junk wax

john eden

male pale and stale
it's a junk shop mode of appreciation for the flotsam and jetsam washed up on lifes shores, the ephemera of consumer capitalism

I think it is that and I can't really defend it on those grounds except to say that it is a reasonably harmless hobby for a middle aged man - and that it's usually in parallel with people also consuming and valueing music in other ways.

There is also an aspect to it which is all about bucking the market and finding things which are undervalued (in money terms) which can then be sold at a profit.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
it fosters a mode of listening and valuing music that i think bad from an aesthetic standpoint. it values the curio and the kitsch and the exotic. i don't mean this as a condemnation of it by the way.

Not sure about that, it leaves you much more open to chance than say, a Youtube algorithm. And what's wrong with curios?
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
Plus there's a joy in popular culture there as well.

There's also the discovery aspect to it. I've seen lots of people dig stuff up that then ended up getting reissued, revived, pushed into wider circulation. Probably my fave is Donnie & Joe. You have to be deep in the trenches to find stuff like this though.

 

luka

Well-known member
Not sure about that, it leaves you much more open to chance than say, a Youtube algorithm. And what's wrong with curios?

nothing is wrong with curios. im just talking about how it skews the aesthetic judegment and decentres it.
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
nothing is wrong with curios. im just talking about how it skews the aesthetic judegment and decentres it.
I think that's true about people who collect records in general. A lot of them are focused on the past and don't really relate to new music very well. The most insufferable bores who want to tell you how there's been no "real" music made since [x} point in history which coincidentally is the point where their balls dropped.
 

luka

Well-known member
right. i dont want to be belligerent and attack record collecting. although it did sound a bit like that. i wanted to explore how collecting skews the aesthetic response. what is distinctive about it. how the hunting and foraging changes the relationship to music.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Well I think there are upsides and downsides to music being embodied in a commodity. On the one hand it is does introduce a whole area of monetary value and speculation, not to mention who has the biggest dick competitions in which the quantity of records or knowledge you have is the prize.

But on the other hand stumbling across random stuff does open up new areas of music. My appreciation for Messiaen and his life and music stems from grabbing a handful of his LPs from a charity shop. Those sort of finds do open up the potential for an immersion in things. And in a different (maybe better, maybe not) way than simply hearing things on the radio or in a rave or on Youtube.
 

luka

Well-known member
i've mentioned Matt's theory that as soon as music stops being a physical artifact it loses all its power. it ceases to exist once the dubplate stops being cut and the cds stopped being sold.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
It's also worth considering completism here, I think. With most things there is a variation in quality and it can become an academic pursuit to hear or acquire every single release by a particular artist or label.

Also scarcity. There is no need to possess something that is rare - especially if it isn't any good.
 

luka

Well-known member
it also stops being a historical artifact. and record collecting is tied in with history in a profound way. its archeological
 

DannyL

Wild Horses
I like the tactile nature of digging. Switch my phone off, wander round the city (or even better a new city), see what I can find. Kinda reminds me of psychogeography in some ways. I have travelled all over cities ignoring their other wonders to get to record shops.

And it often can have very little do with listening. Once you've got the magical object, who cares about something as tawdry and debased as actually playing it?
 

john eden

male pale and stale
i've mentioned Matt's theory that as soon as music stops being a physical artifact it loses all its power. it ceases to exist once the dubplate stops being cut and the cds stopped being sold.

I think it changes things certainly. Men my age get all watery eyed at having had very small record collections and needing to make a decision about which album to buy next - often a thought process that would last for weeks.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Maybe that's missing now - few people will ever be in the situation where they can ONLY either listen to King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown OR Tago Mago. Without having much of a clue about what either of them sound like.

Choices like that confront you with some insight into how you think your tastes might evolve. And you might be wrong.
 
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john eden

male pale and stale
I like the tactile nature of digging. Switch my phone off, wander round the city (or even better a new city), see what I can find. Kinda reminds me of psychogeography in some ways. I have travelled all over cities ignoring their other wonders to get to record shops.

And it often can have very little do with listening. Once you've got the magical object, who cares about something as tawdry and debased as actually playing it?

Yeah I agree that the process is hugely enjoyable - and it isn't necessarily about the music. I can be quite happy bimbling around shops of an afternoon and not buy anything.

So it does skew things as Luka says.
 

luka

Well-known member
i keep saying now that music has become part of the problem. i do beleive that. unless you can find a way to resacralise it its a tool of the Satanic Nazis.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
i keep saying now that music has become part of the problem. i do beleive that. unless you can find a way to resacralise it its a tool of the Satanic Nazis.

I think it's always been part of the problem and you have various tendencies struggling against each other.

Even during lockdown you'll have people forced to sit at home who then commune with cosmos via music. Admittedly this mainly is not a collective experience but there has been some of that with livestreams.
 

luka

Well-known member
I think it's always been part of the problem and you have various tendencies struggling against each other.

Even during lockdown you'll have people forced to sit at home who then commune with cosmos via music. Admittedly this mainly is not a collective experience but there has been some of that with livestreams.

you can sometimes engineer it. that's what we were trying to do with those threads where we pick a song and demand a deep engagement with it. or at least, demand you say something clever about it to impress us. also with the thread where we all listened to thirdforms mix together.
 
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