Agony Shorthand


Thursday, September 04, 2003
THE INSANE PATHOLOGIES OF THE MUSIC OBSESSIVE….Mark Murmann captures nicely some of the bizarre music buying/listening traits I know he shares with many – like me – in his blog Blitz My Brains (which has a new address, by the way; re-set your bookmarks to this one):

A recent record binge, fueled by a fat student loan check has left me with a towering stack of records on my desk. My "To Play" pile. You see, I have a small neurotic process I go through when I get new records. Enter the records into my database, a spreadsheet program that helps me keep track of what I have and what I don't. Laugh if you want, but about half of my collection lives in a small storage space in Southern Indiana. Even a fair number the records I have here in Berkeley are holed away in boxes, or tucked onto shelves in the closet. Every month or so I have to thin out my singles, pull stuff I haven't played in a while to make room for the new. With LPs, for any new record that gets added to the shelves, one has to come out, go in the closet.

After entering the record into my database–information on band, title, label, year, country, condition and special notes (color vinyl?, etc.)–I play the record. Before any record gets filed, it gets played. Stuff that sticks, that catches my ear, sits out for repeated play.


Naw, you don’t really do that do you? Eh, that happens to be almost my exact “process”, minus the database entry part (I do that when I have time but it’s just band & title -- maybe I'm normal after all?). Is it because our moms didn’t love us enough when we were newborns?