Metrobloggen

I've been a collector of various things for as long as I can remember but I'm also trying to collect something that just can't be collected.

I have a goal and that is to actually see/hear all the artists I like. That is obviously impossible because many of them are already dead or they don't play live anymore, but trying to see/hear as many as possible is the best I can do without a time machine.

The biggest problem isn't to get a chance to hear music live but to remember the show afterwards. The memory of it is like the scent of a flower. It fades away and you can't do much to stop it.

I've saved tickets and festival programs in the past. I've also written some reviews but that isn't really enough to remember everything. Some years ago before the cell phone cameras were available most musical live experiences were very exclusive and if you weren't there you missed it completely. Nowdays almost every gig got some clips up on Youtube afterwards and for someone like me that is just fantastic. However... something might get lost if everything is recorded and saved for the future.

The thing that might get lost is the feeling of actually being part of a special event. The experience of seeing/hearing something live which should be the only thing that matters at that time. The focus should be on the show, not filming it.

People use their cell phones to be able to remember the past but they concentrate so much when recording it so they might miss the thing they're filming. I know for sure that I'll be a slave under the camera if I would bring one because I so desperately would like to remember the shows afterwards.

One show I still remember pretty well is Kraftwerk live at the Roskilde Festival in 1998. They hadn't played live much since the 91 tour so the show was very exclusive and special. The festival management tried to lower the preassure of the Green stage (18.000 people capacity) by having Slayer and the reunited Black Sabbath at the Orange stage at the same time but it was still so crowded that I've hardly ever felt anything like it. 

At that time Kraftwerk still brought all their equipment, the whole Kling Klang studio, when they performed live. That meant that the Green stage had to be closed during Thursday except for Kraftwerk.

I was determined to stay the whole gig at the fence in the very first row even though it was so damn crowded. The first six tracks were great and then I decided to bring out my pocket camera. That was really a misstake. I did use it to take six almost useless photos before I fainted for the first and only time in my life. The guards had to lift me over the fence because I was really gone for a while.

When I look at the Youtube clip below from a Kraftwerk show just some days ago I'm stunned that someone could actually stand there filming for more than nine minutes without even shaking the camera.

I've sadly realized that it's impossible to find all the interesting music. Not just to buy it but to even know it exists. The new technology available means that we can easily find a lot of music fast but listening to it and judging if it's any good is still just as slow and time consuming.

Spending a lot of time looking for more good music rather than actually spending that time listening to the music you already know is good is quite a dilemma. Most people I know stopped listening to new music ages ago, well before they turned 30, but I still crave new audio experiences all the time. It seems that this urge to satisfy me with new exciting sounds will never end.

I understood very early in life that my view of what good music is about differs from what the majority thinks. I remember quite well the very first time I was told to lower the volume becuase someone didn't like the music I was playing. It was in 5th grade when I was 11 years old. By that time I hadn't even begun buying records yet, just cassettes. That music isn't anything special to focus on now, but the way I felt then is something that's been following me for my whole life. It seems that whenever I play music somebody has to say it sucks or tells me to lower the volume.

If you look hard enough (you probably need to get those bulging eyes pop out of their sockets) you'll notice that you're not alone in the world listening to weird music. It doesn't matter how weird it is or which genre it is. Thanks to Internet you can find friends everywhere listening to the same music.

The problem is that if you're into crazy sounds you'll have to put some effort into being able to hear those sounds, at least if you want to experience the music live. This is something I never had a problem with in the past but as time goes by and as I've been to numerous festivals, raves, concerts and performances I've started to get a bit comfortable, a bit grumpy and not hungry as I used to be.

This last weekend I just couldn't drag my ass to a forest rave called Creative Alternative just because I had to travel alone for about 2 hours which included a 30 minute walk in the forest without a proper map. I know that most people wouldn't do that either but I've always done it in the past.

Luckily I had seen/heard all the three main acts before and both www.discogs.com/artist/Ukiro and www.discogs.com/artist/Filteria did actually play at my 4-day birthy party called Stormfestivalen earlier this year. That is however a lame exuse for not having the energy to se this in the beautiful forest rather than indoors:

It may be a bit drastic to call myself a unicorn or even say that I'm the last record collector because I know that isn't true yet, but it's sadly a fact that most "real" record shops have already closed down.

The new thing this year is that even the online webshops are closing down rapidly and that records are harder to find than ever before because there aren't enough buyers out there to feed the distributors. As it seems now the only way to get new records in the future will be to contact the artists directly. That might be good for some artists but most artists aren't that good promoting their own music and manufacturing records are really expensive.

How would I describe a record collector then? Someone buying records obviously, but I think some more things are important too. How many records you buy or how much money you spend depends partly on your financial status and not really if you're a collector or not. It's interesting to see what you DON'T buy though. Do you look like you've crawled out of a dumpster because you buy records and not clothes? Do you prefer buying records over buying food?

Please check out the statements below to see if it's possible that you're a collector by my definition. If your answer is YES to many of these statements then you're likely to be just as crazy as me.

1. You're always looking for records anywhere you go.

2. You've got the same identical music on several different formats (vinyl, CD, cassette etc).

3. You've got several identical copies of the same release bought just in case something happends to the one you listens too.

4. You've got several identical copies of the same release bought by misstake. This is harder to avoid than you might think if you have a huge collection.

5. You've got records that are still shrinkwrapped.

6. You've got a lot of records that you haven't had the time to listen to yet but that isn't stopping you from buying even more records.

7. You store all your vinyls and digipaks in protective plastic sleeves

8. Your flat or house looks like a traditional record shop.

9. When you've completed an artists discography you find three or more new interesting artists to collect.

10. You've not yet found out a good way to organize your collection because it's so big and normal methods that other people use like sort it alphabetical or by genre just isn't possible.

11. You seem to never have enough storage space and that means that you've got piles with records everywhere.

12. When you visit a record shop you browse through the complete stock and you never ever look for just one single record.

13. You spend so much time in record shops that some of the shop owners know your name.

14. When people ask you what music you like you use terminology and micro genres that they don't know anything about like drone-doom, glitch, harsh-noise, IDM, EBM, TBM, tech-trance, ghetto-tech, new beat, martial-industrial and so on.

15. You often buy records instead of clothes and food because the only thing more important than records are air, water and love.

That is the question? Or should I say that the real question is:

Do you want to spend money on music?

I've tried to find people in the world that care about music. I've found some but most people just don't care about music. A record is like a bag of crisps for most people = when the crisps are for free the oily bag (the cover + record) aren't interesting for 95 % of the people.

I don't have a solution now how to trigger people to start buying records again, but it's sad that me and my friends won't have anything to buy in the future. I file on my harddrive isn't a record. It might be a good introduction to get a record but it's just some numbers. I need my records and even if it's just a CDr made by an artist it's still a record!

I just released my own compilation (with my favourite artists) in 500 copies for my birthday and it costed 1000 euro just for the CD manufacturing alone. I gave it away for free but it must be impossible to make money when so few records are sold nowdays. 500 is actuallly the minimum quantity you may order a CD in as far as know unless you want it to be a CDr. Manufacturing CDr's is not a bargain either though.

Believe it or not but there are other crazy people out there releasing fantastic music that you might find if you have the map. I'll give my first musical tip right now:

This is a swedish artist that didn't release much on "real" physical formats for about a decade, but he's been busy online meanwhile and many tracks are available on Last FM and other sites for free. I would preferit  if you would get the real thing, the new album, rather than downloading his free stuff but checking him out is a start!

The australian guys running the Demon Tea Records label understood his potential and released a 2xCD, about 80 + 80 minutes of wicked music just some weeks ago. I'll come back to it for sure but you may check out samples here:

http://www.psilodump.com/

I've been a part of the Internet since January 1994 when I got my first Internet connetion, before most people in the world actually (not to brag about it because in 1994 you couldn't find much). My first computer was bought in 1983 so I'm not hostile to the technology itself just extremely slow to accept the web 2.0, which I'm partly doing today by starting all the accounts at various sites.

This day, the 3rd of July 2009 is the day when I went web 2.0, not by lust but by force!

It's been a month since I got an Internet bank account now. I've fixed a Paypal account too (some days ago) and I'm on Facebook, Yoytube and Twitter... fixed a Tradera account too (Ebay in Sweden). I've been on Discogs, Last FM, Google, ICQ, Yahoo, MySpace and more but never thought about it really.

I'm not going to dive into the sea of my neverending hate towards wiki-methods and Discogs in particular now! But I'll do that later. If you aren't part of Discogs you won't understand a thing anyway.

I'm not actually the last record collector (obviously), not even the last record buyer which was my first choice to name this blog, but I know that most shops will close down during the following years. I see it coming!

This blog will be your map into the future because when there are no shops you'll need a map to find the best music on the Internet! I might have that map in my hand ;-)