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Define your collection - not just 'the items,' but how you see your collection: My collection is all the interesting pop music I've encountered since I was 10. Literally. I hunted down pretty much everything interesting I heard on the radio or in a record store where I thought, "You know? I think I might want to listen to that again later." What I ended up with is the very best and the very worst pop music of the past 26 years, with not a whole lot of mediocrity gumming up the works. Fortunately, I have a creative outlet for the collection, and I put it to use every week on my radio show, "Crap From The Past", which just turned 13 years old. [syndicated, and based out of KFAI-FM/Minneapolis; see www.crapfromthepast.com for details] If I had to guess, I'd say I have about 5000 CDs, 4000 45s, and maybe 2000 albums and 12" singles. When & how did you start your collection? The bulk of my collection was 45 RPM singles. Way back when, you could go up to the record counter and they'd have a list of the 75 best-selling singles, which they'd update every two weeks. They always read at the top, "Please request by number", and the clerk would fetch your requested song from a wall of mailbox-type bins. I started buying one 45 a week just after I had turned 10, back in December, 1978. My first two singles were "Le Freak" by Chic and "Y.M.C.A." by the Village People, two songs which still fill a dance floor to this day. A week or two later, I bought two more 45s, "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" by Barbra Streisand & Neil Diamond, and "My Life" by Billy Joel. For the first few years, I would buy primarily just big hits - usually the stuff at the top of the charts. I tried to own everything that hit the top 3, then the top 5, and later the top 10. Once I hit college in the mid-'80s, I just bought everything interesting, regardless of popularity. The first record albums I bought were the Beatles' "red" and "blue" albums, which I still adore to this day. The only two cassettes I ever owned must have been gifts because I wouldn't have bought them - the "Grease" and "Saturday Night Fever" soundtracks. I started buying CDs around 1988, and I had 9 of them before I ever bought a CD player. I'm pretty sure my first was Level 42's "World Machine". The first song I ever heard played from a CD was Chicago's "Stay The Night", which I heard at a Crazy Eddie's store in New York. When did you acknowledge it as a 'collection'? It must have been during college. I got started in radio in college, and I would refer to the collection in the context of, "Let's see what's floating around at the bottom of the collection." In the early '90s, I began to realize that I had more oddball pop music items than virtually everyone else I knew, and in 1992 I got to put them all on display every week on the air when I started "Crap From The Past". It's just gotten bigger and bigger since then. Has it affected you financially? Back in college I used to joke that I could have had a nice little car, but instead I have a bunch of records. Initially, in the junior high school days, I'd end up spending most of my allowance on records. My parents really didn't understand it and certainly didn't approve, but it didn't slow me down. Long term? No real lasting effect. I never deprived myself of anything important just to have more music. Has it affected those around you? Probably, and in a good way. I've naturally gravitated toward other music hounds, which lead me toward the community-run radio stations that I've worked at over the years. Those stations are pretty well populated by people with the same kind of collector's bug that I have, and it's been a healthy creative outlet in the process - I get to give back a little something to the music community every week from the radio show. At this stage in my life, the pop music is pretty well entwined with my personality, and even my non-musical friends know that it's a large part of my life. What is the most drastic thing you have done to pursue your collection? Probably not as drastic as some other collectors. I remember getting quite a yelling from the parents back in high school. I'd found an original release of Diana Ross's "Chain Reaction", which came out in two different versions here in the U.S., and I came home with the 45. It was only about $1.50, so it wasn't a bank-breaking ordeal, but my parents had had enough of my bringing home 45 after 45... Other than that, the only exceptional thing we used to do was drive into Canada (about four hours from college in Rochester, NY to Toronto) to buy Canadian compilation CDs. Everything else has pretty much involved keep my eyes open in some pretty pedestrian locations - record stores, thrift stores, garage sales (before there was EBay), and so forth. How has it affected your daily life? Owning a gazillion records? Not so much, really. I keep them in some nice, restaurant-style metallic shelves in the basement. Concrete floor, no carpet, and a dehumidifier running constantly in the summer. And the whole collection is strictly confined to the basement - you wouldn't know I like music at all judging from the rest of my house. The radio show, on the other hand, has some wonderful side effects. Aside from doing my show on Friday nights (generally the high point of my week, since I have a few friends that show up for the show with me), I get a consistent stream of emails from listeners. It's always nice to hear from people at the other end of the radio. And it has a small effect on my daily work - if an idea springs to mind for the show, I'll generally scribble it down on the back of an envelope at my desk. Over the course of a week, if I get enough material on the envelope - voila! - I have a theme show all prepared. I think Ron has more to share, so stay tuned for more...
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