Georg Cracked talks with Howard Stelzer about the art of record collecting

- Collecting records is different to e.g. stamps, because the music on the records has an emotional quality and an artistic worth. What keeps you tied to collecting records?

It's fair to call it an obsession at this point. There's so much music out there... what if I miss something great? What if there's some new CDr label with limited-edition releases? I can't not know what the music is like, right? What if it's really great, how will I know unless I buy everything, right now? And when I find out about some community of musicians that I wasn't aware of, so a whole body of work that I haven't heard, I want to hear all of it at once... DIY post-Corpus Hermeticum drone records from New Zealand... the German synth-pop cassette underground from the early 80s... that weird sorta-post-techno Zero Gravity scene in Japan….the whole mileu around Wolf Eyes and the young Michigan noise freaks... gotta take it all in, and I keep discovering interesting new pockets of music to check out, new bands... it never ends. Plus, people are forever pointing out gaps in my knowledge, which naturally I have to fill. Like, until very recently, I had never heard Roxy Music or those first few Scritti Politti singles on Rough Trade. One trip to the record shop solved that problem. It was a good day.

- How big is your record collection? This question is not about bragging or comparing, but my problem is that my collection is starting to take over my living space, yet I am unable to give them away. How to solve that?

How big is it? Hmmm... I probably have 5000+ CDs, maybe 2000 or so CDrs, another 2000 or so LPs and 7"s, who knows how many cassettes.... it could conceivably be more than that, but I've stopped counting. I can completely understand your collection taking over your living space! It's happened to me, too, plus I have this record label that every so often fills my bedroom up with more heavy boxes full of CDs that take a long time to move out my door. But it's what I love. I still manage to pay my bills and live a somewhat normal life, so I'm not too worried about become a record-hording recluse. I know people who are way worse than I am. I don't tend to go for the $100+ LPs, the real heavy collector stuff... I'm more excited to hear the music however I can, I don't need 1st pressings or original sleeves or rare objects like that. I'm happy with reissues when I can get them. I even prefer CDs to vinyl! Give me a reissue over an original, I don't care.

- I don't need 1st pressings or things like that either. I have bought cheap pressings from eastern europe second hand for years. Only with classical music or really minimal stuff, I tend to prefer CDs because of the noise vinyl makes when you have played it a few times. With regular and rock music I don't care. I still prefer vinyl for sentimental reasons, but usually I go for the cheaper version, or the one that has bonus tracks, or what's available right now.

I have friends who get excited about 1st editions, too. I've also never really cared. The music is what's important to me, I just want to hear it.

- I find record stores in the smallest towns. I am unable to not look into a record bin when I see one especially on flea markets and such. I found great stuff in shoddy bins between a mass of useless stuff. How about you? Any great finds?

I was once in some tiny town in far western Massachusetts, way out in the country not near anything in particular, driving around at night. There was really nothing else around except for a roadside restaurant which I happened to pull into for dinner... as I remember it, there was highway, farm, and this restaurant that somehow had a record shop next door. So of course I went into the shop, not expecting much, and promptly noticed a section of vinyl marked 'noise'. Huh? I pulled out SBOTHI "Can the Sound Change" and CCCC "Amplified Crystal". Holy crap, right? When I brought them up to the counter, the old guy running the store looked at the records, looked at me, and said "You know what, you need to go to Lowell, there's a store there called RRR that you would probably like... Oh, and these records have been sitting in that bin for years". Hilarious!

- Lately, when I talked to a friend who had just bought a copy of the Sgt. Pepper's Musical done by the Bee Gees (why he bought that is another question...) we came on the two guiding principles for record collectors. The second most important rule is: everything will come up some place else some time in the future, so don't worry about buying right now. The most important rule is: if there is something you want, take it right now.

Haha!

- What's your rules? Have you ever spent money you knew you needed for something else on records?

Are you kidding? I do that every day! Like, I often spend my Saturdays doing the round of Boston record shops. That used to be a lot better, back before most of the shops here closed down (due to that depressing national trend of independent shops being priced out of American cities), but it's still alright. I can hit one in my neighborhood, then walk up toward Harvard and hit four more, ending at Twisted Village, my local. I usually get my rent taken care of in time, but bills do suffer. I'm not too concerned about it. But my other obsession is food and beer, and I often spend more money on eating at restaurants and going to bars than I do on records. I don't make a lot of money at my job, but it all goes to music and food. Life is good. I think I live pretty well.

- When I walk into my favorite record store, which is Substance Records here in Vienna, Austria, I sometimes tell myself: don't take more than two albums. Sometimes it really works. But then there is so much good stuff. What limits do you set yourself?

Perhaps it's a language barrier here. What do you mean by "limits"? I've not encountered that word. Maybe it can't be translated...

- You mentioned another important issue: there is so much good music out there it seems reasonable that you might never ever be able to buy or listen to it all. How do you select?

There are things I listen to more than others. I'll always check out 70s/80s post-punk bands, or early industrial noise... those are my priorities over new noise or new bands, all the time. Major label records can always wait. I don't love special packages, so those things tend to wait unless I really need to hear the stuff now, like with that amazing G*Park 6xCDr boxset that Tochnit Aleph did. Holy crap, I love that thing. Or anything in a small envelope. Those get lost here.

- I have come to the conclusion that I let it come to me. For instance, I don't go after hypes. I don't care who is on the cover of magazines. (Mostly those bands aren't worth the time it takes to listen to them, anyway.) Yes, they could be really good, but I don't care. That's one line I draw, which I know is completely random. How do you beat the pressure?

I don't feel very much pressure, to be honest. I come across interesting new music so often that there's always something that I want to hear, or a scene that I want to check out. Or a pal will suggest something, or I'll see that a bunch of people whose taste I tend to agree with are all excited about an artist, so I'll check that out. It's natural to me, though, I don't feel pressured by hype. Though I am curious when it seems like a lot of people are all into, say, Acid Mothers Temple all of a sudden. I like PSF Records, I like Japanese heavy rock, so... why not check them out? They happen to be a terrible band, but I don't regret giving them a shot.

- Buying online is a great thing because you can get almost anything from the most obscure sources. But then I still prefer the physical act of searching through records. It is what I call record hunting. I love to spend time at record shops looking through the bins. What do you think?

Sure, hunting for records is the best. When I'm in a new city, that's all I want to do other than eat. Find the record shops and sift around all day long. I could spend hours, kill an afternoon or evening just digging through records or CDs or whatever, talking with the store owner. Totally fun. But I buy online, too. RRR, Hanson, all those spots get stuff in that I won't ever find in a shop.

- Amazon has a nifty feature that you'll surely know: "People who bought this CD also bought“ I hate that. I doesnď’t work with me on top. The next time I’ll be visiting a big chain store I’ll walk out with the album by Slayer, the new one by Bob Dylan and maybe an old Blue Note re-issue.

Heh, yeah that doesn't work for people who are already music obsessives. You know what, though? I have never bought anything on Amazon ever, not even once. I've stopped looking at eBay too. Fuck it, I already have too much to listen to, I don't need to bid on records when I tend to amass new music just by waking up. I get demos, buy stuff at shows, stop in to record shops when I have a few minutes to spare on my way to somewhere else, my friends might give me a new CD of their work, then I'll come home and buy more at online shops like Hanson. But those Amazon-style recommendations... not useful to me. I take recommendations from my friends all the time, but not from Amazon. I also try not to go to chain stores, though there's a local chain here in Boston called Newbury Comics that I think does a decent job. 

- Do you care about music on major labels at all? In other words, what did you do when the new Bob Dylan album comes out?

I didn't do anything! Bob Dylan doesn't really interest me. But I like the Thom Yorke solo album well enough, and some Radiohead. I think Interpol are enjoyable. I like some older major label music, back when the majors cared about innovation and let artists experiment... old Human League, Iggy Pop's first couple of solo albums, post-punk stuff, PiL "Second Edition", the Cure, the Smiths, things like that. But new albums on major labels tend to not be music that I care about.

- What do you think of the idea of the major labels to introduce three different versions of CDs, a cheap one with just the music and a sheet, a regular one and an expensive one with all kinds of bonus material?

That may be just a European thing, I haven't heard of it here. But then, I don't buy a lot of major label music. When I do, I always look for it used at an independant shop.

- Yeah, maybe just done in Germany and spilling into Austria. I usually don’t care about the format a record comes in, because I am interested in the music. Still, I prefer to look through vinyl bins than CD racks. But if someone sends me great music, I don’t care if it is a CDr. On the other hand, I’d never say I collect CDs, because I collect records or music. The CDs come along at the side.

I collect CDs. Vinyl gets warped, it gets scratched... I've got no romance for vinyl. I mean, I buy it, sure. I also buy tapes, and I don't like those as a format either.

- A person I know collects the records to the book „The 1.000 most beautiful record covers.“ What do you think about that? Anything likewise with you?

Nah. Though I do like looking at pictures of a record label's covers all gathered in one place, especially when there's some nice design thing that bridges them all together. I like the Factory covers (who doesn't?), Zick Zack's 7" sleeves, John Wiese's designs for Helicopter... good stuff.

- What has been the weirdest reason you ever bought a record for? I sometimes buy records because my wife mentions that she likes that song, and then we never listen to it, mostly because I chose the records we listen to.

Weird reasons... hm, I can't think of any..

- When I was about 16 I ran away from home after some quarrel with my father, didn't know where to go so I headed to a cool inner city record store. There I saw the cover of "Sour Mash" by Beasts of Bourbon and for reasons unknown to me I spent all the money I had with me on this album because of the cover. I spent another hour walking through the cold city and then turned home when my anger had blown off. I came home, put on "Hard Work drivin' man" and that blew me away with its snottiness, anger and growling. Perfect. By the way, nobody noticed I ran away because I had only been gone one afternoon.

Haha!!! That's a good story! Hm, I don't think I have anything to compare. But I was once obsessed by a Fishbone cassette, back when I was 12 years old and a tuba player in my junior high school's marching band. To me, having never heard anything remotely like it, Fishbone sounded like undifferentiated noise. I really could not understand that there were even instruments in there... I had no reference point at all. The tape belonged to a sax player in the school's band. I borrowed it from him, and played it over and over and over obsessively (it was the same 6 songs on both sides of the tape) until the tape literally snapped in half. I had to buy two copies of it after that: one for the guy whose tape I broke, and the other for me. When I was a bit older, I re-bought it on CD, and I still have it today. Yep... Fishbone. Not the most embarrassing thing in my collection, though, believe it or not.

- Do you also download music from peer to peer networks and then burn them yourself? Sometimes. Several months ago, I got involved with Soulseek to find rare records, small-edition tapes, European 80s synth music, things that I knew I would never find. But I got quickly overwhelmed with music to listen to, so I stopped. I may go back to it once I have a larger storage space for my mp3s, and I'll digitize rare things from my own collection, but for now I just don't have the time to keep up.

- Do you remember "High Fidelity"? When that book came out a friend of mine gave it to me saying: that's you. (I hope - and fear - she meant the John Cusack-character not the other ones.) Anyway, the best part about record hunting are the discoveries you might make: a new noise band, some old jazzer or even realising that Stevie Wonder had some cool songs back long before he recorded "I just called to say I love you". What did you find yourself listening to and suprised yourself with the fact that you liked this stuff? Or do you listen to fringe music most of the time?

Oh, plenty of things surprised me! I had no idea that Steely Dan was so great... an old girlfriend turned me on to "The Royal Scam", and I still enjoy it whenever my roommate Greg isn't home. He hates that shit. I also love Billy Joel, but that's a leftover thing from my childhood on Long Island, where Billy Joel is sacred to Jewish folks of my generation from the New York suburbs. Fela Kuti took me by surprise, some reggae and dub... yeah, I'm no snob stuck on the fringe. I like a lot of square stuff, too.

- What do people say when they visit you for the first time at home? I usually get some silly stares and the "do you ever listen to all of those?" remarks.

Sure, I get those too! Well, when I used to share a house with a girlfriend, the CDs and half of my records were hidden away in a separate room. Now, I share a house with two friends, so by necessity my collection is (mostly) stored in my bedroom, along with all the materials from my label. I don't have much room in there for anything else, other than a bed. It's hard to walk around. There's no longer much floor space. But hey, my cousin collects books, lives alone, and had to move to a bigger apartment because his first one could no longer hold all of his books. He still lives surrounded by books, and keeps some of collection in the basement of his previous apartment. So, I suppose it's in my blood.

- Finally, which are your favorite record stores (online or real)? So I don't have to search for them if I should ever get near them.

My favorite shop is Twisted Village, my local. That's located here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, near Harvard University. My pal Wayne runs it, it's a good spot. There used to be an incredible place in Montreal called CD Esoterik, where I would always pull out amazing used vinyl and tapes, old noise records and stuff, but they shut down. That's a real shame, it was so good. I haven't been back to Montreal since. In Baltimore, there's a stunning shop called the True Vine, run by another pal, Ian Nagoski, Great used vinyl, small-run noise CDrs, noise tapes, who knows what else. Walking in their front door costs me $200. A recent fave is Hospital Records, in New York City... an impossibly perfect shop filled entirely with noise CDs, vinyl, and a wall of noise cassettes. WOW. It's barely big enough to hold five people comfortably, but I could spend hours and hours going through their wares. I've done precisely that, in fact. Hospital is run by a totally good guy, too: Dominick Fernow, who does a noise project called Prurient of which I am a fan.

- I like Prurient a lot. I have the albums they did on Load and they are great. I bought them online at conspiracy. Load records is great throughout. Do you focus on artists, genres or labels when searching for records?

Sure! I used to obsess over Selektion when I was in high school and college. That was my favorite label. I remember buying those records when I got my first RRR catalog, handed to me surreptitiously by an employee of a record shop in Miami: "Psst, take this catalog, and order anything out of it". So I did. I chose the records by bands whose names seems the least like band names, the ones that were just letters and numbers: SBOTHI, P16.D4, and F/i. When that order arrived at my parent's house in Boca Raton, I remember being so confused and happy, what a day! Two of those are still among my favourite albums ever: SBOTHI "and" LP, and P16.D4 "acrid acme (of)" CD. Those are perfect albums.

Let's see, what else. Schimpfluch, but that stuff was hard to find even when it was around. Nowadays, I try to be a completist with Fag Tapes, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, Gods of Tundra, Troniks/PACrec, Was Soll Das?, Last Visible Dog... I try to get everything they do, and even if I don't like it all, I at least want to hear it. But some of that stuff just goes by without me, there's not much I can do about it.