Digging in the crates..

To many people digging in the crates, searching for rare (cheap) vinyl, getting your fingers dusty in forgotten record shops, is a lost art. To a younger generation of dj's and music lovers, this art never even existed - it's the age of "digital digging" on the internet. Being a complete music addict, I dig for music in any way I can, in whatever format.

Today i'm at my parents house, where my father's music collection is kept, spread over a few rooms, and I thought to myself: "out of all the various sorts of digging experiences, my favourite one must be to dig through a personal collection". It's not just a bunch of random music being stored at someone's house, it's much more than just that. You can go through huge stacks of cd's and vinyl, pick out some real gems (Talking Heads "Fear of Music", Coltrane's "A Love Supreme", John Martyn "Sapphire") and reminisce about your childhood, the first times you heard these records and how you loved them, or about being annoyed that it was always the same f*&#ing record playing on sunday mornings (Kevin Coyne "Marjory Razorblade").

Record collectors must recognize that feeling when you get hooked onto a certain sound, or a certain artist, you start buying as much of it as you can, go a little overboard on it - and when looking back you have to admit to yourself that some of those records did not necessarily need to be bought:) Like when you loved the soothing 70s jazz guitar of say Earl Klugh, but you lost the focus a little bit and also picked up some of his quite horrible 80s smooth jazz records! The bad records say just as much about a person as the good ones - it's someone's history and character embedded in music.

Now I'm not even mentioning how much the way one takes care of his/her collection can reveal, or the way they tried to create order in the chaos of numerous artists, labels, styles, periods in time, but it's safe to say a music collection is a blueprint to the character of a person. So I dare you to have a healthy dig in your best friend's stacks of records, your parents shelves (tip: records from the year you were born - great stuff), and of course your girlfriend's cd's! I'll take it a step further: I think we just invented a brand new profession here : Music Psychotherapist! Analyzing someone's history, problems, life's ups & downs by digging through their music collection. I'd be quite a good one.