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Underground > Radio & Music >

How does buying music make you feel?

No star here laces

02:16 / 25.06.04

Because me, I get mine in the mail, and a package just arrived.

And oh god, it's an almost sexual thrill of anticipation. I gently ease open the cardboard package and slide out those big black discs in their pristine sleeves, inhaling the distinct "new record" smell.

They arrive while I'm at work, so I sit at my desk contemplating them and imagining what each one is going to sound like when I get them home. I drink in every detail, loving the little cartoon of Pinocchio (why?) on the Nio "No strings" 12", and carefully studying the blurry photography on "Durch Die Nacht" (Kompakt Pop release number 4 - I love labels which only release one or two things a year!)

It is exactly like having a hot date with someone you've never slept with before and knowing that tonight is the night.

Blackstrobe remix of Alter Ego's "Rocker", I'm going to have you naked on my turntable in about, ooh, eight hours and you're going to love it. Once won't be enough, we'll have to do it at least three times. And Tiga's "Where were you in 92" remix of "Shake your dix", you little minx, last time I heard you I was surrounded by 30,000 spaniards off their heads on strong pills, but tonight it's just you and me. I can't wait.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:42 / 25.06.04

Couldn't put it any better.

Generally by the time I get home from record shopping, I've read, learned and inwardly digested every word on every part of the packaging in anticipation...

...ooh, and I'm going shopping today!

(if you'd excuse me... I think I've just come.)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:19 / 29.06.04

This last few days has taken me right back to the early nineties... the joy of buying the new Skinny Puppy, Ministry AND Cure albums within a few days of each other... buying records has been as fun as it was back then.

Red Cross Iodized Salt

02:03 / 30.06.04

Buying music (or specifically, buying records) makes me happy. It's something I can almost always rely on to sort out my mood. I was in shitty form on Saturday, and ducked out of the lunch I was at early to go buy some records. I didn't even end up getting anything too great (although I picked up a Trax reissue of old Joey Beltram records that I'm definitely going to be playing a lot).

I love the smell of fresh vinyl. Even more than that I love the static charge you get along your arm when you put it on a turntable for the first time. I love when you have to rub the edge of a shrink-wrapped 12" against the seam of your jeans to separate the plastic before cracking it open with your thumb (knowing that ]this copy of the record has never been played by anyone else before). I really love finding those records that you've wanted to own for years and always look for first when you don't have anything new to look for. More than anything else, I love the sense of discovery when you've stumbled across something perfect that you've never heard before and know you'll be able to play to other people.

I'm a loving that Dorau / Kohncke record myself, by the way. I haven't been crazy about the schaffel sound in general, but that Wasserman mix rules. German acid-casualty lullaby music...I think I'll put it on right now.

Red Cross Iodized Salt

02:10 / 30.06.04

Y'know, I didn't intend for that post to sound quite so fetishistic ('smell', 'first time', 'rub', 'never been played before')...it just sort of happened that way.

Brigade du jour

21:36 / 01.07.04

You may know this already, and I don't want to sound like a big patronising git, but I'd like to offer a piece of advice.

I recently came into unexpected money and, totally in character, I've bought shitloads of new cds, dvds, booke and other intellectual/emotional consumables of that type or breed. And now ... I'm bloody sick of it. I actually don't think I could face opening another play.com envelope, and even the thought of walking into HMV makes me slightly ill.

My lesson here is this - I've actually overloaded on the very happiness I usually treasure when buying music and carrying many bags home on the bus, so practising a little moderation (as with so much in life) engenders more, not less enjoyment.

Or it could just be because I'm now broke.

No star here laces

01:39 / 02.07.04

How terribly epicurean of you.

07:45 / 02.07.04

Everything everybody has said in this thread is so horribly true.

More thoughts later perhaps after I've been down to HMV to load up on yet more cheap Black Sabbath CDs like the shameless fool I am..

08:13 / 02.07.04

Interesting thread this. I've often thought that when we shop we are in a sense purchasing an experience - the experience of shopping - rather than actually purchasing things for their use value. It's certainly true with my own purchasing of CDs and books (my other fetish), I've a) purchased things I haven't listened to or read for months, if at all and b) found myself wanting to purchase something again straight after I've made a purchase, much like the way I sometimes want a second bar of chocolate when I'm halfway through a first one. It seems like the gratification is at the point of purchase (or perhaps receit if it's mail order). You must be genned up on this stuff, 'laces, with what you do for a living.

Isn't this bad in any sense? Doesn't mean we just end up with houses/lives full of shit - skips full of possesions that slowly lose their meaning and value (I've got, or have had, loads of at the time "hot" dance 12"s which now mean nothing to me) until we have to ditch it all in a life laundry/ car boot sale spectactular?

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:20 / 02.07.04

Buying music makes me feel special. Especially new releases - I'm such a neophiliac. There are two albums that came out in the last three or four months that I want to own at the moment, and the kinda craving I have is something that goes above and beyond wanting to hear the actual music. It's about the need to own those physical objects. Which is kinda messed up.

14:33 / 02.07.04

The emotional aspects of procuring music have a lot to do with the emotional aspects of having no goddam money. Buying music makes me feel poor, guilty, furtive, hopeful, disappointed, and ultimately depressed. Which is perhaps why I do it so seldom.

The "sticker shock" of buying music makes me acutely aware of just how little discretionary income I have, and plagues me with the puritanical thought that I should really be putting this money towards a worthy investment. Like, y'know, rent, or my children's college funds, or something.

And when I do buy a record, I've got a huge emotional investment in its being really really good--in order to justify the expense. And when the record turns out to be merely okay, or even excellent-but-not-life-changing, I'm far more gutted than I should be; the relative failure of the record feels like a personal failure: "All the records I could've bought, and I bought this one... You backed the wrong horse again, dickhead."

This is probably why most records I buy take a while to grow on me--the initial listening period is tainted with shame and self-loathing. Only after that fades can I start to appreciate the music on its own terms.

I don't buy clothes very often, either.

Regrettable Juvenilia

17:21 / 02.07.04

One interesting development I've noticed recently is that I've become a lot better at prejudging whether I'll like a record before I buy it, even without having heard it. I guess my ability to analyse the various opinions I read has improved. It's a long time since I've bought a real stinker.

at the scarwash

17:30 / 02.07.04

It's such a drug. I'm barely through my second listen of the new PJ Harvey. I've had it for three weeks. Why only second? Because the new fall came in the mail yesterday, new Morrissey and this year's David Byrne this weekend. A week or two previously, my very own not burned but purchased copy of Wire's 154. All great purchases. But what next? I don't think that the three CDs I picked up last night at a show will last me long at all (one was a guilty bit of niceness to a boring singer-songwriter type that I felt bad about not really liking). More!

Brigade du jour

02:21 / 04.07.04

This is probably why most records I buy take a while to grow on me--the initial listening period is tainted with shame and self-loathing. Only after that fades can I start to appreciate the music on its own terms.

I know what you mean, Jack - but I think that's a really good thing, like an investment whereby you spend now and reap the emotional rewards of the music itself some time later. I've found that with pretty much every album I've bought, even more so with artists I'm not terribly familiar with already. Listening to an album I've never heard before gives me that 'shame and self-loathing' of which you speak, but it usually works out okay. Have you found this too?