Your music collection ...

#: probably about 1,200 cds, have about 35 gigs on the computer right now

best: the clash, london calling. amazing.

worst: i really can't think of it. i'm sure it exists

first: sgt. pepper's

discovery: doubt this counts, but there are a couple of moments i will always remember -- the first time i heard smells like teen spirit, the first time i heard rid of me and the first time i heard i am trying to break your heart. smells like teen spirit came on mtv. from the very beginning, i was in. rid of me, polly was on leno of all places. just her and a guitar on a stool -- it was incredible. i fell in love and that was it. the last one, i'd heard so many good things about wilco, had a rental car in texas for a week as i was out covering something and needed something to listen to, plucked down a couple of bucks for yankee hotel foxtrot -- i heard i am trying to break your heart. it killed me. i listened to it at least five times before i got to the second song. and it still kills me to this day.

 

Number of CDs/MP3s/Records in Your Collection: There are probably 2,000 songs on my laptop (less than 200 of those from ITunes) and I have maybe 200-250 albums boxed up. I need to convert them and get rid of them too. ... I have very few CDs now that I’m loading stuff up to the ol’ Lappy 486. My wife still buys ’em, but she’s old school.

Best Musical Purchase: Whew. “Murmur” is probably my desert island disc, though my absolute all-time favorite is “Tusk.” And if you want my copy of “Blood on the Tracks,” you’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

Worst Musical Purchase: Hmm. I’m going to say 1987’s “Comely,” the only release by the Athens-based Bar-B-Q Killers. It was highly recommended in an music column I read in the Village Voice. It was, to me, well nigh unlistenable. I tried. Still, one of the great song titles: “Her Shit On His Dick.” And the cover was of a bird tearing a mouse in two. So it had that going for it.

First Musical Purchase: “If You Could Read My Mind,” by Gordon Lightfoot, a 1970 album initially titled “Sit Down Young Stranger,” puchased at the “Stone Groove,” a head shop (!) on the square (!!) in my hometown. I would have been a freshman in high school and while I bought 45s and such before this – I was mad about Michael Parks’ “Long Lonesome Highway,” the theme song of the TV show “Then Came Bronson” – it was my first “real” musical purchase. It’s on my ITunes short list right now.

Best Musical Discovery: I’ll say Don Dixon, producer of Murmur for R.E.M. and some of the Smithereens’ records. The song “Praying Mantis” had a funny video on MTV and so I bought his 1985 debut album, “Most Of The Girls Like To Dance But Only Some Of The Boys Do.” (Dixon, I would learn later, tended to find paintings by artists that he liked and then record a song with the painting’s title and make that the title of the album. Interesting process.) Caught a show with Dixon and his wife, the countryfied singer Marti Jones, at some club in D.C. – not the Bayou, maybe the 9:30 Club, I forget. But it was a damned good show.

 

Before I settled down, got married and had kids, I always had something playing in the background. That has continued as we have a TV but do not watch it, save for a DVD here and there.

I am fully aware that I need to go through and pare down the collection (the LPs I will never part with) of CDs especially now that I am converting them to digital. In my ideal world, I would have them all ripped and on external hard drives, but that is going to take a ton of time!

 

# of CDs: At my peak, I'd say I owned 75 CDs or so. I haven't bought a CD since Rage Against The Machine's live album dropped in 2002 or so.

Best music purchase: Bought it twice -- Depeche Mode 101. I still listen to it regularly. "Behind The Wheel" is a workout staple.

Worst music purchase: I bought Andy Bell's solo album (Erasure singer) and it was terrible. I didn't make it all the way through.

First album: Tie. My madre, at my behest, purchased Thriller and Styx's Kilroy Was Here for me in 1983.

Music discovery: We met Tantric at the Hard Rock Cafe in Louisville two years ago. I'd never heard of them. The guys were nice, bought us two rounds because we hadn't heard of them. Now I really like them. Not my favorite, but some of their stuff is in the rotation.

First concert: Cheap Trick, Tulsa, 1989.

Best concert: Rush, Cincinnati, 1998.

 

Number of CDs: Not that many, actually. Maybe 100-150.

Best purchase: Year in and year out, it's been Journey's Greatest Hits. And I say that with absolutely no shame.

Worst purchase: Spice Girls, the original CD. Good God what was I thinking?

Best Discovery: Believe it or not, probably Surfing With the Alien, by Satriani.

 

Number of CDs/MP3s/Records in your collection: Because I used to hock CDs at the local alternative music store every time I went broke in college, I've had to reconstruct my CD collection several times. Right now, I'm at about 100. However, I've got approximately 5,100 MP3s on my hard-drive/iPod. In my late 80s heyday, probably had 200 cassettes.

Best music purchase: Got to be the iPod I bought a year ago. Thanks to Itunes and generous friends, my music collection has quintupled in that time.

Worst music purchase: I bought so many bad metal cassettes in the 80s that I've lost track, but No. 1 would have to be the solo album "Tattooed Millionaire" put out by Bruce Dickinson, the singer from Iron Maiden. Aside from a halfway decent cover of Bowie's "All the Young Dudes," completely unmemorable lite metal.

First music purchase: Not counting the stuff I stole from my older brother, I got J. Geils Band's "Freeze Frame" on vinyl for my 9th birthday. It actually melted to my turntable when our house burned down the following year.

Best musical discovery: Would have to say Robert Earl Keen. He's basically a Texas version of Jimmy Buffett, for those not familiar with his work.

First concert: I'm told I was on-hand for Elvis at Houston's Hofheinz Pavilion in 1976 (I was 3), but the first one I went to on my own accord was Judas Priest, Turbo tour 1986. I was 13. My ears rang for three days.

Best concert: Saw Black Sabbath on their 1999 reunion tour, just before Ozzy's health took a serious downturn. They were incredible. Also saw Motley Crue three times, including on the infamous "Girls, Girls, Girls" tour in 1987. Topless women everywhere, which is a big deal when you're 14.

Band you missed in concert, but wished you had seen: I was too young to catch Zeppelin or Roth-era Van Halen, so I'd have to say Iron Maiden.

And, Captain Kirk and BYH, my older brother was a HUGE Lord Tracy fan. The late 80s were filled with LA novelty metal acts hoping to become the next Van Halen.

 

I forgot the other categories.

Best music purchase: "The Sound of the Suburbs" (compilation), 1992. Lots of cool mod stuff from the late 70s/early 80s, from Martha & The Muffins to Altered Images to "Turning Japanese." Yummy.

Worst music purchase: ZZ Top's "Recycler" (1990). Went straight to the appropriately-named bin. Crap, crap, crap.

First album: I got various ones as gifts, but the first one I bought with my own money was "The Wall."

Music discovery: Not one in particular, but MTV was an eye-opener in the early 80s. That week when Nirvana's "Nevermind" blew up was probably the closest thing to what it must've been like when the Beatles landed — holy crap.

First concert: Police, Oklahoma City, 1983.

Best concert: (tie) Happy Mondays, Frankfurt, 1991; Monsters of Rock, Memphis, 1988.

 

Ah, Martha and the Muffins. Great band from Toronto (back in the day when there were plenty of great acts - besides Rush - from TO). "Echo Beach" is one of the great 80s songs and "Cheesies And Gum" was pretty cool too.

 

Ah, another sleeper hit I stumbled upon:

Treble Charger

Man, lots of energy and great songs.

 

For BYH and Steak's brother. $13 gets you in the door.




I'm not sure how much it costs to get back out.

 

Let me preface this by saying I was starting to feel my oats a bit until I got to Guerrillascribe's post, and now I realize my collection ain't shit.

Number of CDs/MP3s/Records in your collection: Somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 CDs. The high-water mark was closer to 800 or 900, I think, but I traded in a bunch of them over the years and haven't bought more than a handful in the past four or five years. Now it's all digital, and I have about 40 GB of music in my iTunes, though a good portion of that was imported from CDs I own.

Best music purchase: Probably Pearl Jam's "Vs." I've probably listened to that album more than any other, and because I bought it before any other PJ album, it probably had more effect on the future of my musical taste than anything else.

Worst music purchase: Oh, God. There are so many embarrassing ones I've traded in and erased from my consciousness. I think I owned that shitty Shawn Mullins album with "Lullaby" for a week or two. Egad.

First music purchase: I'll break this one down. First 45 — "Another One Bites the Dust" by Queen; first cassette — Def Leppard's "Hysteria"; first CD — Nirvana's "Nevermind".

Best musical discovery: Sometime around 1998, I was introduced to a little-known band called Modest Mouse. Their third full-length album, "The Lonesome Crowded West," had just been released, and I fell in love. Went to see them play this tiny club on Halloween night, along with the Murder City Devils and Joan of Arc. Great fucking show. Modest Mouse has been my favorite band ever since.

Best recent discovery: I always go through a period of discovery around the new year, it seems, and there's always a new band I fall in love with. Last year it was the Drive-By Truckers. A couple years ago it was The Hold Steady. One band I'm really digging right now is Tullycraft. Their most recent album, "Every Scene Needs A Center," is fantastic indie pop.

 

I have no idea how large our collection is as I've never sat down and counted. We have lots of LPs, cassettes, CDs.....I've ripped all our CDs to my computer, which only totaled 5GB, not much compared to some of you.

I even still have 8-tracks, but those are still at my parents' place. Chances are, they're in some box out in a corner of the barn and will never be found for another 30 years.

My first album that I remember getting was John Denver's Greatest Hits. I still have it, although I haven't listened to it in quite some time. Our collection ranges from Pasty Cline to Janis Joplin to Pink Floyd.

I do know I want Guerrillascribe's set up so I could transfer all our albums to digital, including some old 78s I have.