Makin' space, cutting thru the dust

There was a time when the mission was to beef up the record collection to add some bulk and heft. Amoeba records worked quite nicely for that, and it weren’t long before the whole load got massive and damn near unmanageable. All my good cuts were getting lost in the stacks and any attempt at organization was quickly reversed as soon as I moved again. Trying to organize and make use of limited space got a touch stressful at times, apartment living and all. The source of this vinyl avalanche was of course the fifty cent records at Amoeba. Coming home with a BOX of records every day for four days in a row during one particular week was staggering. And I did it all the time. There are no vinyl listening stations at Amoeba so I am limited to the names of producers and labels that I recognize and things I don’t recognize, but take a chance on anyway. Working like this, I bought a fair amount of truly horrible electronic music that I dispensed with immediately and refused to allow into my collection. Then there were a lot of records that were not sterling selections, but with the desire to make my collection larger, I found something about the tracks worth keeping around. This is how I got into trouble. Along with all of these dodgy sounds tho’, I found some right fuckin’ amazing records that made ALL of that dust inhalation worthwhile.
Over the last couple of months I have been pulling all questionable selections and giving them another listen to determine whether they are worth keeping around. Taking notes and putting on stickers to mark tracks. Taking paint to some records where there is only one serviceable track and blotting out the rest with colors. Thereby saving me the effort of going thru tracks that are not playable next time.
I am getting closer to finishing task and it has taken a lot longer than I counted on, but the extra space in our apartment and my head is nyce. Except when I spilled paint on that one really choice dark house track. I’m still twisted up inside when I think about that. I have uncovered many choice pieces from their hiding places and discovered a lot of great ones that I was unaware that I even owned, there was too much. Amoeba seems to have raised the prices on most of these records to a dollar however, and the quality has dropped, but no matter. I can just be selective now that the collection is leaner and has lost all of that dead weight.