Alrighty, here’s that longer post. These are my records. First, here they are by themselves. I have a fair number of them as you can see. I try to slim down by periodically culling the ones I’m not listening to or which I don’t relate to all the way through (as you’ve no doubt seen in the SALE thread).
But this post is actually about how I organize them. I go by genre, sort of, and then by country. I tend to be in the mood for certain things, which isn’t conducive to country delineation of course but I do tend to buy similar things from the same country, so it almost works. Anyway, here’s the breakdown. We’ll start with the vertical set.
Reddish-orange is R&B, new jack swing, soul, and the like. mid-80s to early 90s, nothing before or after. This is the toughest one to keep to one cube right now, because I keep getting more. I just wanna hear FM synths all the time.
Yellow box is a kind of ambiguous 80s rock and pop. B52s are in there, depeche mode is in there, Thompson Twins are in there, Yello is in there. So it’s kind of amorphous but there it is.
Green two boxes are japanese records. They got too big and had to expand. I brought a whole cube full of records back from Japan last trip so we’ll see how that goes.
Blue is two-plus genres. It’s freestyle (a growing category), eurobeat, and italodisco, all in one section. Then next to them is soundtracks. Thematically they don’t go, I just needed the space.
Purple is allll light jazz and jazz fusion. I’m really running out of room in that one, but it’s something I listen to a lot. Bob James, Rippingtons, Jeff Lorber, etc.
Black is “chinese language” - so that means mainland stuff, lots from HK, some from Taiwan, lots from singapore and malaysia - I need to do a real listen through and cull some of this section because it’s another tight one. But basically any time I went to any of these countries I picked up records, and here we are.
White is Korea. This one hasn’t expanded since I’ve not been to korea for a while. Collecting records there has gotten real pricey! You used to be able to barter over there. Not anymore!
Okay, now the horizontal one.
Black (top row) is metal. As you can see it has expanded into another cube. So it goes. In order to ease the stress from some of the country cubes, the metal section has absorbed any country’s metal that I have.
the (top row) reddish-orange is a genre I don’t really know how to describe. lots of instrumental weirdness and semi-chill vibes? tarantula hawk, force majeur, brian eno.
yellow (top row) is “eastern europe.” Not really fair but it was the easiest thing to do. All my hungarian 70s rock and experimental electronic is here, czech prog, russian weirdness, slovakian ska, polish belters, all in here.
Green is video game soundtracks lol. and right at the end there it’s some SEA compilations, thai fuzz rock comps etc.
Blue (very top) is the 7" box. all kinds of nonsense in here, from touring local band pressings to 70s vietnamese rock and taiwanese singles.
Blue (bottom) is 70s rock, progressive and hair metal goes here too. It’s not my very favorite genre but I have a hard time giving it up? Most of my first records were in here, so maybe it’s that. Also I like listening to Yes when I’m writing.
Purple is like folk rock basically. from carpenters to steeleye span.
White starts with. Lots of electro, some trance, some house, some other stuff. I got a lot of this from my old boss. Hip hop is also here (MC hammer’s first album is in there. Nobody ever talks about that one), as is slightly-more-modern indie rock like velvet teen, deerhoof. It’s a busy section.
reddish orange (bottom row) is the kinda stuff people skip in the thrift stores mostly. it’s your grandma music, old big band, waltzes, 50s stuff, exotica, etc. all the les baxter is in here. I like some of this sometimes, good music for playing scrabble to.
Yellow (bottom row) is my partner’s records. She got rid of her record player because mine was better so they’re just hanging out here.
Black (bottom row) is vietnamese, south indian, and mexican records. the only reason they’re together is because of space, but they’re all separated into their sub-groups. It was tough tracking down the vietnamese rock stuff I was looking for, and when I went record shopping in Chennai and Hyderabad it was like stacks and stacks of improperly stored (horizontal!! bound with twine like olde time newspapers!) stuff I’d never heard of so I just got cool covers and hoped for the best.
The mexican records I got from the russian fella who sold me my record player, maybe I told the story before. I was about to leave after buying the player and an amp, and he was like “wait - you like Mexican record?” and I was like sure, why not! and he brought out a box and he’s like “You take. But I tell you - is Mexican!”
I gave a couple to a friend, donated some, and kept the 20 or so that I liked. This was one of the ones I kept. Check out Yolanda Del Rio’s voice as it goes along. She’s about to stab this fella. The lyrics are real good! I recommend.
well that’s it, that’s what I got and how I organize it. enjoy!?
