Below is an article I published to my music journal on this day last year.
Today it finally arrived! The 5-disc Super Deluxe 20th Anniversary Edition of Underworld's incredible album, Dubnobasswithmyheadman.
Underworld is perhaps where I go off the deep end from fan to fringe fanatic. The first album I ever heard which wasn't commercial pop radio - this record changed my life forever. The album packaging also marked the definitive moment when I knew I had to become a graphic designer.
To date I now have 394 of their albums and EPs in my digital library and nearly every LP, single, book, poster and print they've issued since 1979.
It's collections like this that make me cautious - While I don't buy these titles blindly, I feel somewhat of a sense of responsibility to have them all - perhaps as a part of what critic Simon Reynolds called the growing "curatorial culture" of music fans.
The snapshot below comprises the majority of the releases linked directly to Dubnobass in 1994. But emotionally it feels like I'm archiving my own life story at the crossroads where my preconceived notions of Music were shattered.
I'm really at a thoughtful point in my self-appointed archival career. I'm reading a number of books that examine the nature of post-millennium economy of music sales. Most address the same fundamental points -
- The ease of distribution of digital files and their compact size has stripped music of its commercial value and rendered the majority of physical media useless, making music more of a utility than a property. Most casual listeners are satisfied to sacrifice fidelity and dynamic range for the convenience of carrying thousand of albums with them while they shop, eat, and work, or to give up possession of their libraries entire in exchange for cloud-based music services.
- Simultaneously, the inevitable gluttony of music acquisition which takes place in the digital age further diminishes the value of commercial music.
- However, vinyl sales continue to increase year after year while all other media sales plummet as music consumers discover the merit of the EXPERIENCE of actively listening and participating in their music instead of consuming it passively while performing other tasks.
- And finally, there is an ever-growing culture of music curators who collect physical artifacts of any number of periods, artists, styles, and formats in an effort to reaffirm the value of their music. Another benefit of the digital age is that the Web grants these "curators" access to the furthest reaches of obscure and limited-pressing musics from cultures near and far and from (most) any period in history.
I've found myself spending more time and energy (and money) than I ever have before building my library of "artifacts," in part to document my own personal story via music and also out of a sense of duty to build a library of Music that Matters, so that I can share it with the world and open the minds of listeners yearning for strange and wonderful sounds.
What about you? Are you a cultural curator? Are we wasting our time and our money with these antiquated and out-dated treasures or does our very act of collecting them somehow justify their value?