A note on record collecting

I found the motives behind record collecting discussed last week interesting in terms of my flatmate, who has a large record collection. A few days after the lecture, she launched into a long and tedious story about her search for hard to find Rolling Stones albums. As she rambled on, I noticed she displayed the classic symptoms of a record collector that Nabeel spoke about. These included the thrill of the hunt, displaying wealth and knowledge and the pleasure taken from the ritual of cleaning and cataloguing the records.

I assumed she had a great passion for music to rigorously keep up such an expensive hobby. I also assumed that we did not regularly hear her record player blasting because she was worried about damaging her prized possessions. However, when I asked her what her favourite Rolling Stones song was, she stared at me blankly and slowly replied, “Well I don’t know… they’re all kinda good”. After a long silence it was obvious that my flatmate couldn’t name one song, let alone her favourite. It seems as though while she no doubt has an impressive knowledge about records, she actually has no interest in the music at all. Since then Nikki has often tried to casually drop in interesting music related facts to redeem herself. I just find it fascinating how one can be so consumed with such a hobby and yet have little interest in the music to begin with. It seems that it’s definitely not always all about the music.