Record nerds need lives

collector-nerdAttention record nerds! You’re idiots.

Now that I have your attention, please allow me to clarify and explain: some of you are amazingly short-sighted idiots with the compulsory habits of Beanie Baby enthusiasts. Seriously. I’m not doing this to be “shocking,” I just have a need to get this off my chest and let you folks who buy multiple copies of new releases in various colors are no better than the folks who fucked up comics for everyone in the early ’90s.

Having been a nascent comic fan in the early ’90s, I was perfectly poised to see the multiple-cover, chromium holo foil, die-cut, sealed-for-your-protection phenomenon that took comics from something that you read to something you collected, and much the same thing is going on with records even as I type this.

Example number one: multiple colors. I understand the idea of releasing a record on three or four or five or however many colors, if you’re going to do it over a period of time (first press on green, second on red, etc.). To continue the comic book metaphor, it’s akin to releasing the first press with a foil cover, then maybe a sketch variant for the second press, and maybe just a regular version for any pressing thereafter. You’re rewarding early adopter status with something cool, in order to boost sales out of the gate.

This particular style of limited releases has a certain logic: it’s a good way to get recognition, or offer something for people who buy early. The recent release of Night Birds’ The Other Side of Darkness had a silk-screened cover for the first 125 orders. What I don’t understand is the way labels have begun to release an album on multiple colors at once, and then selling them as “packs,” wherein you can get all variants in one package.

Example number two: New Found Glory’s newest album, Radiosurgery, is available as a pre-order, wherein you can get all three vinyl colors plus a shirt and a slip mat. $60, right here. Now, I don’t know about you, but considering I could get a single LP for $15, that says to me that you’re willing to blow $45 for two more copies of the SAME RECORD. They did the same thing with their “Listen to Your Friends” single. One song, on four different colors.

Granted, this isn’t something that labels or bands would be doing without a demand. Suburban Home/Vinyl Collective might’ve created an artificial demand with three-month-prior pre-orders and limited quantities, but for the most part, this seems to be something that fans are demanding, and that’s what I don’t understand.

You say you’re a music fan? Fine, I’ll give you your mono vs. stereo pressings. I’ll give you the European pressing with a bonus song. Remasters, so on and so forth … all of these things indicate that you care about the music present on these pieces of plastic. There’ve been pictures on the Vinyl Collective forums from people who have 35 copies of Against Me!’s Reinventing Axl Rose. When you buy extra copies of a record that sit on a shelf, sealed, just to have the whole set only puts you in the category of your grandmother and her Hummels.

There’s going to come a point when the bubble bursts, and your friendly neighborhood record shop – the one that’s already under fire from Internet retailers, eBay, and iTunes – will be saddled with insane amounts of product it can’t move, much in the same way that your local comic shop ended up with several dozen copies of the first issue of the Jim Lee X-Men foundering in their back-issue bin. Then, the mouth-breathing troglodytes who flip shit at cons, flea markets, and online will move onto the next hot thing, and that environment you helped foster will be the end of that which you love.

Music is for listening, much as comnics are for reading. If you’re buying something to sit on your shelf, encased in plastic, might I instead suggest bugs in Lucite? They’re educational, and the records freed up up might mean those of us who want to listen to them, can end up owning them.