Oriphiel

WHFS = When Harry Fucked Sally

__________________
----------------------
|---Mic's Albums---|
----------------------
-----------------------------
|---Deafbox Industries---|
-----------------------------

rubber soul

It kind of became that after awhile as the nineties went on. WHFS evolved from Nirvana to the Foo Fighters to Limp Bizkit. Finally, some Spanish language station took the dial over to put them out of their misery.

__________________

innerspaceboy

1980s - I was born in ‘81 so I was part of the MTV and VCR generation. I taped hundreds of videos on EP on 6-Hour Certron and BASF VHS tapes and wore out the pause and rewind buttons manually transcribing lyrics in the pre-Google era. I had a Fisher Price Record Player with Captain Zoom from Space Command singing “Happy Birthday, Innerspaceboy!” (which I still spin each year), and a stack of storybook-and-records. I’d not yet discovered FM radio. Most of my memories pre-2015 are a blur, so only little fragments remain.

Early 1990s - Cassette was king and I spent my summer days biking the neighborhood retrieving discarded mix tapes from the gutters and doctoring them back to working order to discover new music. But again, pre-Google, it took years to work out what I was listening to. I discovered FM via a dental office top 40 soft rock station and quickly found my way to a nationally syndicated “oldies” station and spent most of the early 90s listening to squeeky clean pre-drug culture whitewashed hits of the 1950s. At this point, I loved the Beatles but had no idea that they ever tried drugs.

MP3s didn’t exist yet but I spent a lot of time downloading sound modules from bulletin board systems and playing them with MFED. It was awful, and I loved it.

Late 1990s - I got my first CD player and amassed nearly 1000 CDs mostly from secondhand shops and used bins. I found the alternative indie station in town and lived by their music for the later half of the decade.

1999 was the year of Napster and I discovered the wonderful world of mis-tagged, heavily-compressed, poorly-organized lossy audio with no standardization for file naming conventions or indexing. It was an archivist’s nightmare. But it was the wild west of filesharing and I couldn’t get enough.

This was the same time I got bit by the vinyl bug when my father passed down his entire collection to me. I started hitting up thrift shops which, at the time, were goldmines for original pressing blues, jazz, and early synth music.

MTV was dead and buried by this time, and I threw out my television before the decade was out.

2000s - BitTorrent was born in 2001 and that changed everything. And network indexes developed standardization guidelines and a few topsites held themselves to an archival standard. After a brief stint with various communities, I worked my way through the topsites where I found heaven. Meticulously cataloged lossless archives and a dedicated community of contributors… at the summit was the second Library of Alexandria. Networking 1,091,055 releases & 892,015 "Perfect" FLACs as of November 16, 2016, it was paradise for any researcher.

By this point, my archive had grown to a considerable size. I had ~6,000 LPs, leftovers from the ~750 CDs, and about 160,000 digital recordings. I was publishing quarterly reports of the archive’s investments, had the library's purchases appraised and insured, and I drafted our Emergency Reboot Manual which included a process guide for discovery and new acquisitions.

Concurrent with this evolution of my musical discovery my taste in vinyl became more specialized. I stopped going to thrift stores, which by now had been entirely scavenged for everything but copies of Mitch Miller Sings the Hits, and spent a few years attending regional record shows before I moved completely to Discogs.com for my vinyl needs.

2010s - For the most part I’ve stopped collecting, save for a handful of anniversary box set editions usually sourced from PledgeMusic or ordered directly from labels in Germany, Argentina, Spain, Italy, the UK, or the Netherlands.

I find myself spending a lot less time listening to new music, down to just 5-10 albums a day. As I’ve remarked elsewhere I’ve found that the compulsive collecting was an effort to fill a void in my life, and I’ve since invested my energies in more personally rewarding endeavors.

But I’ll always love the music.

__________________
The Innerspace Connection | Essential Recordings | Top Archives | Hot 100 Albums | Top 550 Artists

Trollheart

Okay, just one goddam minute!
1) You're younger than me? By twenty-plus years? I assumed you were at least my age! Damn!
2) You got your username from a childhood toy?
3) You scavenged for tapes in gutters?
4) You have over six THOUSAND albums????
5) You're DOWN to listening to 5-10 a DAY? I can listen to maybe ten, but that's for my thread. Normally, one to three at most.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

innerspaceboy

Wow! What a response! Well, let me answer your questions.

1) I'm 36. Haven't you seen all the photos of me? Now I've got to ask... how old did I sound from my posts? Could I moonlight as a grumpy old codger?

2) No I did not. I'd just substituted my UN for my actual name spoken on the personalized flexi-disc. The actual origin of my UN is a snippet from a stream-of-consciousness lyric from Underworld's most popular track, "Born Slippy.nuxx". The term was also uttered in a lyric by Cibo Matto and served as an early alias for Germany's Can. I sampled numerous recordings of the term spoken by various artists for bumpers for my web radio station in the early 2000s. (Still thinking of launching a few hundred stations if I can work out the blanket licensing.)

3) Of course I did. Didn't everyone? That's how I heard of Bad Company, Ugly Kid Joe, Suicidal Tendencies, Iron Maiden, Guns 'N Roses, and 4 Non Blondes. (I lived in a mecca of white trash suburbia at the time.)

4) Yes. Yes I do. I keep selling off classic rock LPs I've no attachment to in lots of 100-250 to local secondhand boutiques, but I've about a thousand ambient and proto-electronic LPs that I'll keep forever. The 160,000+ file digital library supplements the LPs and CDs for enhanced accessibility as I run my own server.

5) That's right. I can access my server from any web-enabled device so I have the entire catalog available on my trips to and from the office and during my workday every day. I'll keep a few tabs open for music research while I work. I get a lot done that way.

__________________
The Innerspace Connection | Essential Recordings | Top Archives | Hot 100 Albums | Top 550 Artists

Trollheart

Maybe it's just my bias, but I assumed you were about my age (fifties) - no offence, but all this Victoriana, memorabilia and just generally your "living off the grid" kind of attitude always put me in mind of, yes, a grumpy old codger. Like me. Now you've made me feel even older.
Ah, I see. I literally thought that was where it had come from, and I had wondered from time to time. Thought maybe it might have been from the movie, but then, you don't watch them, do you?
I don't think I've ever scavenged for anything in my life. I've been seen with my head in bins, but that's usually when one of Karen's favourite soft toys has been inadvertently thrown out and I have to search smelly plastic bags to rescue it. True story.
And I thought I was doing well with 400 plus over forty-odd years!
I suppose, yeah, if you listen at work, and can do that, then I would understand how you could get through that many albums. I have very limited free time, and even then, I'm listening to albums for my thread, or watching the TV, so I don't get as much of a chance as I perhaps would if I were working in an environment where I was free to listen as much as I wanted. Still, that's pretty impressive.

__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

salvo

Early 90s
The Disney Channel was my Pitchfork. Mickey Mouse Club and Kids Incorporated were my source for most music. The fact that the only access I had to "cool" music were those two shows, making it not readily available whenever I wanted, made it seem magical.

Mid 90s
I discovered top 40 radio (KISS 108). I had a little toy radio and every night before bed I would turn it on, and play with my toys. This was like 1995. The summer of '96 I started to watch MTV when my parents weren't around. They were still playing music videos on the regular at this point, just before TRL took over. That introduced me to the more Alternative side of things.

Late 90s
I started to listen to more Rock stations (WBCN, WBRU), and began using my allowance purely on CDs. Offspring, Bush, No Doubt, etc.

Early 2000s
I became obsessed with searching the internet for music. I got into Nirvana, they became my gateway band to Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill, Pixies, etc. I was using Napster for a period of time before they shut it down, and then moved on to Audio Galaxy. I was also getting more into Electronic stuff through Bjork. I was listening to a lot of Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky, etc. The Trip-Hop stuff.

Mid 2000s
I was in highschool. I would use iTunes to discover new music. I had an iPod. CDs were officially no more to me aside from burning mix CDs. I got into a newer generation of Indie that was popping up at the time: Metric, Rilo Kiley, Blonde Redhead, Autolux, etc. I was also going back and getting into Britpop/Shoegaze. 90s Hip-Hop was also a big deal to me at this time: The Pharcyde, De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, etc.

2010s
My search has slowed considerably. I mostly stream. My digging now is mostly looking for bands still at a local level in their respective regions. My city has a pretty good Indie scene right now. That said, I still think that most Indie Rock right now isn't living up to it's full potential at any level. My attention has shifted to R&B and Hip-Hop just because I feel like those scenes have a bit more to offer at the moment.