Dude, Where's The Vinyl?

Wow, I sure didn't by much vinyl in February. This past month I actually put most of my money into my CD collection. Up until recently, I never put much thought into collecting CD's. Over the past 5 or 6 years, I've gone nuts downloading music. Using Napster, WinMX, and Soulseek, I had created hundreds upon hundreds of burned CD's....stuff that I had no intention of buying because I had limited myself to only purchasing punk and hardcore. Over the years, my interest has moved from that singular focus and has expanded to include Rock and Metal. I grew up on Heavy Metal, and since the nostalgia for those old bands has kicked in, I'm not too impressed with my collection of burned CD's and homemade packaging. The collector in me has taken over, and I need to own the real deal for a lot of it. We are also putting an addition on my house, and I will be gaining a large walk-in closet to store all of my music. The thought of having shelves of my CD's on display, cluttered with a bunch of burned disks, pushed me to start cleaning it up. I still have over 800 burned CD's, so it will take some work, but I'll get there.

Sabbath From Japan

One of my newest obsessions, and if you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that there are quite a few of them. This time around it is Japanese pressings. When I started collecting Iron Maiden vinyl, I knew that I wanted to get a Japanese pressing of one of their albums...just for collectors sake. I ended up getting the Killers LP and their Live Plus One EP. I loved the packaging on these records...the OBI strip around the record sleeve, and the extra insert. When I got my Japanese pressing of Sabbath's Master of Reality, I was hit with the urge to add any other Metal/Rock record from Japan to my collection. The first one that I found was Live Evil from Black Sabbath. Picked it up for $10.50 on eBay.

I think that Live Evil may have been one of the first Black Sabbath album that I had. I don't even know where I got it from, but I had taped it off of someone. I remember, as a kid, blasting this album from my boom box. Cranking these songs as my soundtrack, playing basketball in my driveway under the hot summer sun. Music is tied heavily to my memories of growing up, and this is one of those albums that will always remind me of those days as a kid...just hanging out with my brother and playing basketball and baseball with neighborhood friends.

That's Why It's Called Record "Collecting"

I don't know many people that really "get it". I was talking to my wife the other day about the Sabbath reunion tour with Dio, and I mentioned that they would be releasing a Best of Sabbath : The Dio Years CD. She replied, "Well you already have all the CD's, so you won't need to buy that one.". I told her that I thought that there was going to be a couple of unreleased new songs included, and she told me that I could just download or copy them from Jeff. Nope, I'll need to buy it. I am a collector. I am a completist. I need to own it.

I know that she would never understand this recent addition, and I'm sure she wouldn't be alone. My Black Sabbath addiction has not gone away, and my newest mission is collecting different pressings of the Master of Reality LP. I once saw a picture of someone's collection...about 30 different pressings of this record...I thought it was one of the coolest things I've seen. Such a great documentation of different pressings from across the world. Master Of Reality has always been one of my favorites from Sabbath, and was one of the first CD's that I ever bought from them. I got my first vinyl copy of this album up in Toronto, and then won the promo copy on eBay. It snowballed from there, and I recently got three more copies for the collection. First, I bought the clear vinyl pressing from Jeff for $10. It was released on Earmark Records, and Jeff hated the sound from this remaster so he sold it to me for cheap. After buying that one, I won a couple on eBay. The Japanese pressing is very cool with the OBI strip and special insert. That one was $26.00. The final copy that I got was the US pressing with the green label...only $4.00.

So, even though I know that not many people will understand this fascination, I'm having a good time with it.