Entertainment For Lively Minds
How completist are you?
Despite owning quite a lot of Cds and Vinyl, it has recently stuck me that I don't own an awful lot of entire oevres. Even if you discount live albums, best-ofs and odds'n'sods collections (which I do in this case). For every band/act I really like, there's nearly always one that I either never got round to buying, or decided that this was their Moon Sausage (blogs passim.) I love Stevie Wonder, but I'm not going out of my way to acquire In Square Circle - ditto with the Beach Boys, Stones and so on. Even my beloved HJHMs have a couple of CDs missing from the pile - I never got round to Please Please Me or Yellow Submarine.
So, for any act who's released more than three studio albums, I own the official studio output of:
Aimee Mann
Fountains of Wayne
Ben Folds Five
Big Star
The Hold Steady
Jason Falkner
Wilco
Nick Drake
REM
Wondermints
And, aside from REM, these are slender bodies of work. However, I know you can do better. Anyone own everything by Bowie? Neil Young? The Grateful Dead? The Fall???
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Too many and in too many formats
Genesis (and Gabriel, Banks, Hackett)
Beatles
Ryan Adams (I think...)
David Sylvian
Lush
John Martyn
Steely and Dan
Cowboy Junkies
Sheryl Crow
The Cure
Yes
Led Zeppelin
Elbow
PJ Harvey
Janes Addiction
Pink Floyd
Maria McKee
Natalie Merchant
Twelfth Night
Patti Smith
Talking Heads
Sarah Slean
REM
Beth Orton
Geoff Mann
Notice how I took it out of alphabetical order so I didn't look too anal. I doubt it worked...
Sarah Slean
Blimey Molesworth, I didn't think anyone else in The Massive would know who she is.
I have The Baroness - can you recommend anything else?
Night Bugs
is a record I like a lot, probably the best introduction to her work, but I'd recommend pretty much anything of hers to be honest.
I'll also give Bird York a hearty recommendation in a similar vein too - I might actually have all her stuff given that I can't find out if she's made more than one cd!
KOL
The only one I can think of is Kings of Leon and I don't even like them.
Neil Young (+CSNY & BS) on vinyl is almost true for me
I'm missing 'Lucky Thirteen' (Odds & Sods collection) and 'Dead Man' (Soundtrack)
been done before but from the top of my head;
Bob Dylan
Roy Harper
Loudon Wainwright
Richard Thompson
Neil Young
Van Morrison
Todd Snider
Ry Cooder
Steely Dan
The Eagles
Led Zeppelin
Pink Floyd
The Who
David Bowie
The Band
Drive By Truckers
Frank Zappa
Free
The Faces
Nick Lowe
John Hiatt
Warren Zevon
Jackson Browne
John Cale
CCR
Beatles
Barenaked Ladies
Fountains Of Wayne
Bruce Springsteen
Tip top
In reply to your headline pedr0, I did do a search to see if this has been covered before. Seems there's nothing new under the Massive.
Hats off to your collecting powers: Zappa's another library in his own right...
Plenty, including the Grateful Dead* and The Fall**
Frank Sinatra, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Frank Zappa, Elvis Presley (including all the film soundtracks).
I have the entire catalogue of pretty much everyone who's music I like. To be honest, it'd be easier for me to list artists I like where I don't have the whole shooting match.
* now 113 Dead albums.
** although Mark E Smith's curious apporach to record deals means it's difficult to determine if certain live albums are catalogue or bootlegs.
Wow-eee
This is what I'm talking about.
I bet you have a big house - or a very cramped one. And I bet your local carpenter (or the owner of your local B&Q) drives a fancy car...
Nope... I just have a very big server
Gave up keeping physical media years ago.
I try to resist repeating myself
but it's very hard. I am rebuying REM's albums again ("remastered") despite owning everything. And I already have all of the Orange Juice output, but this is winking at me:
http://www.play.com/Music/CD/4-/16245581/Coals-To-Newcastle/Product.html
£57 for basically a cardboard box.
Orange juice has been known to cause repeats
[sorry to lower the tone]
Only thinking about this the other day...
inhales deeply...
Springsteen
Todd Rundgren
Hall & Oates
Jackson Browne
Alison Krauss
Led Zeppelin
Van Morrison
Free
Josh Rouse
James Taylor
Toto
Yes
Wishbone Ash
Ian Hunter
Mott the Hoople
Counting Crows
Brian Kennedy
Saw Doctors
Fleetwood Mac
Gerry Rafferty
Tom Petty & TH
Do you mean
Do you mean own physical copies of everything, or own copies in digital format?
If the former, none. (Copies of Sordide Sentimentale or the Snow EP are a bugger to get hold of and ridiculously expensive when you do track them down!)
If the latter:
Joy Division
New Order (except the billions of remixes that proliferated in the late 90s)
Cocteau Twins
Sigur Ros (except Von Recycled, but not for want of trying!)
Galaxie 500
Mogwai
Nick Cave (with and without the Bad Seeds)
Pixies
Mark Lanegan
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
Richard Hawley
Tindersticks
Sparklehorse (except for the collaboration with Fennesz)
PJ Harvey (with and without John Parish)
Goldfrapp
Arctic Monkeys
Arcade Fire
Radiohead
Elbow
Massive Attack
Spiritualized (except F*cked Up Inside)
Queens of the Stone Age
Only 4
Thin Lizzy
Horslips
Bruce Springsteen
The Blue Nile
The Blue Nile
are fairly easy to keep up with - 4 albums over what seems half a lifetime.
But they count and to that I can add
Billy Bragg
The Broken Family Band
Elbow
Grand Drive
The Jayhawks
Ryan Adams
Talking Heads
The Jam
Paul Weller
Teenage Fanclub
Trashcan Sinatras
Counting Crows
Edwyn Collins
Lloyd Cole
Boo Hewerdine
Calexico
Crowded House
Steely Dan
Ian McNabb
Pernice Brothers
Peter Bruntnell
Prefab Sprout
Railway Children
Richard Hawley
Wilco
plus a few others on the 3 Album mark.
Calexico
Does that include internet only releases? I would include myself in that club and Grand drive. That's 2 of us then?
Guess who!
Go on guess!!
Gnidrolog?
The Fatback Band?
Close
but no cigar
not many
Tom Waits
Bruce Springsteen
Steve Earle
Lyle Lovett
Lucinda Williams
I'm a couple short of complete with
Loudon Wainwright III
Steve Forbert
John Hiatt
but they've each got about 20 albums out.
A smattering
Ben Folds (+ Five)
The Smiths / Morrissey
Pet Shop Boys
The Divine Comedy
Radiohead
Suede
Pulp
Gene
Blur
The Prodigy
Elbow
Nirvana
Eels
Lemon Jelly
Muse
Portishead
The Streets
And a few where I'm just one short of a complete set:
Grandaddy / Jason Lytle
Supergrass
Super Furry Animals
Faith No More
Manic Street Preachers
Chemical Brothers
The Auteurs / Baader Meinhof / Black Box Recorder / Luke Haines solo (soon to be 51 short of a full set)
Very few...
I have all the Led Zeppelin studio albums and all those by those Beatles.
I'm struggling to think of any more... goes over to CDs... Bob Dylan nearly.
That's it. I like to think I'm quite judicious with regards buying music; nothing - and I mean nothing - would persuade me to buy The Stones' A Bigger Bang, for example.
No 'Please, Please, Me'!
It's my HJH's album of choice.o
The Smiths and Morrissey -
The Smiths and Morrissey - including all the compilations...
Adam and the Ants / Adam Ant
Mercury Rev
Ivor Cutler
Echo and The Bunnymen
Prefab Sprout
John Shuttleworth
Grandaddy
Lambchop
every Word Magazine compilation CD
and about 90% of the Fall's studio albums
Complete Sets
I, and I'm sure I'm not alone have got complete CD & Vinyl sets (ie 2 copies) for:
Stiff little Fingers
Sex Pistols
Clash
Jam
Specials
On CD only:
Beatles
Paul Weller
Carter USM
Guns n Roses
Stereophonics
Oasis
Blur
On Vinyl:
Adam & The Ants/Adam Ant
The Alarm
Skids
Big Country
Smiths
Marc Bolan/T.Rex
Partial:
Bowie (up to Lets Dance, then nothing until Heathen, then Earthling)
Black Sabbath (until Ozzy left)
The Who (I don't have a 'pukka' copy of My Generation (dodgy copy only))
Iron Maiden (up to No Prayer For The Dying)
AC/DC (up to Razors Edge)
Marillion (up to Seasons End)
If we're talking official releases...
...I have all the albums by:
The Beatles
R.E.M.
Radiohead (plus a good few bootlegs)
Arcade Fire
The Cure
The Hold Steady
Beastie Boys
Pixies
PJ Harvey
Like the OP, though, many of those aren't very hefty bodies of work.
Shit. I lied.
I don't have "Around The Sun" by R.E.M. because it's a massive bag of turgid wank.
some familiar names here
This has actually cheered me up - I've looked and is not as bad as I feared:
The Blue Nile
Talking Heads
Portishead
Elbow
Nitin Sawhney
It seems I've given up on more artistist than I realsied, or else got in to them 'late' and bought the back catalogue selectively.
But... most completist about Belle and Sebasitan. All the albums (only 8 off top of my head), the singles and as many bootlegs as I've seen / found. All in all my itunes reports 451 items. And the next album is about due...
Phew!
It appears I am a lot less obsessive than I thought I was. Even with favourite artists like Genesis, Gang of Four, Yes, Megadeth and Metallica I am missing at least one album.
I think the only people I have every album of are:
Mano Negra (+some cassette-only EPs)
Les Negresses Vertes
Angelique Kidjo (not counting the one only released in Africa)
Depeche Mode
Crowded House (when I get the new one)
Manu Chao
Radiohead
With Depeche Mode I used to have all their 7" singles, 12" singles and LPs up to about the 3rd or 4th album then stopped buying the singles. Recently rebought all the albums in the spiffing surround sound SACD versions.
Mmmm...
I wouldn't have thought it would be that difficult to have complete sets of artists that have only released 3 or 4 albums, which are all readily available for next to nothing on e-bay or in Fopp. I'm going to suggest we stick to three categories - the devotion to a massive back catalogue, a complete back catalogue and all the bootlegs, and the one that you don't think anybody else will have. Along those lines I'll go for:
Bob Dylan - everything officially released (over 50 albums - I can't be bothered to count), all on CD (so the only one missing is 'Dylan', but that's no great loss)
The Beatles - pretty much every recording, official and unofficial, live, studio, demo, etc, which comes to well over 100 CDs, probably nearer 150, including around 25 from the Get Back/Let It Be sessions alone. Some of it is quite interesting (the acoustic White Album demos are FAB), but much of the good stuff has now been officially released.
Rick Nelson - you wouldn't have thought he'd released so much, 25 albums or so. All on CD apart from Intakes, which I don't think has ever turned up on CD.
So come on, somebody must have all The Fall's output or 50 Frank Zappa bootlegs.
Aready commented that I have all the Fall's catalogue
and there's probably at least 50 Zappa boots in my collection.
Most shows by a single artist? I have almost 500 Zeppelin shows and somewhere over 300 Grateful Dead shows
HJHs? All the studio albums - in both UK, US and Purple Chick deluxe versions. The Purple Chick historic collections and, of course, the famous 'A/B Road' 83 CD box from the Twickenham sessions.
In most cases, I have complete collections because I want to hear the music but I suspect, with the HJHs, that's moved across into a bizarre form of completism.
Zeppelin and the Dead are interesting bands to collect live shows as they rarely played two shows with the same setlist and, of course, they did a lot of improv work. Not sure I'd be bothered with collecting (say) Gilmour Floyd shows - they had a small revolving set list and everything was, by and large, played in exactly the same way every night. Waters Floyd was, of course, different in that they kept the same setlist but the band was, on occasions, sufficiently unpredictable (some say shambolic) to make anything worth listening to!
Gosh..
No-one seems to have mentioned Steely Dan yet. Or Donald Fagen.
In addition to the above..
Blue Öyster Cult
Matthew Sweet
The Crystal Method
Teenage Fanclub
Midlake
And probably some others. Awkward now I'm all cloudy with music. In a sense, I now have everything anyone has ever recorded, as, in a way, do we all.
Stereolab
I love 'em, but even I think one or two would suffice.
The OP writes...
Some interesting points thrown up. Does a collection have to be physical? Do we, as Lenny Law states above, own everything now Spotify exists? I'm the same as a lot of you, in that I reached a certain point with many acts and then stopped. Not interested in post-Lowell Little Feat, or in what Lou Reed's currently mumbling about.
I personally feel a collection is something to be put on shelves and leafed through, then the selection enjoyed in a chair with a tincture of choice - possibly wearing a smoking jacket and embroidered fez-style hat. Either that, or I bung on the CD at the top of the pile and get on with the cooking.
Striking the Balance
Now this is something I've wrestled with lately. The collector in me likes the idea of complete sets, a body of reference to cover all aspects of the act in question.
On the other hand, how many times have you bought the new album from an old favourite, given it a few spins, then stuck it on the shelf and reverted back to their previous (ie best) work?
Your wallet's only so heavy - if there's a lot of good new acts around, where's the sense in spending your cash on what is almost certainly an inferior version of the record you originally fell in love with? You're a music lover surely, not a librarian? And yet sometimes the pull of the past is strong...
"If there's a lot of good new acts around"
That's a big if though and in so many cases they sound like inferior copies of bands/records I fell in love with 30 years ago.
Vinyl/cd
Dylan
John Martyn
Nick Drake
Warren Zevon
Yo La Tengo
Sonic Youth
Husker Du
Magazine
Radiohead
Tom Waits
Pixies
Simon and Garfunkel
Mogwai
Arctic Monkeys
Cable
(nearly)
Neil Young (not Fork in the Road)
Arcade Fire (not The Suburbs)
Robert Pollard (not the latest Boston Spaceships)
Iggy/Stooges (nothing recent)
(lots)
about 36 Elvis Presley CDs (and 4 x 4 cd box sets)
Bowie (all the classics)
Van The Man
Zappa
Let's face it ...
... the number of artists whose every album is worth owning, is minimal. And the more prolific, the greater the number of clunkers. The only complete oeuvres owned by me are those by Steely Dan (and I don't go much on 'Everything Must Go'), Eels and Nick Drake (and he doesn't count with only 3 albums).
uh, fairly completist, i'd say but don't tell the GLW
The Jam + 20 boots
The Clash, yes including Cut the Crap + 50 boots
The Smiths + 50 boots
David Bowie (no boots anybody help?)
a few others i suppose Dexys, specials, Ride, Magazine, tAlking Heads
it helps if the artist ceases to be, doesn't it, as opposed to continuous output enough is enough lads (r.e.m, u2, morrissey,dylan, weller, n young)
hang on I'm missing a few Smiths twelve inches but i have all the seven inches, are we talking singles also?
but I do have all The Jam singles in picture sleeves (UK) and most of the Irish pressings. a few of them are Jan 83 reissues, is that Ok?
(you can see how this can get complicated)
i've got every single in pic sleeve by The STyle Council as well, (oh dear)
I have four different pressings of The Unforgettable Fire on vinyl, (she's not happy about that)
oh, i don't have david live but I have him reading Peter and the Wolf
and i'm lying about Never let me down, I only heard it once
I never spent money on Yellow Submarine but I did for the first time spend money on Please Please Me recently and consequently gave it more attention than ever before and I have decided it is the best Beatles Album. Or to put it another way I wouldn't like to have to present a case against someone who said it was their best album.
Roy Harper
on vinyl and CD if we're not counting all the BBC session discs and (I've got 3/6) and that I don't have Commercial Breaks but do have the largely overlapping Loony On The Bus.
Free, also split between vinyl and CD, but that's a fairly small oeuvre.
The Jayhawks now that the The Bunkhouse album has been released on CD.
Old School
The Ramones
The Fleshtones (and a fair number of bootlegs)
Steely Dan (and Becker solo, and Fagen solo)
Dan Baird
The Stooges (and a fair number of bootlegs)
The MC5 (and a fair number of bootlegs)
The New York Dolls
Creedence Clearwater Revival
Fountains Of Wayne
Nick Drake
Big Star
Alex Chilton
Dexys Midnight Runners
Jimi Hendrix
Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper
Rilo Kiley
Teenage Fanclub
Funnily enough ..
... I worked this out for my own collection last Christmas and came up with :
Genesis, Gabriel, and Anthony Phillips
Kate Bush
pjharvey
Julian Cope
Joni Mitchell
Supergrass
Blur, and Graham Coxon
XTC, and Andy Partridge
Bjork
Sigur Ros
King Crimson, as well as Fripp and Eno
Ali Farka Toure
The Mutton Birds
Talking Heads
The Smiths
Gryphon
The Bonzos
Kathyrn Tickell
Chris Wood (as in The Imagined Village, not the other one)
It would be fair to say that I only own Genesis' Calling All Stations for completism's sake. Anyone want to start a list of albums they only own for that reason?
Erk! That would be a scarily long list for me :-)