Brett Milano - Vinyl Junkies: Adventures in Record Collecting

Table of Contents

THE SCYTHIAN

G ive him the Scythian! shouts Monoman from across the room. Pat waves his hand with a proper flourish: Nope, Im not ready for the Scythian yet. Well just have to build up to it.

Im sitting in a record-crowded apartment in the Boston suburbs, staring directly at a few hundred thousand dollars worth of stereo equipment. Pats stereo is nearly as eclectic as his record collection, which includesjust taking in the ones within eyesightthe Who, Doris Day, Tammy Wynette, Motorhead, Tom Jones, and Henry Mancini; this is a sensibility well beyond any standard notions of whats hip. The stereo is evidence of one mans quest for the perfect sound. The turntable is Pats pick of the three dozen hes got in his house: suspendedon air and perfectly calibrated to be vibration-free, its designed to make sure that no small disturbanceslike, say, an earthquake or a nuclear detonationinterfere with the listening experience. The turntable was made by a stereo buff in New Hampshire, the tone arm came from Germany and cost another few grand. There are pillowcases stuffed into the corners of the ceiling to keep those precious soundwaves inside. Then theres the piece of wood.

Dont forget that piece of wood, his assistant Jeff, a.k.a. Monoman, points out. Sure enough, its a piece of wood: cut in the shape of a beehive with a hole in the middle, it screws on top of the center hole to make sure those dreaded vibrations dont get throughaccording to Jeff, The only good vibrations come from the Beach Boys. The piece of wood cost a grand on its own, but as Pat assures us, Its a really good piece of wood.

Id already had some of my best record-listening experiences on the crummiest stereos ever made. Stereo isnt even quite the right termthat thing I owned as a kid was more accurately a record player, a phonograph, maybe even a Victrola, but I believe the technical term were looking for is piece of crap: there was exactly one speaker, approximately the size of that little O youd make if you closed your thumb and forefinger; and the needle tracked at something like two pounds, enough to cause instant damage to every record it touched. But it did go impossibly loud, and for ears trained on 60s AM radio, that was enough. The first record I rememberplaying on it was She Loves You by the Beatles, and it came out with that AM-radio sound: those harmonies at the start of the song sounded like a jet taking off. Which, culturally speaking, is exactly what they were. And when I later heard the same song under more desirable circumstanceson vinyl on a proper system; then on the CD reissueit never had that compressed, unnatural sound that I always took for part of the recording.

By the time I was thirteen, I owned what I thought was a luxury stereo. It was made by Magnavox, just like my parents TV set. The speakers folded out, and the little turntable could be closed up into the player; it was a portable stereo that weighed close to fifty pounds. Unlike my childhood monstrosity, this one didnt ruin your records until the second or third play. You also had the option of ruining your records instantly by stacking them on the changer, where theyd be scraped by the changer-holder on top and by other records on the bottom. By now my musical tastes had become more refined, or so I thought at the timeI was deeply into Yes, Genesis, and their progressive-rock brethren. Im still willing to argue till closing time about those bands musical merits, but one thing is certain: their albums were incredibly detailed, full of sonic textures and mellotron overdubsexactly what my introverted teenage ears were looking for. At this point, records werent something I played over dinner or with company: I wanted to experience all those deep, layered sounds. Armed with my Magnavox power station and a pair of weighty headphones that made your ears throb after the first album side, I listened intently enough to catch them all.

But now Im hoping to get my mind blown in Brookline, to get the high-velocity sound I dreamed of back in my old bedroom. My guides for this trip are well known in the loose-knit community of Northeast collectors. Pat runs Looney Tunes, a used-record store that sits within the high-rent vicinity of the Berklee College of Music. The places very existence looks like a slap at Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, and the other upscale, uniform chains that fill up the same block. But there are enough Berklee-ites who are glad to snap up the vintage jazz and soul vinyl that clutters up the placethough theyd probably be a little spooked if they knew that their records previous owner is likely as not to be six feet under. More than once has the widow of a collector made a call to Pat and his pickup truck; his unofficial motto is You die, we buy. Sometimes the collections survive, but the marriage dies. Pats been there when disgruntled wives have hit their husbands with the dreaded line, Its me or the records. Thats the cue for the husband to make his stand in front of the turntable, the wife to storm out, and Pat to go home empty-handed.

Big and gregarious, with a Southern accent that hes maintained through decades in the Northeast, Pat was drinking martinis and name-dropping the Rat Pack before it became a trend. This is obviously the house of somebody with a problem, he notes, surveying the unfiled discs that take up every bit of floor and shelf space. But unlike the stereotypical record collectorthe hyper-geeky type most recently seen in a dark attic in the film Ghost World Pat doesnt shut himselfaway with his vinyl. He has girlfriends, eats barbeque, and has used record-collecting as an excuse to travel. For him, collecting is an intrinsic part of the good life. Hes fond of quoting the line Music frees your mind from the tyranny of conscious thought.

Monoman is unkempt, eccentric, and the leader of the best rock n roll band Ive ever seen. The long-standing nickname refers both to his love of monaural sound and to his relentless single-mindedness. The name has changed spellings over the years: On a 1978 album with his first band, DMZ, he was Mono Mann. More recently, he fell in love with Japanese cartoons and briefly re-christened himself Pokemonoman. His current band, the Lyres, has been together twenty-two years and shows no signs of either slowing down or changing in the slightest degree. They take their cue from 6os garage punk, the three-chord stomp that was invented by countless teens who took Louie Louie as their gospel. In fact, Jeff learned many Lyress songs by scouring the globe for obscure 60s singles, paying up to a grand for an original 45. But Id doubt that a lot of those teenage 60s bands, hormone-driven though they were, could ever match this one on an especially hot or especially drunk night. He has destroyed instruments and friendships onstage: once he fired the drummer in the middle of the show (the drummer then got pissed off enough to play the set of his life). But hes just as likely to hit you with something truly soulful; the signature Lyres song, Dont Give It Up Now, has gotten me through more than one crisis of faith. I once saw him earnestly explain to an audience that he wasnt in it for the money: Thats why were playingthis crappy club for all of you cheap assholes! Theres been times when youd swear that hes bypassed the tyranny of conscious thought altogether.