I found this alternately astute, hilarious, embarassing, and challenging. Few writers equipped with Kugelberg’s talent take on the zero-sum game of analyzing record collectors. We should thank our lucky stars Johan’s still got enough of the sickness in him to do it. And despite the previews below the fold, it is absolutely worth digging in for the whole thing.

Some money quotes, from opposite ends of the tunnel…

Utrecht, Utrecht, how do I love thee? When I attempt to convince other New York dealers and collectors to just go buy a plane ticket already, and visit what I think is the best record fair in the world, my rap usually starts with the anecdote about the 6″ 8″ collector of Kim Wilde picture sleeves that sided up next to me as I was pouring over some bin at the Utrecht fair: “Hallo! I am Dieter from Germany” he howled. “Howyadoin” I mumbled. “I am doing so good!” he bellowed. “I have found so many today! So many Kim Wilde picture sleeve 45’s! I collect Kim Wilde picture sleeves! What do you collect?”

For a split second, the nasty Anthony Bourdain-style cynicism almost overtook me. You know the kind: where you choose to ridicule the enthusiasm of somebody else because what they like doesn’t fit your perception of what is cool. A powerful and dangerous mindset which rules many roosts of white middle class boys, an often applied survival kit for the person who was bullied in school, themselves becoming taste-bullies, or in worst case scenarios, taste-nazis. Like Sonic Youth. Or Vice Magazine.

I didn’t fall in that trap. “Kim Wilde! Cool!” I exclaimed. “I am looking for European disco 45’s with ridiculous sleeve art,” I told him.

“OK!” yelled Dieter, Rain-man style. “I will tell you if I find some! Please tell me if you see really cool 45’s by Kim Wilde!” “Sure will” I replied.

The mood at the Olympia Record fair was defeatist. It was as if the collective dealers and punters had woken up in May of 1945 and found out that they were lieutenants in the SS. There were murmurings that amazing finds of extremely rare records had occurred during the first half hour of the fair, but all this had happened to other people. Besserwisser psychedelic fatso and blog-toad records were legion, but they were all priced within an inch of the price-guide. I couldn’t help but notice that the equivalent of the Utrecht punter show and tell, herein dwelled within a dealer showing another dealer his fanciest stock before he took it home again. Like a livestock competition, except that the holder of the most beautiful steer or the largest pumpkin would take home a blue ribbon, where the record dealer had to make do with a bit of upmanship and gloat before the mint copy of Odessey and Oracle was put back into the box for another year. 

Our emotional projection on the artifacts that remain from our youth’s cartoon rebellion, is supposed to necessitate our belief system of extended adolescent self-worth. The hedge-fund lower- upper- management aging hardcore kid spending four figures on Misfits test-pressings is battling the same laws of gravity that middle-aged women struggle against at the plastic surgeon or the cosmetics counter. This battle, masking against grave and aging process, and against gravity itself, constitutes one of the most necrotic abrasions into the body-fabric of our very existence: this perpetuated falsity that only certain years in our life-span really truly matter. That life in our youth is worth so much more a commodity, that once youth passes us by, we are obliged to forfeit what we directly lived and recede into a representation of said years for the remainder of our actual duration. Our choice of appearance, our choice of the most meaningful artifacts we surround ourselves with, our choice of the record we place in double plastic bags in alphabetical order, all representing time we address as having lived in qualitative actuality. 

I wonder if Utrecht, WFMU and London Olympia are entrances to the labyrinth, or if they are milestones within it, or mill-stones around our neck, or (gasp!) exits or perhaps tool booths? Are we lusting for death, death itself? Are we incapable of considering the passing of time? Or is it the opposite? Are record fairs well and truly Limbo, now that the catholics have given up their copyright claim, or should that be territorial claim? Have we brought Limbo into our homes? Does the instant graft-grift or grift-graft of an eBay-win and the gratification we hope for not ever arrive at all? Camus’ Sisyphus is only ever stoked about the rare KBD-punk 45 he just won as he is logging on to bid on other records, the physical arrival in the mailbox of the actual record only reminds him of rolling boulders (his day-job) in order to afford to win other auctions. 

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