Feb 252008
NOT BigSteve
Geo mentioned the other day that he had more records by Sun Ra than any other artist. That got me thinking – who is the artist with the most pieces in your collection? At one time I might have guessed James Brown, or the combined works of all the P-Funk configurations. I just counted – 54 pieces (that’s counting each disc of a multi-disc set separately).
Who is the artist who takes up the biggest chunk of your record collection? Are you sure, or is that just a guess? And do you know how many items make up this chunk? Is this in fact your favorite artist, or does this artist just have a huge body of work?
Can I ask for some specifics?
Do you count bootlegs? “Legitimate” (silver) boots only? CD-R boots?
If you have an item on vinyl and on CD is that 1 or 2?
How about a 7″ single?
Depending on the answers to these questions, my artist will be either Bob Dylan or Frank Sinatra (and it’s probably Dylan no matter what the answer is) and they are my two favorite artists as well as taking up the most shelf space.
I’m going to guess Miles Davis, but I don’t feel like counting… Lot’s of Who and Dylan too.
The two artists with most discs in our collection: XTC and Robyn Hitchcock. We have obscure discs from both of these folks as well as all the major releases. I’d say that for a long time XTC was my favorite artist but I confess to not bothering with the last two Fuzzy Warbles releases and definitely passing of Mr. Partridges’ “Monstrance” mess. The wife was a Robyn fan when I met her and I do now like him quite a bit.
Probably Pink Floyd or David Bowie, even though neither of them are my favorite artists.
Mozart. Bach and Miles Davis are head to head. Then the Beatles, then Eno. I wouldn’t argue with any of these in my top ten artists categories, either. Unlike most others, though, once you get a sense of what is so crazy about Mozart, he goes in a separate category, IMO. For the “R” in RTH, though, Beatles, Eno, Zappa, Lou/VU.
in no particular order:
hendrix, sun ra, neil young, the beatles, dylan, and brother jt’s various projects.
oh…and the stones, the velvets, sonic youth, stereolab, and the fall.
all of the artists i’ve named are represented in roughly equal quantities.
Here are the artists represented in vast quantity — most are probably on the top 10 list: AC/DC, Beatles, Beach Boys, Jam, James Brown, P-Funk, Haydn, Mozart, Sinatra, Easybeats, XTC, Mayfield. Other definite top 10 artists are not represented by nearly as much “stuff,” e.g., Sam & Dave, Woody Herman, Barry White, Bill Evans. Then there are “Top 20” artists for whom I unapologetically have huge quantities of stuff — Booker T & the MGs, for instance.
And, yes, I realize that I probably have more than 10 “Top 10” artists.
Beatles and Costello (all those re-issues add up!
General Slocum wrote:
Miles Davis, OK, but do covers albums coulnt? I don’t think they should. BigSteve, please clarify. Thanks.
I’ve got to do some counting today, and I need another ruling from you, BigSteve, but considering you collect P-Funk under one listing I’m OK. My guess is The Beatles, if I’m allowed to includ their solo releases, as I have them all filed under “Beatles” in my collection, Dylan, and XTC will rank high. I don’t count VU/Lou Reed as one category, but if I did they’d rank high too. More later.
In no particular order, these artist represent sizable chunks in my music collection.
The Beach Boys
Sun Ra
Roxy Music
Miles Davis
Hawkwind
the assorted bands of Billy Childish
BigSteve, that is so weird. I just asked that question at another board. Sort of a “put your money where your mouth is” kinda question. I just used my cd’s, because getting to some of the lp’s is gonna take some work.
1. Stones (more than can be counted)
2.Steely Dan (12 cd’s)
2.David Bowie (12 cd’s)
3.The Replacements (9 cd’s)
3. Paul Westerberg/Grandpaboy (9 cd’s)
4. Lucero (8 cd’s)
4. Alex Harvey (8 cd’s)
5. Flamin’ Groovies (6 cd’s)
I figured that’s the bands I must think are most important. I didn’t count every show I downloaded off the Dime or anything. Just what I bought.
I apologize for writing the introduction so quickly that I forgot a crucial sentence. It’s Bob Dylan that has the 54 pieces. And that includes downloaded bootlegs (though not many).
What I had been trying to say was that my James Brown and P-Funk collections were LPs that are now lost and so cannot be counted. Once I counted Dylan, I realized that no other artist would ever have come close. He certainly is my favorite artist.
Itunes does make it easy to count, but I am shocked that Townsmen won’t go count items on their shelves for the sake of RTH.
And it’s true that counting P-Funk as one ‘artist’ is cheating, but I did in fact file them all together. Allowing that category makes it possible to include the Beatles and all subsequent solo albums as one ‘artist,’ but does anyone file all those records together?
Again sorry for the poor introduction, but I got the superultraspeed cable modem yesterday, and the internet is moving faster than my fingers now.
I have somewhere around 65 Art Pepper CDs, including music I’ve copied from others. Speaking personally, yeah, he may be my favorite musician.
I have just above 30 Stones CDs, and probably they qualify as my favorite band.
Some musicians or bands I like a lot have only a few CDs, but generally speaking, numbers of CDs in my collection can be correlated pretty closely with how much I like the music in question.
Well, this Townsman will count (although if it wasn’t simplified by being on a database I don’t know that I would). I don’t know whether to be proud or embarrassed about what follows but I’ll let an RTH Tribunal be the judge.
Dylan wins in a landslide if boots count:
Official CDS: 58
“Legitimate” (silver) boots: 275
Boot CD-Rs (copies of “legitmate” boots): 177
Official LPs: 47
Boot LPs: 63
7″: 17
Sinatra:
Official CDS: 98
“Legitimate” (silver) boots: 40
Boot CD-Rs (copies of “legitmate” boots): 33
Official LPs: 14 (at some point I got rid of a lot of official LPs, a decision I regret)
7″: 2
I can say that I’m embarrassed by how many downloaded shows I have by Sinatra and especially Dylan, so I won’t strip quite that bare.
Length of career fits into this issue of course. Especially if you like someone who predates our era, like Pepper or Sinatra. If you liked classical music, it would be very easy to get above 100 albums by your favorite composer (though probably not performer).
I just realized that Prince is WAY up there in amount of music I own, and he’s a Top Tenner to boot.
Thanks for the clarifications, BigSteve. I’m going to go count now. Yes, I do file some bands and their solo offshoots together, such as The Beatles and Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry/Phil Manzanera (but not Eno). I’ll count them as one but Reed and Cale have gone off onto their own from the VU section in my collection.
Beatles: 52
XTC: 34
Costello: 26
The Who: 25
Dylan: 24
Eno: 22
Pere Ubu: 21
Richard Thompson/Fairport Convention: 18
Rolling Stones: 17
Led Zeppelin: 16
Roxy Music/The Kinks: 13
etc.
I didn’t total up every artist. I probably have 20 Coltrane albums (including double albums) and nearly that many Ornette Coleman ones among my otherwise small jazz collection. Of the rock albums I did total, there are all pretty good representations of how much I like each of these artists, with a few exceptions: I was given about 10 Richard Thompson solo albums, half of which stray into the period that I don’t like as much by him. Led Zeppelin is represented by a box set and a couple of double albums, so in a sense, I have more individual pieces than what I really bought. I like these two artists much less than the others I counted up. I own 13 Lou Reed albums and 10-12 VU “pieces”; if I combined them and added in my 8 John Cale albums, that would be a high number too, but I don’t file them that way.
Mr. Mod tallied:
I never would have thought to group those two together.
If I count Lou Reed/John Cale/VU together, I get 55, surpassing Bob Dylan, but I don’t file them like that.
Mr. Mod, is XTC your second favorite band in the history of rock and roll? Or is that number misleading somehow?
Steve reckons:
If I count Lou Reed/John Cale/VU together, I get 55, surpassing Bob Dylan, but I don’t file them like that.
I clarify:
Neither do I. I shouldn’t count them that way. But even just Lou Reed is a fairly big stack for me. Bob Dylan is a big one, too. One of the ominous trends in this confusing century is that I take things out of the library, or borrow them. So I don’t own it. What did Mod say about that? They count, but you can’t brag about it? Or you can if you’re not a rock nerd? Tee hee. Anyhow, I now have a lot of music in the computer that I don’t own a corresponding artifact to.
Holy crap, Mod. 52 Beatles? Do you have multiples of the various Brit/US versions? That’s like 9 albums per year they existed.
I kind of figured to make this decision you had to count the ones you actually bought. I suppose downloaded from a legit source like etunes would count. Grabbing shit from Pirate Bay is kind of uncool.
Most of the bands I like I seem to have almost their entire catalog (outside of singles), but they only have maybe four albums and then they fade away. I don’t think I can “count” a band I don’t own a cd or lp of. A file just isn’t the same.
OK, a couple of clarifications:
BigSteve was probably joking, but I meant that Roxy Music and The Kinks were tied at 13.
XTC is not my favorite band in history, but their run from Drums and Wires through The Big Express meant a lot to me and made it worth my time buying a lot of 12-inch singles, some box sets (each album/CD counting as 1 piece, as I believe BigSteve set the parameters for these counts), etc. My total of 34 pieces does not include Nonsuch, which I dumped about a year after buying.
As for the 52 pieces of Beatles releases, General Slocum, remember that I was given clearance by BigSteve to lump my solo Beatles releases in with the rest of my Beatles collection (including bootlegs, alternate releases, multiple copies of a couple of albums) provided that’s how they’re really filed in my collection. And they are. They all reside in one crate separate from the rest of my collection, sharing space only with my Rolling Stones album.
For anyone’s information, the Brian Jones era of The Rolling Stones is my third-favorite band of all time, following Elvis Costello & The Attractions (emphasis on
“& The…”). Following those top 3 are the collected works of what I consider the heavy hitters of Motown: Marvin Gaye/The Temptations/Smokey Robinson/The Supremes (no, there is no GREAT 5th Motown group, unless you want to consider Stevie Wonder, who I think quickly transcended the Hit Factory approach). The fifth spot in my Top 5 is whatever band would survive at Sergio Leone-style showdown among XTC, The Kinks, Bob Dylan, and The Who. Fair enough?
David Bowie 12
Japan/Sylvian/Karn 12
Neil Young (inclBuffSprngfld) 10
Stones 10
Beatles 8
Zepp 7
all vinyl
CDs are trash and don’t count
mp3s don’t even actually exist
I also totally forgot about the umpteen Kinks LPs I have. Can you tell I didn’t actually count?
While I’m not at home now, so I can’t count, the artist with the most CDs and records in my collection is definitely Elvis Costello. Graham Parker, The Fall, The Beach Boys, Joe Jackson, The Go-Betweens (as well as their various olo and side projects) and anything related to The Soft Boys/Robyn Hitchcock, The Replacements (and the various side and solo projects) and X are also very well-represented. I’m sure I’m forgetting a few, but that’s what comes to mind now. Many of the Soft Boys/Robyn Hitchcock and Go-Betweens boots and rarities are things that my fiancee bought or downloaded, though I’m a huge fan of The Go-Betweens as well. Nevertheless, since we combined collections, it’s grown astronomically and now I have the full catalogs of Yo La Tengo, Pavement, GBV (again thanks to my fiancee) and just about every side project each of those bands have done.
Interesting exercise. I was quite surprised to find that I had 46 discs by Taco.
Tom Waits with 14 nudges out GBV and the Stones, both with 12.
XTC brings up the rear with 0.
I have a near complete R. Stevie Moore discography, numbering in the hundreds of CDs, tapes, LPs and singles. Is he my favorite? Mmm…could be, yes.
First runner up is probably Stereolab: couple dozen CDs alone, many of them multi-disc, plus some rare tour singles and the like. Definitely at least in my top 5 artists, I should think.
If we count Charity’s collection, we have to include Richard Thompson as well.
If I’m allowed to count Beatle solo albums I’d have more than 52, but I’ve always grouped them by last name. What scared me about this question was that if it were 20 years ago, I’d have had Jethro Tull second on the list.
In no particular order:
Beatles
Yo La Tengo
Stereolab
Robyn Hitchcock/Soft Boys
GBV
Mr. Mod, you have 25 records by the Who? Is that total padded out with Daltrey wolo releases or something?
Tvox, remember, per BigSteve’s parameters, each album in a double album count separately. I own 4 or 5 Who double albums, for starters, then there are those double-album collections of Townshend’s demos. Toss in the Townshend/Ronnie Lane album and a couple of albums I own on both vinyl and CD and you’ll see where I get that seemingly inflated number. I did, years ago, pay a dollar to own the Best of Roger Daltrey. It was too funny to pass up.
“I did, years ago, pay a dollar to own the Best of Roger Daltrey. It was too funny to pass up.”
Was it a cassigle? A blank cassingle?
Okay, I’m a little late, but I didn’t have a chance to count my record collection till now. The results are in:
Beatles/Solo: 47
Kinks: 44
Costello: 43
Pulp/Jarvis Cocker: 32
Bob Dylan: 31
XTC: 29
Fairport/Richard/Linda Thompson: 26
Wilco/Tupelo/side projects: 24
Roxy/Eno/Ferry: 19
Randy Newman: 18
Bowie: 18
The Replacements/Westerberg/Tommy: 18
Neil Young/CSNY/Springfield: 18
The Who: 16
Cheap Trick: 14
Crowded House/Split Enz/Finns: 14
Nick Lowe/Brinsley/Rockpile/Dave Edmunds: 13
Velvets/Cale/Reed: 12
Pernice Brothers/Scud Mountain Boys: 12
What’s noteworthy is that pretty much all of these artists are or were part of personal pantheon. (Okay, not Dave Edmunds.) Also the artists up at the top of the list — From Beatles to Neil — are either all-time favorites or I’ve been a fan longest (or both). Therefore, I’ve been building my collection for a longer period of time, or a intense concentrated period of time.
From this and other recent comments, I’m getting the sense that complicated feelings about Jethro Tull are lurking on this list. Out with it then, okay?
Far and away Duke Ellingon, over a hundred titles (hey, he recorded for 49 years). Surprised he isn’t seen anyway else in this thread. Nat Cole, Dylan, Sun Ra, Sinatra, James Brown, Cannonball Adderly and Coltrane are all well represented.
-db
Yah, Mr. B, I did totally ignore my 20 or so Ellington discs. Another 10 or so lps. He’s surely in my personal canon. I completely overlooked him. Is that somehow psychologically indicative of …?
…psychologically indicative of a healthy populism in response to his royal name, perhaps.
-db