Very Good Plus: Record Collecting, Nostalgia and Patina

This paper explores the practices and cultures of contemporary vinyl record collecting. It does so through two specific conceptual devices. Firstly through the historical framing of vinyl collecting within four disc eras – shellac, vinyl, CD and Hard Disc – and three collecting eras: From the early practices and discourse of a ‘music’ collection (without reference to formats), through what I argue is the nostalgic turn in collecting between 1968 and 1972, to the contemporary practice of collecting in the post-vinyl economy. This first conceptualisation allows for a second, whereby the paper explores the differing nostalgic practices and discourses of value of collectors who are broadly bifurcated along the lines of their lived (or unlived) experiences with vinyl as the primary medium of music consumption. As such, collector’s attitudes toward the historical material artifact can be explored in two broad categories. The first contains those whose lived experience includes vinyl as the primary carrier of music; they can be explored as restorative nostalgics (Boym, 2005) with particular attitudes to condition. In this vinyl collecting discourse (through publications such as Goldmine or Record Collector) care of the material object, its patina, is demonstrated through a complex absence of “wear and tear” (Appadurai, 1996). The second group – collectors whose experience of vinyl is broadly within the eras of the CD and Hard Disc; the post-vinyl economy – can be explored as reflective nostalgics (Boym 2005) with a differing attitude to the condition of records. These collectors can value the signs of age, writing on sleeves, ring wear or damage; the presence of wear and tear, or the absence of patina. Beyond this there are shared cultural activities within, what I argue, is a shared bohemian nostalgia that can be situated at the intersection of traditional subcultural ideologies and postsubcultural practices.