My growing collection

A lot of people are unconscious collectors. The counscious collectors are people who make a concerted effort to increase their holdings. The other type of person may not even know they have holdings. Take my buddy Brian. He collects the remnants of given-up hobbies. The martial arts outfit he wore twice, the guitar he's played once, the RC airplane he never flew, and countless other forgotten joys. I know people who unconsciously collect everything from shoes and hats to travel books. My own collection is very conscious. I collect concert DVDs.

I think very few people actually start a collection with the intention of developing it; the collection just starts building up. That's how mine worked anyway. I guess there are probably some sad people out there who start their coin collections with those gift packs from Sky Mall. Not to digress, but I think it's sad when something packaged as a "gift" is bought for ones self. My collection started with a few concerts that were given to me, and a few more I bought myself. It wasn't until the last six months when I became conscious of my collection and began putting an effort in expanding its goodness.

The reason for my concert DVD collection is simple. I love music. Any regular readers of the blogue will understand that I have an almost spiritual (Drew's words, not mine) connection to music. It's not that I play it all that well, or that I have a preternatural grasp of music history and theory. It's that I geek out. Hard.

It only makes sense for someone who loves music to own concert DVDs. The digital nature of the recording allows for lots and lots of high-quality content, and in my limited lifetime, DVDs seem to hold up better than tapes and film reels. But all that is just the format, there's something so much richer about the experience of a concert.

No music fan will deny the power of a live performance. Certainly there are people who prefer studio work, and in the case of bands like the Beatles, you have no real choice, however for me, the vast majority of music is much more interesting to experience than simply to hear the sterile sound of recording equipment.

Today I bought The Grateful Dead Movie. This is a good example of what I like about the concert disc. First of all, the Dead are notorious for their live experimentation and improvisation. But one can always listen to any number of their live audio recordings. Jerry and the gang aren't all that exciting to see either; they don't dress up or jump around or any of that business. What the concert movie gives you, however, is the experience of the show.

A performance is more than just a band playing their songs on a stage. It is an ambitious recipe containing fans, technicians, and musicians: a whole show! You can't hear a show, you need to see it. And The Grateful Dead Movie is full of dancing hippies, wonked out lighting dudes, and of course Jerry and the gang. When I watch a good concert movie, I feel like I am not only hearing music, but experiencing a moment in history.

Seeing the English fans of Pablo Honey react to Radiohead's progressive shit off of The Bends at a 1994 show in Brixton. Seeing Jimi Hendrix light his guitar on fire at Monterey in order to one-up Pete Townsend's smashing act. These are experiences. I got 'em on video. My collection is growing and am happy as a lark.