Records (2021) - full transcript

IMANTS: [archive] All right, uh...

There's a lot of oldies in the...

ALAN: Behind the fish tank, eh?

IMANTS: There's a door there where we go and feed the fish

in this sort of storage closet there,

but I had it there till we got the fireplace.

ALAN: You're definitely the only one with records

behind a fish tank. IMANTS: Okay.

COLLECTOR: I don't know how your Mickey Katz collection is.

I put some aside for you.

ALAN: Okay. [both laugh]



ALAN: I'm sort of not-- I'm not there anymore, but--

COLLECTOR: You've moved on? ALAN: I've moved on.

COLLECTOR: [laughs] Okay.

I wondered about that.

COLLECTOR: [mumbling]

556...

Good score. [chuckles]

5, 28, 38...

Perfect. Great, enjoy.

COLLECTOR: Oh, now you've got a poster.

MAN: Yeah, I love this stuff, and the Dale Carnegie,

and all that.

COLLECTOR: Yeah. For sure.

MAN: What are you documenting this for?



COLLECTOR: Uh, do you know Alan?

MAN: Oh, Alan? Yeah, right.

Yeah, I was almost in his first film about vinyl,

but apparently I wasn't insane enough, so I was cut.

COLLECTOR: [laughs] MAN: No, literally, literally.

ALAN: [archive] [coughs]

Um, look.

You know, "self-loathing"

may be an extreme term, but...

maybe it's accurate.

If you would have asked me what I wanted 15 years ago,

I wouldn't have known what to tell you.

But there were some things, a certain degree of success,

a relationship, a family, et cetera,

that I assumed would come to me.

Um...

I didn't think you had to want them badly and go after them.

I just thought they happened.

And that, you know,

they happened 'cause you were good or something.

I don't quite ever say you would have what you want

if you didn't collect all-- you know,

if you weren't spending all your time going out

and buying records and looking at records

and selling records and thinking about them

and reorganizing them.

I don't quite say it that specifically,

but it's part of the picture that I draw when I say...

"This is why you aren't where you want to be.

"This is why you're a failure.

"This is why you're alone."

ALAN: Maybe it says more about our mutual friends

than it does about you... ANDREW: Sure.

ALAN: ...but both of them, when I said I'm gonna interview you,

said kind of like, "Do you want a record collector,

"but he's a normal guy?

"That's Andrew."

Do you know what that means?

ANDREW: Uh, well, I haven't watched your first film.

You had some people who are a little bit more, uh...

maybe into it than I am, in an unhealthy way.

Like, if you buy so many records that you don't listen to them...

You know? And I've met people like that.

Like, "Oh, I bought that a year ago,

"and I've just never really gotten around

"to listening to that." And I think, like,

"How could you do that?"

I want to get it home, I want to take it out,

and I want to put it on.

ALAN: I don't mean this as an insult,

but this apartment is very art directed.

COLLECTOR: Yeah.

I want you to walk in here and you're just confused.

And there is-- your eyes just go everywhere, you know?

That's what I like, you know, like you could see--

covered in tattoos.

And I just want it to be a, you know, you walk in...

Because when you walk into a tattoo studio,

it's covered like this, you know?

Ceiling to floor stuff on the wall,

and that's what I really like.

The genre that I'm really catering to is the whole, like,

stoner doom psych stuff.

You know, like, there's one over there with probably

my favourite cover of this year.

Let me show you, actually.

This is pretty hilarious.

Yeah, this is like one of the funniest covers

I've seen ever, but the music's great.

ALAN: How did this start?

COLLECTOR: Collecting records? ALAN: Yeah.

COLLECTOR: Yeah, well, you know, I grew up

in a collectors' household.

You know, my dad was an avid, avid hockey card collector.

He still is.

You know, over 500,000 hockey cards.

My mom grew up collecting baseball cards,

and I always saw their collection of records

in the basement.

And then one Christmas, they got me a turntable, and then,

you know, I was a junkie ever since, you know?

COLLECTOR: I don't smoke. I don't take drugs.

So this is my only vice, right?

I love '60s music, psychedelic music.

It's... the greatest music ever.

Like, it's, ah...

it's hard to express these thoughts,

but the music is so brilliant from those times, right?

Like, in this room, there's a lot of my favourite groups.

Like, there's Jimi Hendrix, there's the Beatles,

there's the Stones.

But that just doesn't make it into the room upstairs.

ALAN: Why do you have upstairs and downstairs records?

COLLECTOR: Like, I like separating them.

The other room is primo stuff.

Like, it's... it'll blow anyone's mind.

Like, this stuff is all good.

Like, I love this stuff.

But the other room...

is where the killer stuff is.

ALAN: Anyway, how many records do you say you have?

COLLECTOR: Uh, probably about...

13,000, maybe.

WOMAN: When we first started going out,

I had more records than him.

So that was one mon--

Yes, I did.

And so-- he denies it, but I did.

So...

And we didn't live together at first,

so maybe you just don't remember counting, comparing.

But anyway, so then he kind of quickly,

you know, caught up with me.

[laughs] MAN: That's fine.

This is revisionist history she keeps coming up with.

WOMAN: It is not! It is true!

MAN: It got into, like, you know?

WOMAN: It is true.

ALAN: Did you guys ever think about merging your records?

MAN: No. WOMAN: No.

MAN: Never.

WOMAN: Now...

you feel like we shouldn't have duplicates.

MAN: Yeah, yeah.

I'm not-- I'm totally fine, like, you know,

I love that she's got her own collection.

Like, we can't even agree.

We wouldn't even be able to agree

how to organize the collections.

WOMAN: Pssht! Absolutely not.

ALAN: So, Jim, tell us about this wall.

You painted this especially for us, right?

JIM: Yeah, I decided to freak it out a bit.

And I was like, "Well, you can't have a boring background

"for a film about basically mostly vintage records."

I like this guy here only because it was one of the ones

that I found in the dollar bin when I was a teenager.

Deep Purple's on this, yeah.

And Floyd.

But I was blown away by this album cover.

COLLECTOR: Oh, yes.

I don't know why I brought this.

But, well, it's the kind of thing--

well, the cover is really great, because here he is.

Like, there's a-- there's a giant woman there, and, um...

he's a little bit frightened.

And then you see the back cover...

Oh!

Oh, they've gone off somewhere together.

Burton's taken all his clothes off and knocked the bench over.

What a guy.

JIM: I love that album cover.

COLLECTOR: So, this is obviously a dollar bin purchase.

I just got drunk one day and thought I'd buy

all the Burton Cummings solo albums.

ALAN: Twenty-five years ago,

25 years ago, 1995,

is when I started shooting the film that became "Vinyl,"

that became my first feature documentary

that changed the course of my life.

The film that this is

intended to be a kind of a sequel,

a bookend, an answer, a...

a kind of a tribute to.

Um... [door opens]

ALAN: Okay, Keely, get over... KEELY: Who are you talking to?

ALAN: I'm talking to myself, or I'm--

no, I'm talking to hopefully someday an audience of people.

And when I look there at the wall,

I imagine 400 people at a screening, so can you--

KEELY: More like three people.

ALAN: Or like three people. Yeah.

KEELY: I'm pretty sure once there was like

six people or something.

ALAN: At a screening, there was six people.

KEELY: Yeah.

ALAN: You're right that I have had screenings

where six people showed up.

KEELY: [laughs] I knew it was like a small number.

ALAN: Okay, could you stop bouncing and close the door

and let's see--

KEELY: I'll close the door and then I will

go back to bouncing.

ALAN: So, let's start again.

Twenty-five years ago I started making a film

about record collecting.

When I started that film in 1995,

I'd been trying to make it in the film industry in Toronto

for 20 years practically, and I had not succeeded.

And it had been certainly a contributing factor

in preventing me from achieving other things like a family,

children, a house.

[door opens] KEELY: Daddy?

ALAN: Yes, Keely?

KEELY: When I was playing, guess what just happened?

ALAN: What just happened?

KEELY: And I'm really mad about it.

ALAN: Can you come back? Can you come here and tell me?

KEELY: No. ALAN: Please.

KEELY: I was playing with Lulu, and I was--

she just came to my house, and we were just celebrating,

and then the iPad died.

Like, I'm having a serious problem with the iPad dying.

ALAN: I have to ask, like, do you ever think

that like you're just a sad guy who hates himself,

and that's why you have to have all these records?

COLLECTOR: [laughs] That's a good one.

ALAN: So, what's in there?

COLLECTOR: About...

I would think about 30,000 records.

Mostly 78's, about half classical, half jazz,

pop, nostalgia.

Huh, Hopalong Cassidy!

ALAN: Now, that looks like a-- I see, that's a transcription.

COLLECTOR: This is a radio transcription.

1949.

This was how radio stations got programs

when they weren't live and before tape.

So this is Hopalong Cassidy program 84, part one.

[playing record] "Out of the old West

"comes the most famous hero of them all,

"Hopalong Cassidy."

[record playing on a loop]

COLLECTOR: You can create a loop manually,

and it's called needle dropping.

Hip hop was the gateway, you know, to records for me.

I think what really became exciting was

when I actually realized,

"Hey, my collection, you know,

"should probably be more than just samples."

The epiphany of doing that for years and years

and having records that I liked, you know, 10 seconds of,

or 20 seconds of, or 30 seconds of,

you realize, "Wait a second, well, that Marvin Gaye record

"actually, you know, is a pretty good album."

You know, "I should probably listen to that whole album."

That opens your mind up to, well, now,

"I want other good soul music that sounds like this."

There's all these chambers that you can kind of go down

when you start... opening your mind.

I don't know why, it's, uh...

it's really weird.

I just can't stop, man.

I can't stop discovering

and falling in love with music.

[record playing swiftly]

GARY: We'll play it at the right speed.

[record playing]

ALAN: Okay, so, Gary...

You told me you have records in other places

other than this room.

GARY: Uh, we have a home in Manizales, Colombia

that we have some records at.

As well, uh, Barcelona, Spain,

in the garage,

and also in my mother's basement as well

in London, Ontario, so...

ALAN: I know it's crass to talk about numbers,

but do you have...?

GARY: Um, exact numbers, no.

Roughly in this number, I always include cassettes,

LP's, CDs, 45's,

it's about 31,000.

12-inch vinyl would probably be around 22 to 25,000.

ALAN: The thing that would be hard for me

if I was doing what you do,

is if I found that many unfamiliar

and cool-looking records

that were not expensive by Canadian standards,

I wouldn't know when to stop.

Like, when do you... Like, there...

GARY: Hence the situation we're in, right?

ALAN: So, I think people told me you had a lot of records.

Like, they were right.

Like, I want people to imagine that there's, let's say,

two more spaces like this. COLLECTOR: Yeah, it's true.

ALAN: There's like 7,000 records here, you think?

Higher?

10,000?

COLLECTOR: Nice little crest. ALAN: Okay.

COLLECTOR: Let's be comfortable with 10.

ALAN: We're gonna say 12.

COLLECTOR: Since a child, I always had that desire

to have a large record collection.

And I managed to make the dream come true--

or make it a nightmare,

but again, we'll deal with that later.

I was all about quantity more than quality.

I was-- my thing was I was gonna extract the quality

from the quantity. ALAN: Right.

COLLECTOR: As opposed to people who were more

selective from the jump.

"Oh, what is this, do I...?" You know?

"Okay, I'm gonna take this."

I was, "Alright, I'll just grab half the crate,

"and I'll mine it, cull it for later on."

ALAN: Right.

COLLECTOR: The burden that they presented

was when I had to move them.

When you have records against a wall like this,

that's where they are.

But to move them,

I didn't put the records in boxes.

ALAN: What?

COLLECTOR: I wasn't-- I didn't have the time

and it was too daunting to, fuck, number one, find boxes,

find boxes that fit, and to take the time to be boxing them.

I didn't have-- I had no time.

And I knew that it was going to be problematic,

that they were gonna be moving them like this,

the arms full of records.

When I kept seeing them coming,

it was as if it was like something out of a clown car.

They kept coming, and coming, and coming, and I was like,

"Oh my God."

COLLECTOR: This would normally be filled.

Then I have another two-by-four.

Then I have another two-by-two.

They I have a one-by-five, and a one-by-four,

and a three-by-three, and another three-by-three.

And then I have some still at my mom's house in her garage.

ALAN: Do I have your permission to post

some of your Instagram pictures?

COLLECTOR: Yes!

ALAN: Okay, so tell me where that idea came from.

COLLECTOR: Honestly, it was just random.

It randomly came to me.

"Well, shoot, I have thousands of records.

"This seems like something I, you know, could do."

Because I'm a music-lover, but I have no musical talent.

So this is sort of my way of, you know,

paying homage to all of these records.

ALAN: What bothers your mother more?

That you have too many records

or that you sometimes pose with a bikini or what--

COLLECTOR: What bothers my mother is that

I don't smile enough in my photos. [laughs]

COLLECTOR: I started out,

I had a couple of racks like this here, and that was it.

And then as I expanded, then I had them across the back wall.

Then that got too big, so I had to build all these shelves.

And it's been like this for about five years now.

ALAN: The one in the middle, that's...

COLLECTOR: This just happened last year.

DAUGHTER: It was never like, "Don't touch the albums,

"the collection is not for sharing,"

or... you know? It was always...

there was piles of albums outside

and my dad was playing them a side here, a side there.

And he's just playing tunes, playing tunes, playing tunes.

COLLECTOR: You know that everybody had the same basic

Beatles and stuff, but...

they didn't listen to, say, you know,

Kensington Market wasn't big.

A lot of these Toronto bands are so obscure, um...

but they're also valuable.

I got albums in here worth two, three hundred dollars.

ALAN: Okay, show me a two- or three-hundred dollar record.

COLLECTOR: Early prog rock 1970,

there was a guy named Bob Bryden.

"Christmas." ALAN: Okay.

COLLECTOR: They spent some money on it, gatefold,

and then they disappeared.

♪

COLLECTOR: This isn't the largest collection by any means,

but it's well sifted.

These are the records that meant the most to me.

Every one of these records represents a little journey,

a little part of my life, a slice of life.

ALAN: And what's in the cabinets?

COLLECTOR: These are just duplicates.

And these are the titles

that they never made it to the crates.

Sometimes they come out, you know?

Sometimes I let them out.

You know, I don't play these records anymore.

I play the CD version.

I know that's heresy, heresy!

And one of my main things is that

I don't collect for the sake of collecting.

I collect for the music.

It's always about the music for me.

ALAN: Okay, well, I'm gonna push back a little bit.

COLLECTOR: All right. We can get into it, I'm ready.

ALAN: Okay, so here's the thing.

First of all, there is not a collector in the world

of records who wouldn't also say,

"I'm in it for the music." COLLECTOR: Okay.

ALAN: Even the person who you and I might say is a hoarder...

That person also says, "I'm in it for the music."

I think all record collecting

is a little bit about collecting, even if it is...

COLLECTOR: Well, I'm a collector.

I call myself a collector.

I would never-- I would never not say I'm a collector.

Yes, I am a collector!

I do say I have a life, you know?

When I meet people who are truly--

and I don't want to be unkind,

but let's just say neurotically obsessed with a thing

where I can't quite see the reasoning behind it

other than maybe something strange.

Uh, I...

I say, "Yeah, well, you know, I have a life.

"I think I'll go for a walk."

ALAN: I can see the distinction you're making.

You're not exactly crazy, but you're obviously...

COLLECTOR: Passionate?

ALAN: My friend used to say

"ecstatically marginalized," but you're not.

COLLECTOR: I like that. I like that!

I'm gonna use that.

"Ecstatically marginalized."

COLLECTOR: Now, here's the real thing.

Even better than the Beatles,

was the first Canadian Swinging Blue Jeans album.

ALAN: "Hippy Hippy Shake." COLLECTOR: Yeah.

By the time the Beatles are on Ed Sullivan,

I already know some of their songs.

I get one of my dad's old tennis rackets

so I can pretend to be John Lennon.

That was 60 years ago.

I'm still the same person, basically.

I was lucky my dad had all his big band 78's.

My mom had Harry Belafonte.

So I was surrounded by records.

I saw later my friends who did grow up,

and now they're all like complaining,

"I hate my job, I hate my whatever,"

their hair's gone now,

they don't want to come out to see

the Ramones with me, and I go...

"Rock and roll!"

You know, it's supposed to be fun.

And I met like-minded people.

Imants Krumins.

ALAN: Yeah, Imants.

COLLECTOR: Did you ever meet him?

ALAN: Yes, I interviewed him for "Vinyl,"

and I didn't use it because,

I think it was partly my own judgement.

But also, like, he lived in his parents' basement,

and his father used to have to come downstairs

to use the washroom, and there's all these shots

of his father walking through the background of a shot,

and I just thought people would laugh.

COLLECTOR: Imants' genius was he had a car and a job.

So he could put together-- this is pre-Internet--

so he was our Google and our Wikipedia.

He could bring Teenage Head to Toronto;

he could take me to Hamilton.

And then, do you know about the trunk of his car back then?

ALAN: No.

COLLECTOR: His car trunk would be filled with

7 inch, 12 inches, and cassettes.

Whatever you put in, if you put three 45's in,

you could take three 45's out.

ALAN: In the mindset I had back then,

I thought, like, you live at home,

you're not interested in women--

I mean, you're not interested in having a family.

You have a lot of income because you live at your parents' house.

COLLECTOR: Mm-hm. ALAN: And you take trips

to Germany and places, and you get records,

and that's your whole life. Now as I'm saying that now--

COLLECTOR: But it wasn't his whole life.

Remember-- ALAN: As I'm saying that now--

COLLECTOR: He was a wrestling fanatic.

He would go around the world to go to wrestling.

I mean, he was such a great character.

ALAN: What I'm saying is that, as I'm saying that now,

I think, "Lucky guy," like... COLLECTOR: Exactly.

ALAN: He found the thing he loved.

COLLECTOR: Exactly. ALAN: And he did it.

But in 1995, in the mood I was in, I thought, you know,

"Poor shmuck." COLLECTOR: [laughs]

ALAN: Those are, one, two, three, four,

five, six.

Mike Nesmith records.

I was playing--

I decided to play these records and...

'cause six seemed too many, and I was trying to decide

which ones I could get rid of. There's no rules to this.

Part of it I just think is, hey, if I'm in the mood

to play Mike Nesmith, how many...

I might play one record, I might play two.

The next time I might play two different ones.

But in terms of playing them, I don't need six.

Doesn't seem right.

I have this story of...

getting rid of all the records.

You're not gonna live a simple, uncluttered life

with 1,500 or 2,000 records.

They're inconvenient.

Like, those records that are up there now,

I think those are really cool records.

I'm glad I have them.

Um, the Al Caiola record, in particular,

like, you know, if I cut out 75 records

and put them in a box and say,

"These are the records, these are my daughter's

"when she's 21 or when I'm dead,

"or someday if she wants to see

"what her dad was into in the music,"

I would-- that Al Caiola record.

You know, the reason I decided to make another film

about records was to make it really clear

that I might be an neurotic person

and therefore constantly questioning everything I do,

but I think those records are really cool

and I don't even play those records.

COLLECTOR: Recently I had a copy of "Head Hunters"

by Herbie Hancock.

And it's an album that's like, you know,

so revered by so many people, and so I've held on to it

because, just like, everyone says it's great.

And I've played it a few times and I'm like,

"I just can't stand this."

And actually I adopted something that you did in "Vinyl."

I took it over to Dupont Street again

and left it by the telephone pole

and just like stood back

and like within ten minutes it was gone, you know?

And I actually took a photo of it

because it just looked so great,

put it on Instagram and people were freaking out,

"Oh my God, that album's so amazing."

Like, you know, "I hope you picked it up!"

But I didn't say that, like,

"No, I'm the one that left it there."

If I look at my earliest, like, record buying,

it was like I would hide records when I came home

so my mother wouldn't know that I bought more records.

And I would, like-- I made like shelves in my bedroom

so I could, like, display all the record covers.

I was like, you know, spent a lot of time in my bedroom,

listened to them, and listened to records.

Like, the moment I woke up, I would put a record on.

ALAN: Do you still have the Alice Cooper panties?

COLLECTOR: Yeah.

COLLECTOR: [archive] Of course a CD doesn't come with that.

ALAN: No, that's the problem with CDs, you can't...

COLLECTOR: You can't put panties in them.

[record playing]

COLLECTOR: The wiring on the speakers is a little weird.

[record continues playing]

♪

ALAN: I like this already. COLLECTOR: Okay!

Let me just try and turn it up a little bit.

I feel like it's a little low.

♪

ALAN: So, Italo, tell it-- like, I don't know that word.

COLLECTOR: It's not really a genre so much as it is

just any form of electronic music

that was kind of created within Italy,

but also other parts of Europe.

I just like the kind of

amateurishness of it in a lot of ways.

The experimentation of it in a lot of ways.

Um, even when it fails.

ALAN: Not that I'm trying to psychoanalyze you...

COLLECTOR: Go for it.

ALAN: But why would somebody choose something

so hard to find?

Like...

COLLECTOR: Okay, I mean, I'll be perfectly honest.

Uh, I live with obsessive compulsive disorder,

which probably you hear a lot from record collectors.

I've always had kind of a weird affinity for collecting

and organizing and archiving things

to the point where my first masters degree

is in museum studies.

So basically I have like an honorary degree in having OCD.

I like to know things, and more things,

and I like to know as much as I can about something.

And so I've been trying to get to know as much as I can

about Italo for again, like, over a decade now.

This is an Italian guy from Sudbury.

[chuckles]

[record playing]

COLLECTOR: Right.

[coughs]

[record playing]

COLLECTOR: This is what Italian people in Sudbury do.

COLLECTOR: This is probably my most prized possession

out of everything in here.

ALAN: And where'd you get that? Where did you find it?

COLLECTOR: Uh... a guy's basement in Guelph.

I drove down there in an ice storm, almost died,

and I got to this guy's house and I'm going through

all of his doubles.

It's amazing 'cause he's, you know, probably in his 80's,

and he has everything on like a list written by hand,

and I ask him, "Do you have this Jackie Shane 45 on Paragon?"

And he goes, "Yeah, I have it.

"But I won't sell it."

And I looked him dead in the eye and I said,

"I will not leave your house until you sell me this record."

ALAN: Okay, so first make me jealous with this record.

COLLECTOR: [laughs]

This is why you came over, isn't it?

This is a great old psychedelic record called JK and Company.

It was recorded in Canada and it's really hard to get.

It was-- you know, it's super rare.

It's fantastic, it's creepy, it's trippy.

And the craziest part of all is it cost me one dollar

when I found it in a Goodwill in Butler, Pennsylvania,

in amongst-- everything else that was there

was gospel records and really bad country records,

and I-- there was like piles;

there must have been like 10, 12 piles,

and I went through them all.

But it was worth it because this was the gold

at the end of the rainbow.

So much of my record collection

has come from these kind of circumstances.

Almost all of the neat records I have

were not high-priced items in some boutique store.

I found them kicking and gouging in the mud and the blood

and the beer by hitting those Goodwill's and Value Villages.

To me, a big part of collecting is the find.

Just flipping through that, and going, "Holy shit,

"holy shit, there it is, there it is, I've won!"

You know what I mean?

To me, specifically looking for records is boring.

Yeah, I could never take a list and go,

"Okay, I'm not buying nothing but's on this list."

The bottom line is I'm buying them to listen to them, right?

Like, when we were in Butler, Pennsylvania,

I had to wait an entire fuckin' week to play this

'cause we were there on a vacation

and I bought it early in the vacation.

I had to wait a week!

COLLECTOR: The thing that I like about record stores is that

the record stores are run by maniacs.

Either, you know, they're maniacs

because they're compelled to assemble and spread culture,

and then there are other maniacs who are just like--

who have kind of a compulsion to zero in on one facet

of music or one select group of artists.

I've often thought that you could make a really

engaging record store

if you just had two maniacs

with diametrically opposed takes on music.

Like, if you had one guy that was obsessively

collecting Willie Nelson records

and then another guy who was just an obsessive

collector of the band The Fall.

Like, you could fill a shop with just Willie and The Fall.

And, I mean, I think that's a perfectly viable

business model, and I'd love to see somebody do it.

COLLECTOR: I worked at record stores since I was 15.

I benefited from working in record shops,

seeing records come in, and going,

"Oh, this one? No."

ALAN: What's your childhood like that you started working

in record stores when you were 15?

COLLECTOR: I... uh, well, I grew up in Ajax.

And the people I grew up with...

often, like, racists, and...

I started a death metal band with some friends,

and we were on the GO train to Toronto

every weekend and just buying like metal vinyl,

and just being, like, inspired by that.

Just to be clear, my parents were beautiful, loving.

I came from a caring, nurturing home.

Uh, that home just happened to be in Ajax.

ALAN: Right.

COLLECTOR: That was surrounded by skinheads and assholes

and fuckin' people who hated gays.

And just like-- I just, I was like,

"No." And when I discovered

a band like Napalm Death who were just like,

"That is not the way we think.

"We fight Nazis. We fight ignorance.

"We fight," like, you know... "bigotry."

Napalm Death!

[record playing Lillian Allen, "Fight Back"]

ALAN: I'm gonna guess that you may be the first couple I've met

who does keep their records together.

MAN: Oh, like fused? No.

WOMAN: [laughs]

MAN: I think if you built your collections together,

like, if you were like, "Okay, here we are, we co-habitate"...

WOMAN: Yeah.

MAN: "Let's start a record collection," you know?

But I don't think it's...

WOMAN: What kind of couple would do that?

"Let's start a record collection."

MAN: I don't know, some kind of couple might.

COLLECTOR: Well, I go to a lot of record shows.

I know you do too.

And, you know, it's life and in a way my livelihood.

Record collecting, which has been for me over the years

in my life, has been soulful, it's been creative,

it's been mysterious, has now turned into like

baseball card stats.

And I just find it-- it's like so uninspiring, so boring.

The mystery is long gone.

The excitement, like, of going into a record store

and thinking that you're...

you know, you're gonna find a piece of music

you've never heard at an affordable price...

They're like luxury items.

ALAN: You're depressing us. COLLECTORS: [laugh]

COLLECTOR: Oh, I'm sorry, no...

COLLECTOR 2: Can I just say that this is coming from a guy

who found, what, a copy of The Ugly Ducklings last week

for two dollars? Um... [laughs]

COLLECTOR: Whoa... Alan...

There's-- there's no secrets. COLLECTOR 2: [laughs]

ALAN: I mean...

COLLECTOR 2: Sorry, man. [laughs]

COLLECTOR: Well, that's not average, like you--

COLLECTOR 2: No, that's not the average experience,

but the experience still-- COLLECTOR: We were grinding.

COLLECTOR 2: Yeah, that's true, man.

COLLECTOR: We were grinding.

COLLECTOR 2: I tapped out, by the way.

I had to leave. I couldn't deal with the...

everything about it.

The crowdedness, the smell of the place.

It was a junk shop, and it was everything about a junk shop.

It was also kind of crowded.

There was like a weird energy in the room.

And I, I gave up.

COLLECTOR: I still have the hunger.

COLLECTOR 2: He's still-- I, yeah.

COLLECTOR: I still have this hunger for it, in that capacity.

Like, I was wearing, you know, in the pandemic time

we're all wearing masks, we're walking around with masks,

and shit, I was doing that,

I was doing that record shopping 15 years ago.

Because I had to, because otherwise I would have been

in the hospital with black mould and dust and rat droppings.

But I love it.

The going through the-- like, looking through

thousands and thousands and thousands of records.

And somebody would say,

"Oh, well, they're not-- they're not in order."

Or like, you know, "Oh, just so you know, they're not"--

I'm like, "Yes, that's even better."

COLLECTOR 2: Good!

COLLECTOR: That's gonna stop soon.

[scrambling noises]

COLLECTOR: Sofia, bring the dogs up!

[scrambling noises continue]

COLLECTOR: Yo! SOFIA: [muffled] What?

COLLECTOR: Upstairs!

Yeah.

I started collecting records at three.

I'm 50 now.

ALAN: What did you collect at three?

COLLECTOR: My uncle's records.

I didn't collect them. I stole his records.

Basically, he had no choice.

Here's my uncle who's a teenager,

who's got Alice Cooper "Killer,"

and there's this big red snake on it,

it's like, "Goddamn, I want to know this."

Or it's kind of like

Rolling Stones, "Sticky Fingers."

It's like, "What? What's the--?

"There's an underwear under there?!"

And I'm a three-year-old kid,

and it's like, I have an original

Rolling Stones, "Sticky Fingers."

And I'm the guy who broke the zipper.

That's what it is that makes a vinyl

more than just music, right?

It's the artifact.

So to just act like the artifact doesn't matter

means that you don't get it.

I mean, it's like ordering a steak

without being able to smell the damn thing.

It doesn't make-- you can say,

"Oh yeah, well, it tastes the same."

No, it doesn't taste the fucking same, it doesn't!

If you're gonna take a steak and you're gonna eat it

in a Styrofoam thing with a plastic fork

and a plastic knife kind of thing,

you're gonna tell me that it's the same thing as

getting a plate with the fixings,

some nice broccoli there, some nice stuffed potato,

all dressed, it smells nice...

You're gonna tell me that that's the same as eating

a fucking steak in like a takeout container?

It isn't!

So it's not just about the music,

it's about the experience.

And that's why I collect, because these are artifacts.

I am vinyl Dumbledore.

DELL: I would say I do live and breathe music.

It just brings me joy.

It makes me think.

The lyrics, the sounds, it soothes me.

Like, I-- there's this...

I'm bipolar. I get...

I get in waves where drugs can't help me.

And I can put on, whether I'm at the highest high

and having trouble,

or at the lowest low and having trouble,

John Martyn, "Solid Air,"

and it just takes me to this calm place

where I can just be there with that song, and it...

I will always go to that.

I will always have that.

For me personally collecting all this stuff,

it seemed like there was like this big hole in my soul

that I was just trying to fill with material things.

I'd always to have to like be searching

to get something to give me that feeling,

like I was getting something new or completing myself, you know?

ALAN: Okay, so when you were-- I gotta unpack this.

When you were filling the hole, and if I would have said,

"Dell, you're just filling a hole

"that will never be filled."

What would you have said to me?

DELL: You're right, you're right.

But if you would have said to me,

"It's too much," I would have said, "To who?"

It's a personal thing.

If it's causing a problem in your relationship,

maybe that's something you have to factor in.

But if you're just doing your--

it's not harming anybody.

You know, it's okay.

You can't have too many records

unless you have too many records.

ALAN: Oh, good.

The thing is, all I'm thinking about now is,

can I enjoy music without the records?

I want to change.

I think that's the biggest part of it.

I want to give something up.

Um, this reminds me, though,

I drive my daughter

and two of her classmates to school Monday morning.

I could probably make it if I wake up at 7:00,

but I set the alarm for 6:45.

Anyway, so the other morning I'm driving my daughter

to school and I get up to Bloor Street,

the main street that's just a couple blocks up,

and I see a guy; he was not a young man,

but a little younger than me,

walking slowly across the street.

And I think to myself, you know, like, "Oh, it's so weird.

"What's that guy doing up? What's he doing now?

"What's he doing so early?"

The other morning I had that feeling, like,

"What's that guy doing up?"

And I realized I'll never totally comfortably

be this guy that I am now

who wakes up at 6:45

to get his daughter off to school.

I don't want to say in my heart, but kind of in my heart,

I'm still the guy who used to stay up,

stay up till 6:45 for no reason.

You know, I had an apartment;

it was at the back of a building;

there was no direct sunlight.

If I shut the blinds,

it would get really dark,

and it would stay dark.

It was a dark apartment.

And I liked it that way.

I lived that lifestyle

for a good 25, maybe 30 years.

Now you have a kid.

Now you're a parent.

I don't push against that. I don't--

oh, fuck.

The guy I was when I made "Vinyl" 25 years ago

and complained about my life,

I feel like,

a little bit like I'm that guy who woke up and was like,

"Well, all those things I want that I have,"

but in my heart I'm still that guy a little bit.

And I don't... [mic falls]

Even this, like...

the clip fell off, taping it to my sweater, and...

how many times in the last half hour that I've done this,

had that fall off...

Did I go get another fresh piece of tape?

With me, the shoe keeps dropping

because I'm not--

you know, 'cause I didn't tie up the lace.

ALAN: So, is this like a secret spot, this store?

Like it's...

HENRY: It's a little odd to have a record shop

to the back of an industrial complex.

ALAN: Right.

HENRY: When I started here,

it was like a [inaudible] gamble.

I thought, "It might work; it might not work."

[chuckles]

And so 20 years, I'm still here.

ALAN: So you have the store, but you're a record collector

yourself, right? HENRY: Yes.

That's what got me into it in the first place,

being a record collector.

We weren't rich.

We didn't really live in the ghetto,

but we lived-- I lived in a tenement yard,

which means on the street there'd be restaurants and bars

and they'd be playing music all the time,

and then on the weekend, the guys would have

sound system, dance, and they'd put the big horn in the trees,

and they're blasting and all these records,

and I'd get to hear them all the time.

And at about age nine, I've sort of developed a taste of my own,

a style of my own.

I bought my first two 45's, and I remember them very well,

and I still have them.

And so when I get a little older and I can go to party on my own,

I became the DJ.

ALAN: Yeah. 45's are hard to look for.

HENRY: They're not. They're not.

ALAN: Well, you can't, you can't...

Your fingers can't go down-- you have to pick up--

HENRY: But when you do something like...

There's more than 25 here, I can flip through easier.

ALAN: Oh, yeah.

HENRY: You can't do that with an album.

ALAN: No, but I'm not really into 45's 'cause...

but I love them, but I don't--

HENRY: But if you're a true collector,

you have to collect 45's.

See, I'm really caught up with this mid-tempo style

that came up between the years 1964-68.

And I could say I have a huge collection in that category.

ALAN: A mid-tempo, so...

HENRY: Mid-tempo.

[record playing Dee Clark, "Don't Walk Away From Me"]

HENRY: Play this one more.

ALAN: I found 45's too much, I don't know.

Are you guys 45's people? COLLECTOR: Yep.

COLLECTOR 2: 45's, that's what I like.

You used to go to Village Value [sic]

and buy a whole bunch of them, okay?

They're so cheap, you know?

You could take chances. "Okay, that's good.

"Oh, that's bad."

"That's good. Oh, that's bad."

My rarest record, the jewel of my collection,

it's Denis that sold it to me for five dollars.

DENIS: I did!

COLLECTOR 2: The guy from France...

DENIS: If you want a second copy, it's a bit more.

COLLECTOR 2: I found another copy for $400

and I sold it for $1,000 to a guy in Tokyo.

And I went to Tokyo and I gave it to the guy in his hands,

and he paid for my airfare with that record.

[all laugh]

COLLECTOR 2: It's an amazing psychedelic,

like with echo and, like, just, you're--

you just put the tone arm on it and you're like flying.

COLLECTOR: I've never told the price to my girlfriend,

but last year I bought a record and it was super rare,

but I bought this for 300 bucks

and never told her,

and she looked at me...

and she knew how much I'd paid.

COLLECTOR: I didn't realize till today,

I have two of the damn things!

A friend in Las Vegas sent me an autographed one.

I know one woman in the other interview alluded to him.

COLLECTOR: [archive] Heino, have you ever heard Heino?

There's a whole cult of people that are into him.

ALAN: [archive] No.

COLLECTOR: Gotta be his first album...

without spectacles.

Then the shades began to appear.

ALAN: Okay.

COLLECTOR: The covers had to be seen to be believed.

Nosferatu Heino.

The Village of the Damned children as adults.

And that one, "Liebe Mutter," "For Mother,"

this is an entire album of Mother's Day songs.

GLEN: Of course, you remember this one from the past.

ALAN: Ah, okay. GLEN: I still have it.

ALAN: Now I am going to cut...

GLEN: Cut to the first film I'm in.

ALAN: ...to the first film with Glen showing that record

and then me saying to him,

"I've already seen that record from somebody in the film,"

and Glen saying...

GLEN: [archive] Someone else had this?

ALAN: Yeah. GLEN: Wow.

"You like the whip. You like it."

GLEN: "You like the whip. You like it."

You can't not do that when you talk about this record.

ALAN: Yeah.

GLEN: And I could never let this go.

Is it a good record? No.

Do I need it? No.

But I can't let it go 'cause it's Sado Maso Disco.

ALAN: Yeah, no, absolutely.

GLEN: What had happened probably to coincide with the time

you made the first film was I started thrifting much greater.

ALAN: Right.

GLEN: Thrifting started in a big way for me around '95, '96.

When you can acquire oddball items at cheap prices, you know,

it's an aphrodisiac; it keeps you coming back.

And, you know, we're living in a world now

where you can go online and get anything, really.

If you want to listen to things, it's there.

It's not like you really need the records.

I mean, I know that even in your first film,

there were people who didn't like the fact

that you were maybe implying that

it's not really just about the music;

it's about all these other things.

They're like, "No, no, no, it's just about the music for me."

ALAN: That's the--

GLEN: I don't believe that even for myself.

I mean, I think there is a fetishism

to collecting records, and that's part of the turn on.

How many of the people from the original film

have died since then?

ALAN: Um...

GLEN: Like two or three, or more?

Yeah, I know he's only in it for a tiny little part,

but Imants, he died.

ALAN: So you were-- were you a friend of his?

GLEN: I knew Imants very well, yeah.

I met him at the punk scene in the '80s.

You had a shot of him, just like holding a record.

ALAN: Yeah, I know, but I felt kind of sorry for him.

GLEN: Sure, sure.

ALAN: The guy lived at home, yes.

GLEN: He wouldn't have cared, yeah.

He had no shame about any of that.

ALAN: He lived at home and he had a lot of money

because he worked in a bank. GLEN: Worked in the bank, yeah.

ALAN: And he used his money to do the thing he loved.

GLEN: Yeah.

He used to go to Japan all the time so he could buy records

and go to wrestling events.

He was a total nerd in that way, in all those areas.

Imants was just funny. Imants was just--

I don't mean funny, awkward.

I mean funny in the sense that he was so into the things

he was into and he had just major dedication about it.

And, yeah, and the fact that he lived with his parents

didn't bother him.

He didn't try to hide it from people.

I remember one conversation one time where somebody said,

you know, "Imants, have you met any women lately?"

And he's like, "Ah, not really."

And they're like, "You don't really try, do you?"

And he's like, "Ugh girls, icky."

You know what I mean? He was making a joke,

but that was kind of the thing. It really wasn't his thing.

It wasn't really something he pursued or anything.

I mean, he was a manic collector.

His collection was massive. He had to reinforce the house.

There was at one point in time where he said that

the foundation was getting so weak from the amount of records

and things that he had that they were advised to reinforce

from the basement up because it was getting so heavy.

COLLECTOR: I feel like I don't go a weekend

without buying at least one record.

It's like, it's pretty addictive.

So, you know, and now that I'm on Instagram,

I can't help but, like, see the record stores.

You know how they do those posts where they're like

flipping through their latest records?

And I'm always like, "Oh, I need that," you know?

So I'm like, "I gotta go to the store, like today!"

Well, my plan is

to have like one of these kind of shelves here

next when I run out of space under the TV.

ALAN: So you plan to run out of space?

COLLECTOR: Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. I'm not stopping any time soon.

It's like a comfort, you know?

Like, just to have the music and to have that.

And like, I own them. [chuckles]

I mean, I guess that's an obvious answer, but...

ALAN: No, but it's, it's... COLLECTOR: It's the truth.

ALAN: It's obvious, but most people don't do it.

It makes me wonder, like, what are they...

COLLECTOR: Why aren't they doing it?

ALAN: Why aren't they doing it?

COLLECTOR: What's wrong with them? [laughs]

ALAN: [archive] About a half an hour ago I decided

that I really don't want to see anybody

that I know ever again.

Right now, I wake up and go to bed thinking it's too late.

Too late for all kinds of things that I thought I once wanted.

I got woken up this morning

by a phone call.

It was about 10:30,

and I hadn't fallen asleep till after 7:00 am.

I got up, made my coffee, walked into this room here,

the room where I live, and I felt like

I had the whole day before me

to get my life on track, get moving.

I started to work on this tape and I thought,

"You should be feebly attempting

"in your all-thumbs manner

"to put together your daughter's bicycle.

"Well, you should have a daughter.

"And you should be trying to put together her bicycle,

"instead of making a tape

"for somebody...

"again."

COLLECTOR: Do you know "Slides"?

Should I play a little "Slides" for you?

ALAN: Okay, a little "Slides." Like, I like Richard Harris.

COLLECTOR: Yeah, me too.

But I like the fact that nobody else likes it.

[record playing Richard Harris, "Roy"]

[record playing metal music]

COLLECTOR: [imitates death growl]

ALAN: Well, I mean, can you tell me what he's singing?

COLLECTOR: I don't think there's a lyric sheet.

ALAN: Does...

COLLECTOR: No, there's no lyrics.

ALAN: Can you tell for sure that he is singing lyrics?

COLLECTOR: Um, yeah.

Um, we played with this band

from Japan called Sete Star Sept.

They label themselves as a noise core band.

ALAN: Right.

COLLECTOR: And they don't have lyrics.

They literally just make, like, gibberish.

They go, [indecipherable growling].

Um, I can just, like, lay them out if you want.

These are all by the same band.

And I just have, like, an abundance of their records

'cause I think they're, like, really cool.

COLLECTOR: This is your Marc Bolan, T. Rex,

Donovan, David Bowie, British beat group stuff,

all through Kinks, what have you,

into more progressive stuff, rarer psych stuff.

We're going into weirder folky stuff.

As you go more acoustic,

it gets more traditional across the top.

I told myself I would build a shelf

and if it didn't fit in the shelf, that's it.

ALAN: Right.

COLLECTOR: You know, I picked my battle.

ALAN: So that shelf. That's it.

COLLECTOR: That's gonna be it, so--

I used to have boxes on the floor.

Like, little, you know, the crates

that you can flip through. I had them all over here.

It just got insane.

Simply if you live with people,

you can't just have your shit

visually taking up all the space

and physically taking up all the space.

You can overwhelm people very easily.

I've managed to defeat

that thing within me that used to be very present,

which was the hawkish,

like, the Jackal, you know, on the Serengeti,

constantly looking for the next meal

or the body that might be left out.

I managed, I think somewhat successfully,

to be able to find a mechanism psychologically

to suppress that.

COLLECTOR: When I started working in a record store,

I mean, it's impossible to not collect.

I had taken a big trip in '96, '97,

like six months of travel--

Asia, Australia, New Zealand, right?

Came back a different person.

And, um, so I started selling my collection.

I don't remember it that well; it was like I was

in a fugue state or something, because now I look at the--

I kept a list of everything I sold, documenting the trauma,

and I look at the list and I think,

"What was going through my head?"

How could I have sold all my incredible string band albums?

Sold them all!

They were so important to me.

This is the list.

All my Phil Ochs albums.

And Phil Ochs was, like, part of my heart, my soul.

And I sold nine albums that I had of his.

I sometimes look at this list just to get sad, like I say,

poking around in the sore spot.

Seven Robyn Hitchcock albums, my Soft Boys album...

I think there was an element of that I-- I did it because I--

like, to prove that I could do it.

♪

ALAN: Those are Mexican lobby cards.

This is all part of, like, stuff I have that I probably should

get rid of that I don't know why I haven't gotten rid of.

I still have a shelf of DVDs.

I don't know why I have them.

I'll probably get rid of them.

Oh no, there's some more DVDs there,

and then behind here are some books.

The other day I went through some documents

and I found this document.

"Things I'm throwing out."

A contract to act in a film I wrote

called "Daughters of Jerusalem."

Some one sheets from my film "Stealing Images."

An envelope in which I sent hash to a friend in Toronto

when I was in Afghanistan.

A letter from 2006 from my downstairs neighbour;

he complains in the first line

of my selfish and arrogant attitude,

your excessive noise, cigarette smoke,

and overall ogre-like demeanour.

There's an entry about a woman

who phoned and cancelled the lunch date,

telling me I was crude, angry, and bitter,

that everyone knew it,

that all her girlfriends knew it,

that it's written on my forehead,

that I blame women like her for keeping me unhappy.

I'm not proud.

It makes me laugh because it's so negative.

It makes me laugh, but I'm not happy that somebody

thought that of me or said that to me.

And I'm not happy to remember

that there may have been some truth to that.

The other day my daughter was upstairs on her iPad

and I just wanted her to stop.

ALAN: [video] Now, I don't know what this is...

ALAN: I was cleaning out some stuff in storage in the garage.

I had to give her something to do, so I asked her to film me.

KEELY: [video] It's filming now.

ALAN: So, I looked a little bit at it, and I saw myself.

I just looked like a big, hulking oaf.

I hope I don't look as much like a big hulking oaf

to other people when I come to their house.

KEELY: [video] Okay, hold the cupcake.

ALAN: [video] One second, when I...

ALAN: When I go to interview people,

I don't understand how people can even stand

to take me seriously. Like, "Who's that?"

Like, "Who's the big hulking oaf?

"Oh, that's your interviewer."

ALAN: [video] This is a Super 8 film.

See, each of those frames is a picture...

KEELY: Mm-hm.

ALAN: And as the pictures roll by...

KEELY: Oh, so it's like a movie?

ALAN: That is a movie.

KEELY: Oh, it's a blue movie.

ALAN: So I was saying to my girlfriend,

"How can they take this big hulking oaf seriously?"

And she said, "Maybe that's your secret weapon."

When the big hulking oaf actually has a decent question

or turns out to be a gentle person

who doesn't eat them for breakfast,

that they're-- they find themselves disarmed.

She didn't say, "You're not a big hulking oaf."

She said, "Maybe the big hulking oaf thing is working for you."

ALAN: [video] Looks like a T-shirt.

What's this T-shirt?

KEELY: Oh, "Vinyl," your movie.

Vinyl, vinyl, vinyl, vinyl.

ALAN: [archive] Um, I'm looking for some place to sit.

COLLECTOR: Why? What do you care?

Get the stool. ALAN: I'm an old man.

COLLECTOR: Well, he's overweight, that's for sure.

I don't mean to hurt your feelings,

but you could...

ALAN: I could lose a few pounds, you're saying?

COLLECTOR: You could lose a few pounds,

you could probably feel a little bit better.

What do you think?

I know you're not grossly-- you're not grossly overweight.

COLLECTOR: I started out as a DJ,

and so I was buying music just to play.

As I was playing stuff and learning about stuff,

you start to, you know, hear about the samples and learn,

you know, as you like, "Yo, where'd that come from?"

This and that.

We look for moments sometimes too, right?

Because there's like-- you know, I buy a lot of gospel.

A lot of gospel is terrible, but there's great moments.

There's some amazing gospel records.

But you gotta dig through a lot of shit to find that, right?

COLLECTOR 2: You know, there's certain people that just like

to pick the lowest hanging fruit all the time.

Or it's just like, "You know what, okay, this is the easiest,

"this is the closest thing to me,

"I'm gonna make it like that." You know, cool.

That's part of your process, dope, you know?

But I'm trying to reach at that golden apple

that's at the top of the tree.

You don't see, like, Gordon Ramsay going out

and just picking like, any type of--

the cheapest rice in the supermarket.

He's going out to, like, finding the grains and the actual, like,

you know, in the rice field in Thailand.

Like, you know, if you feel like your rice is not better

by going all the way to Thailand

and just buying the regular rice at a supermarket, good for you.

COLLECTOR: More records for us at the end of the day.

COLLECTOR 2: Exactly, you know?

ALAN: The film is about record collectors.

And I'm always surprised even though I shouldn't be,

that basically, I can say the word "we,"

we're all kind of the same.

COLLECTOR: Yes. COLLECTOR 2: Absolutely.

COLLECTOR: Well, even like when you guys came in today

and we said it, like, your eyes lit up.

You guys started going through the crates and everything.

And, like, we relate to that because we're the same way.

And like you said, like--

COLLECTOR 2: We do the same thing.

COLLECTOR: You know, even though we might have different

points of entry into collecting

and different, you know, genres that we like

and contexts or whatever,

we still have the same kind of passion.

ALAN: A lot of people don't want to be associated

with the word "record collector" because it has a...

COLLECTOR 2: Stigma attached to it?

ALAN: Stigma attached to it. COLLECTOR 2: Mm-hm.

ALAN: They always have this straw man,

which is some dude in his house

with 50,000 records and he doesn't have a girlfriend,

blah, blah, blah, and they just want to tell you,

"I'm not that guy." COLLECTOR: Yeah, we get bitches.

[both laugh]

ALAN: Do you merge your records?

LISA: No.

COLLECTOR: No, we do not. LISA: Never.

COLLECTOR: Behind us we have Lisa's, behind you we have mine.

I have brought it up actually many times

that we should merge them

because I think it would be cool.

But, no.

ALAN: Is it because if you split up,

it would be hard to pull them apart?

LISA: That's part of it, but it's a mental thing too.

I just-- these are mine.

ALAN: Are there duplicates?

COLLECTOR: Oh, definitely. ALAN: Oh, yeah, yeah.

COLLECTOR: See, that's why I want to merge them,

because then it would be streamlined.

And we could sell stuff that we don't need!

We got doubles!

LISA: Sometimes I'll be like, "His copy is nicer,"

like my copy of something else is really old and scratched-up,

so if I want to hear it not fucked up, but then--

ALAN: Actually, you know what, can you just get your version

so we can just... COLLECTOR: Compare them?

LISA: Yeah.

COLLECTOR: Mine's gonna be better.

LISA: Mine has sentimental value, though.

COLLECTOR: Those are like the same, the same press.

LISA: They're the same.

COLLECTOR: Look at that. Immaculate.

Oh, wait, I don't know, actually.

LISA: Scratches and fingerprints on it.

COLLECTOR: You know what?

I would say it's kind of comparable.

We could definitely get rid of one of these.

ALAN: So many people differ from me in this one way.

I hate those plastic sleeves. I hate--

LISA: I hate them too because they're kind of annoying,

but also I don't like the idea of my records

not being protected by plastic.

There's been some mishaps in here where the protection

of the plastic has saved us some...

COLLECTOR: You know what, we had pet rats.

LISA: Yeah, we have pet rats.

One of them choked on his own blood and died...

COLLECTOR: Those 7-inches have definitely been pissed on a lot.

LISA: He sprayed blood all over the records, and...

they were all in plastic, so we just wiped them off.

COLLECTOR: I go through these periods where I think

I want to have every single--

I want to have every single thing by that band.

I want to have all of the records.

I have all the albums. But I'm not a completist.

The things that I do collect most

I have to say that I have...

totally have an emotional connection to.

I'm obsessed with this pop star Mariah Carey.

I don't know if you've probably seen me post a million things

about her online.

ALAN: How many Mariah Carey records do you have?

I can't imagine you have any?

Who has Mariah Carey records? COLLECTOR: Oh my God.

I have so many Mariah Carey records.

I have-- I have like...

ALAN: I didn't even know there-- I mean...

COLLECTOR: Yeah, dude.

So, this is just a single, but it's like double.

This is her last record.

This one came out when I was working at Rotate.

And they all made fun of me for, um,

loving Mariah Carey as if it was,

um, ironic or something.

I'm all about the attachment to the record, for sure.

Like, it's fandom.

It's like fandom.

Like, definitely the things that I collect are like

people that I love or bands that I love,

and like, it's a lifelong engagement that we have.

You almost develop like a familial,

like the obsession can kind of take you into that territory

where she feels like a sister or something like that.

When they put out records, I would take it

as like a kind of message.

"Here's where I'm at now."

I would feel rude if I didn't buy it.

ALAN: In general,

in your record collecting and digging history...

COLLECTOR: Are we starting now?

So there's no, uh, clapper?

ALAN: [claps] Did you hear that?

COLLECTOR: There you go.

I heard it.

I guess it started off very early for me.

I think I was about 11 years old.

My friend in school, he used to wear the punk T-shirts.

And I remember when I saw those images on his shirt,

I was immediately drawn to them and I was like, "What is that?"

You know, and then he snuck his older brother's tapes;

we would like sneak back into the classroom

and use the teacher's tape recorder and listen to,

it was like Dead Kennedy;

I remember "Nazi Punks Fuck Off."

That experience just blew my mind open.

ALAN: "Nazi Punks Fuck Off," okay.

COLLECTOR: Yeah. HENRY: I'd like to...

introduce... ALAN: Yeah, introduce me.

HENRY: My great friend Rosa.

Rosegreen, Carl Rosegreen by his correct name.

ALAN: Uh, what should I call you?

Mr. Rose, or...?

ROSA: Grandmaster Rosa.

ALAN: Randmaster? ROSA: Grandmaster.

ALAN: Grandmaster Rosa. ROSA: Yeah.

ALAN: Can you take your mask off your ear?

Yeah. ROSA: Okay.

ALAN: Can you take your hat off, Henry?

I know you like the hat, but... HENRY: No, I don't like it.

Yeah, we started a disco sound system called Super Tones.

ROSA: That was the first disco in Montego Bay.

HENRY: And the set became very popular because of Rosa DJing

and my ability to find records.

ROSA: We go inside a party,

and once we enter the door,

the DJ that was hired for the party

leave voluntarily

for Henry and myself to take over.

HENRY: That's true. That's very true.

ALAN: How is it that you had better records than the DJ?

ROSA: There was a station in Miami called WINZ.

HENRY: Yeah.

ROSA: Now, my father had a Bush radio.

So I stand up, I like climb a mango tree

in the back of the yard, and put the pole, the antenna,

among the pole in the tree, put a bottle,

a broken bottle, on the top,

and we would run the wire, the aerial wire from the radio,

to that bottle.

And in Montego Bay

you could have picked up like WINZ on shortwave

and other stations in America.

So even how we heard those music playing,

the record shops never have them,

but we always make a list of records.

HENRY: That's true.

ROSA: We have friends that work on ships

that used to take tourists to Jamaica.

So then when we have-- like, when the ship comes in

on a Wednesday, we'd give them a list.

And the following week they would bring some records

in a little package.

We would have the records in a 45 box with some album.

And the minute we enter that house,

the DJ get up voluntarily because they know that the host

of the party immediately say,

"Okay, Rosa and Henry's here!" [chuckles]

"That means you play your last song."

And we would just run that party all night

till it finish in the morning.

And we'd walk it home. [laughs]

ALAN: It's a miracle. One sec...

It's a miracle.

So I just had a thought that I'm in my room

and I went down and got the mirror and just thought,

"Okay, just do it now, just do it now,

"just express that thought."

So those are records that I'm getting rid of.

And a lot of them are records that I...

that were, you know, here. Here on...

They're here on the normal shelves,

and then I just listened to again and decided,

"You know what? I can live without this."

I just want to be clear,

my often thinking of getting rid of my records,

that doesn't say anything about my love of records

or my love of music.

I love records.

It's just that my collection, for lack of a better word,

it's not like this-- I'm not building something.

It's a...

it's a coming and going thing.

I love discovering records

and discovering things I don't know.

But I don't love owning them.

The film I made 25 years ago, that film was about failure.

I started to make a film about record collecting,

and I couldn't help make it about failure.

That film is about failure.

This film is about acceptance.

I was thinking of this record on the right here,

this [inaudible] Rusty Kershaw.

Finding that record, bringing it home,

hearing like this second cut, "These Days and"...

Oh, what is it?

"This Day and Time," I think it's called, was just like...

"What?"

I couldn't even believe that cut was on this record.

I'm just glad to have that record.

That record is the kind of record that I go and find things

that I've never heard of.

That's why I do it, to find records like that.

If my...

you know, Matt... Matt and Neil,

who were the last people that I still played records for,

if Neil came over, I'd play him the Rusty Kershaw record

and expect to kind of blow his mind.

Okay, that's not bad.

COLLECTOR: This guy getting his child to beat him

as punishment for swearing.

[playing record] "But what are you gonna do, Dad?"

"Here. Take my belt, Billy.

"Don't look so surprised.

"I want you to spank me."

"Spank... spank you? But--"

"Now I'm going to take off my shirt."

"But I can't, Daddy, please, please.

"I'll never swear again." [smacking sound]

"Again, son, harder!" [smacking sound]

COLLECTOR: This record has driven me to drink.

"Again, son! Again, son!

"Again, harder!"

COLLECTOR: [laughs]

Oh God... ALAN: That's...

COLLECTOR: Oh, oh, oh, oh...

[laughs] [inaudible]

ALAN: Do you play that, or you just like that it exists?

COLLECTOR: I just like that it exists.

ALAN: "Hear how to plan the perfect dinner party."

Yeah, I mean...

it's surprising when you first go out there

to find out that records were made

for all kinds of reasons, and...

COLLECTOR: But that's what I like.

That's what I like, is all the other reasons

besides the music. ALAN: Right.

COLLECTOR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That really-- like, oh!

Like this!

Oh, here's a-- yeah!

There you go.

ALAN: Do you think you chose to be that kind of person?

COLLECTOR: Ooh, good question.

Uh...

no.

I don't think it's a choice.

I think it's a...

I think it's pathological.

I think you were addressing in your first film

the need for people to collect.

And, in fact, I remember, you know, going on--

you know, after bad break-ups and I'd be very upset,

the first thing I'd do is hit the flea market,

come home with something that I can--

"This is mine."

And also I've been-- I suck at relationships too.

They take me away from my stuff. [laughs]

You know, I'm living-- I'm not married; I'm single.

Um, but I'm living in my own playhouse,

at age 60, and I think that's fabulous.

COLLECTOR: [archive] When I go to record conventions,

I always assume that people think that I'm somebody's

girlfriend or wife.

What I really find is when you get, like,

the collectors and you're in the bin,

like you're going through this and going, "Oh, wow,"

and then you can see them dancing, you know, like,

"Hurry up, hurry up." You know, like,

"She doesn't know what that is." Yes, I do, thank you!

And it just pisses people off.

COLLECTOR: This collection and everything that I do over here

is about being able to soundtrack every moment,

every instance of my life.

Every moment of my life, because--

ALAN: What does that mean?

COLLECTOR: What that means is that...

I grew up not being able to connect to the people.

I grew up in a household

where connections like that weren't made.

So connecting to sounds, connecting to music being made

by human beings is something that made more sense to me

because it allows me a connection and it allows me

to feel things

that I ordinarily could not feel in life.

ALAN: You're a big, jolly Italian guy.

How come you didn't connect

to the other Italians in your household?

COLLECTOR: Because I was beaten down.

And I couldn't. And I couldn't communicate.

So I spent my life protecting myself

and letting in what I could.

And music was it.

ALAN: I think you know this, but your connection,

your experience of a record, that is a person.

COLLECTOR: Sure.

ALAN: Once upon a time... COLLECTOR: Yes.

ALAN: ...that person

blew their heart onto that needle...

COLLECTOR: Yeah.

ALAN: ...and now you drop the needle and you're talking--

like, it is a human connection.

So it's not like...

COLLECTOR: Without the parts that hurt.

Without the parts that can hurt me.

So you're right.

It's sad when you think about it.

[record playing "Fiends and Ghouls" by Hungry Beast]

COLLECTOR: It's kind of got that Johnny Harris vibe.

ALAN: Right.

COLLECTOR: These really, like, sparse, but like,

lush kind of orchestrations.

Like, there's a lot of space. ALAN: Right.

Do you know this, it reminds me, there's a...

[drum kicks in on recording]

ALAN: Oh.

Wow.

COLLECTOR: My life is about records.

Like, I don't know how I would be, uh...

Like, probably if I marry someone, she's gonna say,

"Get rid of the records."

I don't think so. [laughs]

ALAN: When you look back on the years

before you started collecting, what do you think?

COLLECTOR: I think I was pretty wild.

Once I found music, this type of music,

it just totally relaxed me.

I felt that was more important for me,

health-wise.

ALAN: What do you mean by health-wise?

COLLECTOR: Well...

I got Parkinson's.

Parkinson's, they say if you have it,

your kids will-- will get it.

I don't want to give it to my kid or whatever.

Sometimes when I'm in bed, I get the shakes, right?

But I know how to calm myself.

I'll get up and...

and go into the room.

ALAN: Into the record-- COLLECTOR: The record room.

And I totally calm.

I can't explain it.

I can look at the records and I go, "Wow, I got this."

MAN: Like, you can just lose your mind to music, you know?

I mean, the records-- like, music to me is also like

live music, you know?

And if a band hits a certain riff,

particularly if it's a riff that I've been like listening to

at home and then hearing them live,

I can just like completely lose myself.

Like, I've had people come up to me, strangers,

and tap me and go, "Are you all right?"

You know, 'cause I'm just like my hands on my head,

and I'm just like...

I'm doing shit like that, right, you know?

And that's the kind of ecstatic experience

that music fills me with.

Now, all this to me is the kind of best

physical format of that music.

It's funny you ask this as well, Alan,

'cause I have been kind of pondering.

You know, I don't want to be part of the montage where,

you know, it's like, "Oh, I'm into it for the music."

I saw that montage. [laughs]

You know, I just don't want to be the,

"Oh, it's all about the music." But it really is.

COLLECTOR: [archive] I collect music.

COLLECTOR: The music.

COLLECTOR: Really the music.

COLLECTOR: It's not the music? ALAN: No.

COLLECTOR: Oof...

COLLECTOR: What can I give you?

Let's, uh...

"A Nation's Business: Executive Seminar in Sound,"

which is an eight-part series... ALAN: Oh my God.

COLLECTOR: ...of the evolution of a successful

executive people management, to planning your organization,

and eventually strategies of moving ahead.

This guy I have some investment in, Barton Horvath.

And the guy has this weird... weirdly soothing,

uh... accent.

[alarm clock noise on record]

"Good morning,

"and I'm going to see that you do have a good morning,

"as well as a good day."

ALAN: You got rid of 3,000, 4,000,

almost all your records at your yard sale.

You're down to your core,

and in your core is Barton Horvath.

COLLECTOR: Barton Horvath, yeah, yeah. [laughs]

ALAN: Were you looking for clarity

when you got rid of almost all your records,

and did you attain it?

COLLECTOR: [inhales and exhales]

Was I looking for clarity?

If I was working the rubber chicken circuit

as... giving lectures on collecting,

um, I asked myself,

"Is this object serving me, or am I serving it?

"And what's the level of service?"

And by the time you've carried these things around

from apartment to barn to new apartment

to barn to new apartment, um...

it's a lot of service.

And eventually I figured I need to re--

just re-proportion the objects.

It was-- it just felt done.

The other thing, I guess is that, um,

the move away from record collecting also broke

around the same time that I started gender questioning.

Which isn't new-- which isn't completely linear,

but I do feel like there was a feeling

that everything was up for examination,

and that that was-- that, um...

the hoarding impulse was something

that was tying me to a male identity.

The men in my family were the collectors.

And I don't feel like it has to be that way, certainly,

but there was a, uh...

The moving away from that was partly

had something to do with that, I think.

ALAN: Are your records integrated,

or do you have separate...?

BOTH: Integrated.

ALAN: So, what do you think that says about a couple that

can't integrate?

WOMAN: Oh. MAN: Yeah.

ALAN: Because most can't. WOMAN: Oh, really?

MAN: Oh, that was really easy for us.

WOMAN: Yeah.

MAN: Mm, the polite thing to say would be that maybe

they have different musical tastes.

WOMAN: I don't know.

It might say something about commitment there.

MAN: If I hear music that I like,

it just catches me some way, and it's like, you know,

it hits a part of the brain somehow.

WOMAN: It's weird how it hits our brains in a similar way.

MAN: Yeah.

WOMAN: Like, we will be listening to--

we were listening to a belly dance record

at the old house, we had it on, and there's this like

part where it changes to this funk break,

like just random, out of the blue,

we were at opposite ends of the house, and we ran like,

"What is that?"

MAN: We're running towards each other going,

"Are you hearing what I'm hearing?!"

I don't know, can I-- do you want me to play it for you?

ALAN: Sure.

MAN: I'm gonna play here...

[record playing] MAN: So... I mean...

it's good, you know?

But then out of the blue...

[funk beat kicks in]

WOMAN: Why?

MAN: Like, where does this come from?

There's nothing else like this!

There's like two minutes like this!

[funk break continues]

MAN: Same players that played the rest of the record,

I'm sure. ALAN: Right.

MAN: It's amazing!

This, like, just blows my mind to hear something like this.

ALAN: This is good.

MAN: And in a place where you like would not expect it.

WOMAN: And then back.

ALAN: Right, and then back. WOMAN: And that was it.

MAN: And then back. WOMAN: Yeah.

And it doesn't do it again.

MAN: It never does it again on the entire album.

This is Ramona.

ALAN: Hi, Ramona.

MAN: And that's Georgia. ALAN: How old are you, Ramona?

RAMONA: I'm 11.

WOMAN: Do you have a favourite record?

RAMONA: Mmm...

I like Altin Gun.

I have an Altin Gun record.

ALAN: A what? RAMONA: Altin Gun.

It's like a Turkish band.

I like this one. ALAN: That's really obscure.

You can't tell anybody at school that you like Altin Gun.

RAMONA: [chuckles]

ALAN: You guys make record collecting look healthy.

[laughter]

WOMAN: I thought you were gonna say something worse than that.

ALAN: Like...? WOMAN: But healthy is good.

Healthy is good. I like it.

ALAN: Yeah, healthy's good.

It's just hard to know what that means sometimes.

Like, you guys knew Imants, right?

MAN: Yeah.

It's funny because we...

we met Imants, like, in a live music setting, right?

Like a guy that always came to shows, to always see bands.

You know, we knew that he lived at home with his parents

or whatever, and...

you know, that like maybe he was sacrificing other parts of

what someone would consider a "normal life"

to pursue his passion.

But, I mean, he really pursued it, you know?

And, like, it left a mark on the world.

Like, we went to Imants' funeral,

and that was the mood, right?

Like, as if he was like the godfather of a scene, you know?

And all these people were there because it was like,

"Oh, you know, it's Imants," like...

ALAN: Twenty-five years ago,

I was a passenger in a car driving to Winnipeg,

where I was gonna interview a few record collectors.

And I had a Neil Young mix tape playing in the car.

And, you know, back then when I made compilation tapes,

I would make covers for them.

I had a picture of Neil Young on the tape.

I had a video camera

that I had been using for the last little while,

and I really enjoyed just looking

at things through the video camera and shooting.

I just aimed the camera at this picture of Neil Young

on a cassette box.

Pretty boring shot, but to me it was--

had meaning.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share that memory because

a few weeks ago, I was interviewing an old friend

who was like two hours out of town from Toronto where I live.

I was with my crew, John and Ryan; they're my pals,

and they're record guys; they're music weenies,

or they're into music.

I looked on my phone

and I saw that I had a Neil Young playlist,

which included some Neil Young records that I didn't know.

And a song came on called "Change Your Mind."

It was one of those great Neil Young songs

where you've never heard it before,

but you feel like you've known it your whole life.

The chorus is a kind of call and response thing

where Neil sings a line and then the chorus comes back

with the song title "Change Your Mind."

And I found myself singing along.

It's not something I do in public;

I was just caught up in the moment.

Every time it came back to that chorus,

Neil would sing his lines

and I would come in with the rest of them.

"Change your mind.

"Change your mind.

"Change your mind."

For the next two hours I was with my friends,

I was listening with people,

we were appreciating things together,

we were talking about some of the songs;

we're talking about the ones we liked the best.

Anyway, this is just all to say

I had the most enjoyable experience listening to music

that I'd had in a long time.

[record playing 'Igginbottom, "The Castle"]

ALAN: Oh yeah, this is in my wheelhouse.

COLLECTOR: Yeah.

ALAN: Do have any parting words?

Any advice for record collectors?

Any...

anything to say to your tribe?

COLLECTOR: Just... [sighs]

COLLECTOR: Listen to that.

[complex instrumental]

COLLECTOR: Yeah.

It's so good.

COLLECTOR: You know I'm a big Kate Bush fan, right?

So, one of the reasons I love Kate Bush so much,

one of the reasons, is because whenever I get consumed

into myself, whenever, like, all this COVID thing,

it's fucking driving me nuts, or I'm so depressed,

or I'm gonna-- I'm gonna-- I don't know what I'm gonna do,

I can't take this for another year,

anything that's like sort of internalized,

and I'm walking down the street, and it's all about me...

and Kate Bush, if I have Kate Bush in my earbuds,

Kate Bush makes me go...

She makes me look up.

She makes me look at the sky

and the clouds and the sun and the trees.

She makes me...

it makes me come outside myself.

There's this.

You know?

There's this.

IMANTS: [archive] Alright, uh...

I have to say 10,000 45's, 5,000 LP's.

ALAN: Your parents didn't buy this house knowing

that you would need a room like this, did they?

IMANTS: Yeah, I went with them to buy it.

ALAN: Oh, you did?

IMANTS: But I've always been a musical fanatic.

Maybe I should explain that a bit,

'cause I try to get a wide variety of a lot of different

punk music, you know, from different countries.

I do like to travel and I will pick up some music

from places I go.

Every year I travel somewhere.

So I just came back.

ALAN: And how much did you spend,

not on the trip, but just on records when you were away?

IMANTS: I don't know; I'd say at least 2,000 Canadian dollars.

Like, my dad and my brother and myself have been watching

wrestling just about since we got television

in the late '50s, so...

it's a hard thing to explain to people that don't get it.

And it's the same with music in general, or punk, or whatever.

So there's no point in trying to explain.

You just do it.

You know? ALAN: Right.

I mean, is it an effort for you to keep up?

IMANTS: Yeah, too many records coming out.

ALAN: Too many records coming out and...

IMANTS: Yeah, it's an obsession. [laughs]

IMANTS: Yeah, hi. ALAN: Hi.

IMANTS: Yeah, this is Alan. It's my dad.

He's actually doing a film about records and collecting.

FATHER: Oh.

ALAN: No, you can just walk through.

IMANTS: Ah, you're in it now!

FATHER: I'm sorry, [inaudible]. IMANTS: Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we got the censored scene coming up here.

ALAN: No, I mean, it just like--

I had to stop smoking for a few days.

IMANTS: You should ask my dad that.

He used to smoke.

ALAN: I think your dad wants to go hide.