Fanable Collector: A personal insight into the psychology of a record-collecting completist (Part 2)

In a previous blog I briefly outlined the mindset of being an excessive record collecting completist using myself as a case study. That particular article contained some of the extreme and excessive lengths I have gone through on a general level when it comes to collecting music by particular artists. What I thought I would do in this blog is write a brief but more detailed account of my most recent music completist (and some would argue obsessive) activity concerning the British rock band The Move who were active in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

I had liked The Move since my early teenage years after buying a 10-track cassette (The Greatest Hits Vol. 1) in my local Woolworths shop in my home town of Loughborough. The cassette was on the budget Pickwick record label and I bought it because it only cost 99p. (In fact, I bought dozens of budget albums at Woolworths in the early 1980s including many Pickwick compilation cassettes and many vinyl records on the MFP [Music for Pleasure] record label mainly because they were priced £1.99 or less and the same price as 12” singles at the time). I had only ever heard a few songs by The Move on BBC Radio 1 (my preferred music station in my teenage years) including ‘Flowers In The Rain’, ‘Fire Brigade’, and ‘I Can Hear The Grass Grow’. Because the cassette featured all three of these songs I bought it on impulse and was not disappointed.

Over the years, the albums that I had on cassette and vinyl were slowly replaced by CDs but The Move’s greatest hits LP was one of the few that slipped through the cracks and which I never got on CD – until about a six weeks ago. As ever, the buying of the CD was an impulse purchase following a ‘You might like…’ recommendation from Amazon. I had just bought a couple of ‘glam rock’ CDs and (as Amazon always do) I got a personal recommendation that I might like The Move’s greatest hits CD because I had bought greatest hits CDs by T-Rex and Slade.

The album that I was recommended was Magnetic Waves of Sound: The Best of The Move, a 21-track LP featuring all their singles and released earlier this year (“magnetic waves of sound” is one of the lyrics from ‘I Can Hear The Grass Grow’ in case you were wondering). I bought it not only because it contained all the 10 tracks that were on my Pickwick label cassette that I bought in the early 1980s, but also because it had an accompanying DVD of many rare performances of The Move on TV from the late 1960s. I ordered the 2-disc set and as soon as it arrived I uploaded it onto my i-Pod and played it repeatedly for the next few days. In fact, I played it three or four times a day for the following week. I absolutely loved it – despite the mixture of different song styles from four different line-ups of the band during the 1967-1972 era.

I haven’t got time to go into the history of the band but most fans of the band tend to differentiate between the line-up featuring Carl Wayne as lead singer (with all the original songs being written by Roy Wood) and the later incarnation after Carl Wayne had left and was replaced by Jeff Lynne (who shared songwriting and lead vocal duties with Roy Wood). Roy Wood and drummer Bev Bevan were the only two in all the different line-ups over the years.

Within a few days of playing the CD, my thirst for The Move was unquenchable. After just four days listening to the ‘best of’ album on repeat, I ordered all four of The Move’s back catalogue studio LPs – Move (1968), Shazam (1970), Looking On (1970), and Message From The Country (1971). Not only were all four albums still available but all had recently been re-released in ‘deluxe’ and remastered editions with many extra discs’ worth of unreleased material including dozens of tracks from BBC radio sessions over the years. The four albums soon arrived and I had eight new discs of music to gorge myself on. They arrived just before I went on my family holiday to the Canary Islands so I had lots of time (without work) to listen to the music on the plane, by the pool, while I was reading, and in when going to bed (I always listen to a couple of LPs in bed every night before I go to sleep).

While I was on holiday I was reading lots of online articles about The Move while listening to their albums. It was at this point that I decided that I had to have every track they’ve ever recorded in my collection (irrespective of whether I like the songs or not). This is one of the worst things about being an avid collector and song completist. I simply have to have every note – good or bad – that has been recorded by the band (including live albums). I soon found out that The Move had only released two live albums (Something Else From The Move and Live At The Fillmore 1969) so I ordered those while I was on holiday (and they were waiting for me on my doormat when I arrived back home). Thankfully, both of these feature lots of songs that are not on any of their four albums and they also happened to be a great band when playing live (but I didn’t know that until after I’d ordered). There was also an LP of session tracks they recorded for the BBC (the unimaginatively titled BBC Sessions) but thankfully all of those tracks (and more) were included as extras on the deluxe editions of their studio LPs (which I already had). Good job too because it sells for hundreds of pounds on sites like Amazon and eBay.

Finally, there were two anthology box sets. The first one (Movements, issued in 1998) was a 3-disc set, but again, all the rare tracks on that set featured in the extras of the more recently remastered deluxe edition versions of their studio LPs (so I decided I didn’t need to get that). However, a more recent 4-disc box set (The Move Anthology 1966-1972, issued in 2008) had lots of tracks and alternate versions of songs that weren’t available anywhere else and exclusive to this particular CD boxset. I went online and found various online websites selling it secondhand for exorbitant prices (around £125; I’d managed to get all the other seven albums for around £80 in total). I would have gladly paid the price for such an overpriced item (and that is another downside of being a completist – we will pay over the odds to complete our collections – even if there is just one or two tracks that I don’t own), but thankfully I found a secondhand set on Discogs for just over £30. Bargain! I quickly ordered it (“only one copy left”) and had it in my possession within 36 hours of ordering. In the space of about three weeks I had completed my collection of everything The Move had legally and commercially produced.

But a completist collectors never end there. We then start to track down illegal bootlegs (typically online but also at various record fairs around the country). We seek out rarer and rarer items and build up a kind of tolerance that can never be totally satisfied until in the possession of new recorded material. I only managed to locate five bootlegs by The Move and there were no tracks on them that didn’t feature in the albums already owned (so I wasn’t tempted to buy any of them – other completists have to own all recorded output irrespective of whether they already have the tracks in question). I then went onto YouTube and found some rare live performances which I converted into MP3s to make my own unofficial rare bootleg LP collection of The Move live. But that still didn’t satisfy my thirst for material by The Move. I wanted more.

Much of the reading I did online about The Move during my summer holiday featured quite a lot on the 1970-1972 period (when Jeff Lynne joined) where there were actually two bands in operation simultaneously – The Move and the embryonic Electric Light Orchestra (ELO). As a child (11-12 years old) I loved E.L.O. and had bought their Discovery album on cassette because I loved the track ‘Don’t Bring Me Down’ (and still do to be honest). However, I never realized in my early teens that Jeff Lynne had been in the later line-ups of The Move. Given that the Electric Light Orchestra were actually The Move in all but name at the beginning of the 1970s, I also ended up buying a 2-CD collection called The Harvest Years (a new copy for just £6) featuring all of the tracks on the first two ELO albums (The Electric Light Orchestra and ELO 2) plus dozens of extra outtakes and b-sides. ELO’s mission statement was to produce ‘symphonic’ rock fusing elements of classical music and instrumentation (cellos, violins, etc.) into the rock genre. In fact, the only reason The Move still existed as a band was because they were contractually obligated by their record company to produce two more albums. In reality, Wood and Lynne’s only aim was to get ELO up and running and the first ELO album was recorded at the same time as the last album by The Move. ELO’s first hit single (‘10538 Overture’) was originally recorded as a Move b-side. The Move’s last top ten hit single (‘California Man’) crossed over with ELO’s first top ten hit single in the British charts and had identical core line-ups (Wood, Lynne and Bevan).

 

I then found out that Jeff Lynne and Roy Wood had been friends for years in Birmingham where they both lived and served their musical apprenticeships. In fact, The Move had recorded a demo version of ‘Blackberry Way’ (their only No.1 hit in the UK) in Lynne’s homemade studio while he was lead singer in his own band (The Idle Race). Roy Wood had also asked Lynne to join The Move in 1969 but Lynne felt he could still get somewhere with his own band. The Idle Race were also one of the first bands to perform a cover version of a song by The Move – ‘Here We Go Round The Lemon Tree’). This led me to buying a secondhand copy of the complete (2-CD) recorded works of everything by The Idle Race ever commercially released (Back To The Story) for just £5. Bargain!

But my thirst for Move-related music didn’t end there. I then found out that there were various tracks that Roy Wood had written during his tenure with The Move and Electric Light Orchestra (Mk.1) and that ended up on his subsequent LPs (most noticeably his Boulders album). I subsequently bought Boulders as part of a £10 Roy Wood 5-CD boxset also featuring LPs by his next band Wizzard as well as ELO’s first LP and The Move’s final LP (both of which I already had but £10 for three new albums seemed good value to me). I then bought a ‘greatest hits’ CD of Roy Wood and Wizzard (for a couple of quid).

As I write this, for the last two weeks, I’ve been slowly buying up the rest of ELO’s album back catalogue. For the best part of three decades, ELO were one of my guilty pleasures as I had quite a few of their late 1970s albums on my iPod (as well their Light Years greatest hits collection). I now have all the albums ELO recorded in the 1970s as well as the most recent (2015) platinum-selling Alone In The Universe. I managed to get all of these for less than £20 in total. Bargain! However, whether I will end up being an ELO completist remains to be seen. A lot of their post-1980 output is not something I can honestly say I like. But who knows? As I said above, one of the worst things about being a completist is buying music that we don’t like but collect just to complete our collections. With ELO, it’s definitely a case of ‘Watch this space’.

Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Brumbeat (2017). The Move. Located at: http://www.brumbeat.net/move.htm

Paytress, M. (2008). Liner notes in book included in the 4-CD The Move Anthology 1966-1972. Salvo/Fly Records.

Van der Kiste, J. (2014). Jeff Lynne: Electric Light Orchestra – Before and After. Stroud: Fonthill Media.

Van der Kiste, J. (2014). Roy Wood: The Move, Wizzard and Beyond. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

Wikipedia (2017). Carl Wayne. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Wayne

Wikipedia (2017). Electric Light Orchestra. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Light_Orchestra

Wikipedia (2017). Jeff Lynne. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Lynne

Wikipedia (2017). Roy Wood. Located at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Wood

Wikipedia (2017). The Move. Located at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Move

Fanable Collector: A personal insight into the psychology of a record-collecting completist

Regular readers of my blog will know that I have described myself as a “music obsessive” and that I am an avid record and CD collector. When I get into a particular band or artist I try to track down every song that artist has ever done – irrespective of whether I actually like the song or not. I have to own every recording. Once I have collected every official recording I then start tracking down unofficially released recordings via bootlegs and fan websites. I have my own books and printed lists (i.e., complete discographies by specific bands and solo artists) that I meticulously tick off with yellow highlighter pen. (In some ways, I am no different to a trainspotter that ticks off train numbers in a book).

I wouldn’t say I am a particularly materialistic person but I love knowing (and feeling) that I have every official recorded output by my favourite musicians. My hobby can sometimes cost me a lot of money (I am a sucker for deluxe box sets) although most of the time I can track down secondhand items and bargains on eBay and Amazon relatively cheaply (plus I have downloaded thousands of bootleg albums for free from the internet). Tracking down an obscure release is as much fun as the listening of the record or CD (i.e., the ‘thrill of the chase’). Almost every record I have bought over the last decade is in mint condition and unplayed (as many records now come with a code to download the record bought as a set of MP3s).

As a record collector, one of the things that make the hobby both fun and (at the same time somewhat) infuriating is the number of different versions of a particular song that can end up being released. As a collector I have an almost compulsive need to own every version of a song that an artist has committed to vinyl, CD, tape or MP3. However, I am grateful that I am not the type of collector that tries to own every physical record/CD released in every country. (My love of The Beatles would mean I would be bankrupt). I only buy releases in other countries if it contains music that is exclusive to that country (e.g., many Japanese CD releases contain one or two tracks that may not be initially released in any other country).

For most artists that I collect from the 1960s to early 1980s, it is fairly easy to collect every officially released song. Artists like The Beatles may have up three to four official versions of a particular song (the single version, the album version, a demo version, a version from another country with a different edit, etc.). With bootleg recordings, the number of versions might escalate to 30 or 40 versions by including live versions, every studio take, etc.). It can become almost endless if you start to collect bootleg recordings of every gig by your favourite artists. (I know this from personal experience).

It was during my avid record buying days in the early 1980s that the ‘completist’ in me started to take hold. Some of you reading this may recall that in 1984, Frankie Goes To Hollywood (FGTH) became only the second band ever to reach the UK No.1 with their first three singles – ‘Relax’, ‘Two Tribes’ and ‘The Power of Love’ (the first band being – not The Beatles, but their Liverpool friends and rivals – Gerry and The Pacemakers). One of the reasons that FGTH got to (and stayed for weeks at) number one was there were thousands of people like me that bought countless different versions of every variation of every single released. For instance, not only did I buy the standard 7”, 12”, cassettes, and picture discs of both ‘Relax’ and ‘Two Tribes’, I bought every new mix that FGTH producer Trevor Horn put out.

Every week, all of the money that I earned from my Saturday job working in Irene’s Pantry would go on buying records from Castle Records in Loughborough. I didn’t care about clothes, sweets, books, etc. All I cared about outside of school was music. Some of my hard earned money went on buying the NME (New Musical Express) every Thursday along with buying other music weeklies if my favourite bands were featured (Melody Maker, Record Mirror, Sounds and Smash Hits to name just a few).

When I got to university to study Psychology at the University of Bradford, my love of music and record buying increased. Not only did I discover other like-minded people but Bradford had a great music scene. One of the first things I did when I got to university was become a journalist for the student magazine (Fleece). Within seven months I was one of the three Fleece editors and I was in control of all the arts and entertainment coverage. The perks of my (non-paid) job was that (a) I got to go to every gig at Bradford University for free, (b) I was sent lots of free records to review for the magazine (all of which I kept and some of which I still have), and (c) I got to see every film for free in return for writing a review. I couldn’t believe my luck.

During this time (1984-1987) my three favourite artists were The Smiths, Depeche Mode, and (my guilty pleasure) Adam Ant. I devoured everything they released (especially The Smiths). As a record collector I not only loved the Smiths music but I loved the record covers, the messages scratched on the vinyl run-out grooves, and Morrissey’s interviews in the music press. It was also during this period that I discovered other bands that later went onto become some of my favourite bands of all time (Propaganda and The Art of Noise being the two that most spring to mind). As a Depeche Mode fan, collecting every track they have ever done has become harder and harder (and more expensive) as they were arguably one of the pioneers of the remix. Although Trevor Horn and the ZTT label took remixing singles to a new level for record collectors, it was Depeche Mode that arguably carried on the baton into the 1990s.

During 1987-1990, my record buying subsided through financial necessity. I was doing my PhD at the University of Exeter and the little money I had went on food, rent, and travel (to see my then girlfriend who lived over 300 miles away). I simply didn’t have the money to buy and collect records the way I had before. Buying singles stopped but I would still buy the occasional album. This was the only period in my life that I didn’t really buy music magazines. (My thinking was that if I didn’t know what was being released I couldn’t feel bad about not buying it).

In the summer of 1990 I landed my first proper job as a Lecturer in Psychology at Plymouth University. For the first time in my life I had a healthy disposable income. My first purchase with my first pay cheque was an expensive turntable and CD player. I also bought loads of CD albums on my growing wish list. What I loved about my hobby was that I could do it simultaneously with my job (i.e., I could listen to my favourite bands at the same time as preparing my lectures or writing my research papers – something that I still do to this day).

When CD singles became popular in the 1990s I became a voracious buyer of music again. Typically bands would release a single across multiple formats with each format containing tracks exclusive to the record, CD and/or cassette. Artists like Oasis and Morrissey (two of my favourites during the 1990s) would release singles in three or four formats (7” vinyl, 10”/12” vinyl, CD single, and cassette single) and I would buy all formats (and to some extent I still do). It was a collector’s paradise but I could afford it. In fact, not only could I afford to buy all the music I wanted, I could buy all the monthly music magazines at the time (Vox, Select, Record Collector, Q, and then a little later Uncut and Mojo), and I could go to gigs and still have money left over.

Since the mid-1990s only one thing has really changed in relation to my music-buying habits and that is there are less and less new bands that I have become a fan of. I still buy lots of new music but I don’t tend to collect the work of contemporary bands. However, the music industry has realized there are huge amounts of money to be made from their back catalogues. I am the type of music buyer that will happily buy a ‘classic’ album again as long as it has an extra disc or two of demo versions, rarities, remixes, and obscure B-sides, that will help me extend and/or complete music collections by the bands I love. Over this year I have already bought box sets by The Beatles, The Velvet Underground, Throbbing Gristle, and David Bowie (to name just four). I have become a retro-buyer but I still crave “new” music by my favourite artists. Yes, I love music and it takes up a lot of my life. However, I am not addicted. My obsessive love of music adds to my life rather than detracts from it – and on that criterion alone I will happily be a music collector until the day that I die.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Belk, R.W. (1995). Collecting as luxury consumption: Effects on individuals and households. Journal of Economic Psychology, 16(3), 477-490.

Belk, R.W. (2001). Collecting in a Consumer Society. New York: Routledge.

Moist, K. (2008). “To renew the Old World”: Record collecting as cultural production. Studies in Popular Culture, 31(1), 99-122.

Pearce, S. (1993). Museums, Objects, and Collections. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Pearce, S. (1998). Contemporary Collecting in Britain. London: Sage.

Reynolds, S. (2004). Lost in music: Obsessive music collecting. In E. Weisbard (Ed.), This Is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project (pp.289-307). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

A world of disc-overy: Record collecting as an addiction

Regular readers of my blog will know that (a) some of my friends describe me as a “music obsessive” and (b) that I have written blogs on both compulsive hoarding and ‘collecting’ as an addiction‘ (including a separate blog on murderabilia). Today’s blog briefly looks at a really interesting 2008 paper I came across on ‘record collecting’ as an addiction written by Professor Kevin Moist in the journal Studies in Popular Culture. (Moist also has a new co-edited book – Contemporary Collecting: Objects, Practices, and the Fate of Things – that has just been published by Scarecrow Press).

According to research papers and books by Dr. Russell Belk, around one in three people in the United States collects something – yet one of the observations that Moist makes is that collectors (in general and not just relating to record collectors) are often portrayed negatively as “obsessive, socially maladjusted oddballs in thrall to acquisitive drives”. I have to admit that those closest to me certainly see my passionate interest in collecting music by certain recording artists as “obsessive” (although arguably not “socially maladjusted”). I’ve also been described as “no different to a trainspotter” (but said in such a way that it obviously relates to something negative).

Research by Dr. Susan Pearce (published in her 1998 book Contemporary Collecting in Britain) shows that collectors as a group are “quite average, socially speaking”. Additionally, Dr. Belk claims that the image of a ‘collector’ acts as “an unwitting metaphor for our own fears of unbridled materialism in the marketplace”. Belk then goes on to say that his research has led him to the conclusion that collectors cherish things about objects “that few others appreciate” and are not necessarily materialistic in their motivations for collecting. Belk also talks about collecting behaviour being on a continuum of the ‘heroic passionate’ collector at one end of the spectrum and the ‘obsessive-compulsive type’ at the other with most collectors falling somewhere between the two. I briefly dealt with the motivations to collect things in my previous blog but in her book Museums, Objects, and Collections, Dr. Pearce argues collecting falls into three distinct (but sometimes overlapping) types. As Moist summarizes:

“One of these she calls ‘souvenirs’, items or objects that have significance primarily as reminders of an individual’s or group’s experiences. The second mode is what she calls ‘fetish objects’ (conflating the anthropological and psychological senses of the term), relating primarily to the personality of the collector; the collector’s own desires lead to the accumulation of objects that feed back into those desires, with the collection playing a central role in defining the personality of the collector, memorializing the development of a personal interest or passion. The third mode, ‘systematics’, has the broader goal of creating a set of objects that expresses some larger meaning. Systematic collecting involves a stronger element of consciously presenting an idea, seen from a particular point of view and expressed via the cultural world of objects”.

When it comes to record collecting, I appear to most fit the second (i.e., fetish) type. The artists that I collect are an extension of my own personality and say something about me. My tastes are diverse and eclectic (to say the least) and range from the obvious ‘classic’ artists (Beatles, David Bowie, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Lou Reed), the not so obvious (Adam Ant, The Smiths, Bauhaus, Heaven 17, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, Divine Comedy), the arguably obscure (Art of Noise, John Foxx, Propaganda, David Sylvian, Nico) and the downright extreme (Throbbing Gristle, Velvet Underground). Arguably, most people’s conceptions of record collecting (if they are not collectors themselves) are likely to be based on media and cultural representations of such individuals (such as John Cusack and Jack Black in High Fidelity, or Steve Buscemi in Ghost World). I agree with Professor Moist who asserts:

“Most record collectors fit well within Belk’s definition, passionately acquiring sets of records both as objects and cultural experiences. As with most types of collecting, the ‘thrill of the chase’ is a major part of the experience…[However] today, with eBay and other online resources, the amount of time required for the hunt has been reduced, and collecting is also less of a face-to-face social activity since one can search in private rather than actually traveling to find records…Music writer Simon Reynolds notes that record collecting also ‘involves the accumulation of data as well as artifacts’, a factor that can be seen in magazines devoted to record collecting such as Goldmine and Record Collector, and that has only increased as collecting has gone online”.

The above paragraph could have been written about me. I am one of those record collectors that collect as much for the cultural experience as for the object itself. I have loads of mint condition singles and LPs that I haven’t even played (but listen to the music on my i-Pod). I have bought Record Collector magazine every month for over 30 years and have never missed an issue. Every month I buy a wide range of other music magazines including Mojo, Q, Uncut, Vive Le Rock, Classic Rock and Classic Pop (as well as the occasional issue of Rolling Stone, NME, The Wire, Future Music and Shindig). In short, almost a lot of my disposable income goes on buying music or reading music. My records, CDs and music magazines can be found in almost every room in my house. To me, my collection is priceless (and I mean that in an emotional sense rather than a financial one). I am an archivist of the artists I collect as much as a collector. Professor Moist comments that: “While such fanatical and obsessed collectors do exist…they are clearly outliers on the scale of collecting passion…For such people collecting is a real problem”. However, I am a true fanatic of music but don’t believe I am addicted (based on my own criteria). My love of music and collecting it adds to my life rather than takes away from it. As Moist also notes (and which I again wholeheartedly agree:

“Most record collectors collect as much for the content as for the object: one is far less likely to find a collector whose collecting criteria is ‘records with yellow labels’ than to find one whose focus is ‘west coast jazz’ or ‘pre-war blues’. Collectors might follow particular artists (Charlie Parker, the Sex Pistols), musical genres (reggae, soul, classical), records from certain cultural/geographic areas (New Orleans, South Africa), records from specific labels (Sun, Stax, Rough Trade), records for special types of use (sound effects, ‘library’ music), records from a historical era (the 1960s), records with covers by particular graphic artists, special editions of records (first/original pressings are again popular), particular types of records (45s, LPs), records that embody memory on a more personal scale (those played by a favorite local DJ, or listened to in one’s youth, etc.), and many more besides. For many collectors, records’ status as bearers of personal and/or collective meaning is most significant”.

Moist’s chapter also features a number of case studies of people that appear to be addicted to record collecting – an activity that completely takes over (and conflicts with) almost every area of their lives. Moist concludes:

“Is there something about recorded music that lends itself to this sort of collecting? It could be that records’ dual levels of significance – objects themselves, and materializations of sound – make such types of activity more likely, that the status and possibilities of the object itself provide for certain approaches to collecting it…more research is needed on other types of collecting before such conclusions can be reached, though certainly the era of mass production has seen popular collecting expand greatly, and the digital era should see even further changes”.

I (for one) would love to carry out research in the area of record collecting but I guess I would get little research funding to carry out such studies. To me, the psychology of record collecting is fascinating but I know only too well that most others I know simply cannot fathom what it is I love about music and collecting music.

Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Belk, R.W. (1995). Collecting as luxury consumption: Effects on individuals and households. Journal of Economic Psychology, 16(3), 477-490.

Belk, R.W. (2001). Collecting in a Consumer Society. New York: Routledge.

Moist, K. (2008). “To renew the Old World”: Record collecting as cultural production. Studies in Popular Culture, 31(1), 99-122.

Pearce, S. (1993). Museums, Objects, and Collections. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Pearce, S. (1998). Contemporary Collecting in Britain. London: Sage.

Reynolds, S. (2004). Lost in music: Obsessive music collecting. In E. Weisbard (Ed.), This Is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project (pp.289-307). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.