RECORD STORE TALES #1137: A Little South of Sanity: What I’ve Been Up To…In Photos

Madness reigned.

As you may be aware from the last cottage video, disaster struck when we returned home on June 23.  My old shelves, which I’ve had over 40 years, finally fell apart, and a few hundred of my precious CDs hit the ground.  Some were damaged, some just have broken cases.  This was a pretty traumatic experience for a collector.  After considering quitting the hobby for good (more grief than it’s worth?), and wasting time and money with a carpenter, I decided to rip my music room apart and see what I could do.

I moved everything around to make space, and then got to work.  I chose a couple bookshelves on Amazon.  They’re not ideal for CDs, but the music is off the floor now.  Shelves are better than floors, even if the discs are in stacks and not rows.  The two shelves I chose can hold 350 lbs each.  More than enough.  They arrived on Saturday.  In the time it took to listen to all of Aerosmith’s double live A Little South of Sanity, Jen and I had the shelves built.

A Little South of Sanity more than describes the week I had, mental health-wise.  I told people I was done with physical music, and therefore the show and site would be ending.  I’d move on to drone videos.  I really was ready to sell it all.  Looking at my damaged Metallica Live Sh*t box set, which was mint when I bought it in 1997, was heartbreaking.

The new bookshelves were so surprisingly easy to put together (even we could do it!), that I ordered a third to replace an old ugly wooden unit.  Then, I began sorting.  I’m maybe halfway through putting everything back in alphabetical order.  The discs used to be scattered through three rooms.  Now I’ve got it down to two!  In the end, there will be two CD towers, three of these new bookcases, and a few shelves for box sets.

It’s a work in progress.  On Sunday, I spent six hours filing.  It felt amazing to see my entire Iron Maiden collection in one place again (excluding box sets and abnormal sized boxes).  Soon, all my Deep Purple, Marillion, Aerosmith and Kiss will join them.  It’s a long process hindered by a shortage of space, but it’s coming together.

By Saturday, my mental health was good enough that Jen and I went out to the Farmer’s Market for the first time together since her dad was alive.  We stocked up on schnitzel, sweets and cheese curds, but the main reason we went was actually quite epic, and relevant.  We met, in person, the incredible Nurse Kat.  She is the first Grab A Stack of Rock guest that I didn’t know previously, that I have now met in person.  And she too had great success, finding lilies to replace the ones eaten by a rabbit.  In happy coincidence, both she and Jen were decked out in AC/DC gear.  So it was success all around!

I will say with cautious optimism that this summer is looking up.  Wish me luck and hope that nothing got permanently destroyed in my music avalanche of 2024!