Completism, being a Completist: C/D?

And enlightening sometimes to discover early work that is actually not very good, but with seeds of greatness still present.

I still try and draw a line somewhere on a quality basis, even with mp3's. I'm not actually much of a completist then, or maybe just someone who realises that 'complete' is virtually always an unattainable goal, so... why try!

I am a brass band completist, but that's pretty easy to keep up with since there are only about six bands who record and they each put out an album a year if I'm LUCKY, plus any bootlegs that happen to come my way.

Avoid the following: Zappa, Sun Ra, Lee Perry... that way lies financial and mental ruin

Although I'm very selective with my Fall purchases, I still have 30 releases, and I'm hankering to get more.

And I'll buy virtually anything on Fat Possum records, but these days I'm being more cautious.

Other than that, I'm pretty happy with owning official full-lengths by artists. If they have a large catalog, I do some research, and stick with the generally recognized classics.

You don't think it might have been sensible to start off with someone just a little less prolific?!?

(A rhetorical question for illustrative purposes that can apply to anyone, I'm NOT looking to turn this into Neil Young S/D)

But that's the only reason I was buying so many of their records! It's not like my end goal was "being a completist", it just seemed like there was so much DIFFERENT material to hear.

I've contemplated being a Tom Waits completist, but once you get off the straight and narrow there's really just far too much stuff available to contemplate rationally.

I met a Bob Dylan completist once, which was a somewhat cautionary experience: he had something like 10,000 tapes and CDR's of gigs and outakes etc., and was still trading like a frenzied lunatic.

I have in the past been reasonably completist about The Damned, Buzzcocks, Killing Joke, Theatre Of Hate, The Smiths, Aztec Camera and Prefab Sprout.

Back in those days, without the internet to tell you what was out there and how to find it, completism was so much easier 'though: it usually just meant buying the 12" and the 7" of any given single (even if you already had all the tracks on the album) and buying the odd bootleg record or tape that you happened to come across.

At least with Zappa I think you could be reasonably confident that it's all been painstakingly annotated and archived....

Country completism has to be the most insane, since so many big artists were really prolific and the albums are very unavailable (as opposed to jazz per se). I couldn't imagine trying to get everything by Johnny Cash or George Jones.

Stewart, do you have this?

http://www.rhinohandmade.com/artistink/index.mgi2

I'm more interested in stuff with the band(s) really. I'd rather like (at least a copy of) the CD with the poetry readings that comes with that set, but once you start to get into Don's art on any level above just enjoying images on the web or at a push going to an exhibition, you're getting into a whole new - and substantially more expensive - ballgame.

I think that kind of depends on your definition of "everything"!

I think I have basically everything by the Captain recording-wise though! as well as Mallard albums and Mu albums and so forth. I guess I never picked up that Unconditionally Guaranteed-era boot that was floating around tho..

I think the only bands I even own every album by are Sleater-Kinney and the Dismemberment Plan.

when did "official" catalog stop meaning singles (listing both b-sides and singles seems redundant) and ep's?

I quite like both of those albums. Though not everything in between. Was that an exclusive or inclusive statement?

i think catering for completists has ruined a lot of best of overview compilations. not everyone needs 2 full cds of an artist at once. especially when it includes not so good or not that interesting early material instead of the hits/unquestionably good stuff.

Classic albums reissued on CD with some really shite b-sides tacked on at the end - definite dud. (I know that, in theory, you can program them out, but life's too short.)

As for completism, where it's actually possible, I find I want to resist snagging that last item - because then it's over.

Great when I was 17, glad to get rid of this habit as an adult.

I find I want to resist snagging that last item - because then it's over.

Heh, I try to resist because I know it'll inevitably be disappointing if it's the last (and most likely weakest) album in an artists canon.

I think completism for the sake of completism (rather than for the sake of love of that artist's work) is a dud.

I tend not to be a completist, but I've lately been finding riches being more of a completist, e.g by seeking out solo albums by bands I like (like the Who and Kiss), which in the past I wouldn't have bothered seeking out. So I think there's something to be said for seeking out lesser-heralded albums by bands you like, as long you don't go in with too high expectations.

I was going to start a more general ILX thread on this, but this will do. I have this problem to a degree. I don't usually set about to collect everything of something, but what does happen often is that I get partway and the completist impulse takes over. Some examples.

I bought a few baseball media guides at a card show five years ago; the seller told me he had more, and two trips to his house and six or seven hundred dollars later, I'd bought every guide he had, encompassing almost every team from 1981 to the mid-2000s. It's hard to convey how truly useless these guides are in the era of online sites like Baseball Reference.

A book series called Images of America. I found a few in a sale bin 20 years ago when Chapters here merged with Indigo. Then I found a few more, then a few more, and now I have 36 of them. I've never opened even one, and I'm not a traveler.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/rocky.jpg

I could trot out lots of other examples. My newest thing is pocket Blue Jay schedules. Starting around 2010, I'd grab a few from various Rogers stores, and I bought a handful of earlier ones here and there. Seeing how many I had, I made a list of which ones I still needed and took a look on eBay. I've bought another 10 or so, and I'm down to eight for a complete 1977-2020 set. I haven't paid more than $2 or $3 for anything yet; when I get down to the last couple, I'll have to save me from myself.

Those Images of America books are freaking ubiquitous. I find they make good gifts for self-proclaimed "local history buffs."

Personally, I've never felt the impulse to collect *all* of *anything*, not even Pokemon. Dunno if this makes me a slacker or a well-adjusted human being.

A well-adjusted human being.

I strive to be a completist but I usually fail at it.

That means you're maladjusted and incompetent.

(I'm totally kidding--it was just teed up, and I couldn't resist. C'mon, we're Canadians.)

Hah, I was going to make a similarly (self-)deprecating joke, but you beat me to the punch.

I used to be a completist but learned it's better to be a curator.

(I have lots of baseball books that need to go, too)

I definitely suffer from this sickness. Thankfully, I'm neither fervent nor wealthy enough to elevate it to the level of a crippling illness. It helps that my tendency is limited solely to books, comics, and physical copies of filmed media, but it turns out you can really do some damage even within those seemingly narrow parameters.

I have completist notions but run up against my own laziness. At one point I had it in mind to collect CBRs of all Marvels from FF#1 until Jim Shooter's elevation to EiC, early 1978, but then I realized how much work it would be.

I was an aspirational Boards of Canada completist until this happened:

www.discogs.com/Boards-Of-Canada-XXXXXX-/release/4516654

Never got the Old Tunes tapes either, of course, but I still actually want those

Another example for me: these puzzles.

http://www.rediscoverjigsawpuzzles.com/

I bought the Dylan, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, and Jackson Browne on sale about a decade ago, $10 each. I stupidly passed on the Johnny Cash, two or three of which would pop up in that particular store for the next year or two. Then it was gone, and I never saw it again. I started checking online a few years ago, but with shipping and exchange, it'd now cost upwards of $30 at least. I've also discovered the Hendrix, Bowie, and Nirvana puzzles make up the complete set. I keep checking periodically, and will probably still be checking the day I die.

I'm sure I don't even need to say this: I don't do jigsaw puzzles. They sit on a shelf downstairs unopened.

I have completist notions but run up against my own laziness. At one point I had it in mind to collect CBRs of all Marvels from FF#1 until Jim Shooter's elevation to EiC, early 1978, but then I realized how much work it would be.

The least I can say is that I do regularly engage with the spoils of my completionist impulses (like, I do keep watching the pre-Code movies I keep amassing). It's just that at a point I know I will have collected more stuff than I can read or watch within the number of years I have remaining. And I suppose I'll have to finally draw a line when/if I fill up the storage unit i rent to deal with the runoff.

clemenza, your puzzle example makes me think of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_OH78jHz6w

That's good! My puzzle quest makes me think of Damone ridiculing Ratner in Fast Times at Ridgemont High: "You bought forty dollars worth of fucking film, and you don't even own a camera."

Oh hey - Images of America - that's something worth being completist about!

I think I've only been this way about certain comics.