Filing your music alphabetically - C/D?

I also tend to stick in solo stuff with the corresponding group, assuming it's more of a 'side-project' thing and not a full-blown, separate career. I.E. Neil Halstead in with the Mojave 3, Mark Kozelek stuff in with the Red House Painters, McCulloch in with Echo & The Bunnymen, etc.

Most stuff is alphabetical together under the dubious 'indie/rock/pop' idea in my head, with totally different sections for:
Dance (anything club-ish that you can actually dance to)
Electronic/Ambient (stuff you CAN'T dance to)
Downtempo/Hiphip (a tricky section - everything from stuff like Kruder & Dorfmeister, Kid Loco, Theivery Corporation, through to Ninja Tune stuff and then straight Hip Hop)

All above alphabetical because I have a lot, but other stuff such as Classical, Jazz, Blues is just all stuck together mostly by label since I don't have much.

Hiphip sounds like the best genre evah.

Now its: A-Z, singles and albums together, chronologically within artist (by release date, so comps after original albums), solo with band, Iggy under Stooges, CDRs in with the rest, separate section for comp albums, separate section for the masses off Idlewild singles I have for reasons I can't remember but all the Super Furry Animals in with the rest cos they have pretty spines.

How do people deal with free CDs given away by magazines? Separate section for me.

It'll take a while before I file my vinyl though. There's more of it and I like the way it kinda SPREADS across any room its put in, even if I put it all away neatly. It seems to breed and give me records I don't remember buying.

God damn you all to hell. And I really mean that.

The rest of my apartment tends to be a disorganized mess, but I am very meticulous about making sure the music collection is in the proper order.

things listened to recently
things listened to kinda recently
records i completely love and cherish

everything else is basically in a big sale pile that goes to the shop every couple of months.

It works pretty well for me with a few exceptions....

One of these is when essentially the same band / artist changes name, e.g.: Iggy Pop / Iggy & The Stooges / The Stooges as has already been said (fwiw, having been both together and separate and "P" and "S" in the past, they are all currently reunited under "I" - well, I figured if it was good enough for Martin C. Strong in his Great Rock Discography, it was certainly good enough for me!).

Having the Warsaw CD separated from the Joy Division ones offends me enormously 'though (New Order being separate doesn't bother me as that feels like a different band). Fortunately I stopped caring about Southern Death Cult / Death Cult / The Cult around 1985.

A sub-set of this is when individual artists stop pretending they are - or are still - bands, e.g.: having to separate Roddy Frame from Aztec Camera gnaws away the very fibre of my being (Roddy Frame IS Aztec Camera for fuck's sake!); similarly Paddy McAloon / Prefab Sprout and to a lesser extent Them / Van Morrison (again I don't feel the same way about Morrissey being separated from The Smiths 'cos that feels like two distinct acts).

Individuals are filed according to their surnames rather than their first names - but nicknames, titles and initials can produce some odd results.

Duke Ellington goes under "E" and Count Basie goes under "B" but Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band goes under "C" (on the basis that CB&HMB was supposed to be the name of the band rather than CB being specifically the name of Mr. Van Vliet).

Following similar logic, AR Kane goes under "A".

I'm pretty happy with with Prince Far-I going under "F" and with I-Roy and U-Roy going under "I" and "U" respectively; but slightly less confortable with Prince Buster being under "B"; not at all happy with King Tubby being under "T"; and I could easily lay awake all night fretting about Big Youth if I wasn't heavily sedated.

At the same time however, I'm almost equally happy putting Sun Ra under either "S" or "R" - but then I've never really expected to fully understand Sun Ra.

Of course the comp.s present their own problems - basically alphabetical although I tend to just ignore words like "Best" and "Greatest" in the titles and try to alphabetise them by a key defining word ("More" has to be ignored as well to avoid series being separated).

A number of people have suggested that I may be suffering from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Imagine!

I know who the bastards are 'though - I have little book with all of their names and addresses written down neatly in alphabetical order.

an excellent idea upthread is to put the cds bought in the current year at a separate place and file them in 1st january. in that way there is much less reshuffling to do and the new cds are separate and don't get lost in the huge mass. i think that's an improvement to the pure alpha method. i will think about doing this in the future.

Some discrepancies:
- solo artists filed by first name instead of last name (common in Portugal), so everything is ordered by its first name;
- side projects including all (or majority of) members of main group (or major contributors to it) (ex. Ciccone Youth, Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe, Palace whatever) go along with main group, others get filed separately;
- no various artists' compilations on my collection (though film soundtracks would be filed as "OST")

As my collection has now passed the #1300 mark, I'm starting to have some serious space problems, so a lot of my recent acquisitions are just being piled up by order of arrival...

This raises a number of further issues:
1. what if an album is released out of the sequence in which it was recorded (e.g. Prefab's Sprout's "Protest Songs" was recorded before "From Langley Park To Memphis" but released after it; Captain Beefheart's "Mirror Man" was recorded before "Trout Mask Replica" and "Lick My Decals Off Baby" but released after them; are we actually prepared to believe that The Residents' "Not Available" was recorded before "Third Reich And Roll", "Fingerprince", "Duck Stab" and "Buster & Glen" and locked away in a safe in pursuit of their belief in "the theory of obscurity", or is this just more of their crazy self-mythologising?)

2. (How) do you include compilations within the date-order? According to the last recorded tracks or the first one? At the lunatic extreme, do you consider the chronology of bonus tracks or just that of the album to which they've been added?

"i would never file lou reed or john cale under velvet underground. they have released much more solo albums than there are vu albums so they merit to be filed under their proper name."

I wouldn't file them with VU either because I think they both have careers that are substantially (and I don't just mean in terms of size) separate from VU.

Where do you file "Songs For Drella" 'though (or "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts", "No Pussyfooting" and "Evening Star" for that matter!)?

"an excellent idea upthread is to put the cds bought in the current year at a separate place and file them in 1st january."

I suspect that would result in anything bought in the last few months of the year getting played a lot less than anything in the first few.

OK, the truth is that it scares me to think of the volume of my purchases being that visible!

compilations are filed by the date of the last recorded track. i haven't thought about the bonus track thing and i am not sure if i have any examples in m collection but logically the recording date should apply.

the careers of cale and reed are substantially different as vu because they are so long. if lou reed had only released one album i'd probably file it under vu.

songs for drella etc. are filed under the name of the first artist mentioned on the album which would be lou reed in this case. church of anthrax is therefore filed under john cale and not terry riley. wrong way up under eno and not cale.

there is a problem with the separate filing of recently purchased albums on a year to year base, you are right, but life is unjust sometimes...

1. the collection grows and grows and grows and becomes more and more difficult to access easily.

2. my brain disintegrates more and more the older i become and i bloody need a crutch to find things.

and of course i don't mind at all if strangers can navigate without problems in my collection. they should so that they can find rapidly what they want to listen to.

- Each format category subdivided into three release types.
- Single-artist releases (whether individual or band)
- Split-artist releases (two-artist splits in a non-collaborative context)
- Compilations (anything with more than two artists represented in a non-collaborative context) and soundtracks.

- Single-artist releases are sorted alphabetically by artist name. Last name takes sorting precedence with releases by individuals. Leading articles in band names are ignored except in some troublesome exceptions, based on "gut instinct" (A Flock Of Seagulls, A Tribe Called Quest, A Perfect Circle would all be under "A," for no reason I can currently justify). Acronynic band names are generally filed under their expanded name (records credited to "A.C." get filed under "Anal Cunt," "GBH" gets treated as "Grievous Bodily Harm," etc.). Personal titles ("MC," "DJ," etc.) are ignored.
- Releases are then subsorted alphabetically by title. This "chronological by release date" stuff is bullcrap!

- Split-artist releases get sorted by the name of the first-appearing artist (either on the A side of a vinyl or cassette release or the first track appearance on CD).

- Compilations are sorted by title only.

BOOM!!!!! Sorted.

i have twice that and the answer is no, not once. if it wasn't CDs it would be booze or clothes. not exactly asset building stuff now, is it? do you think i should be putting money into a mortgage instead?

I hope you are joking. 8000 records? Let's say you paid seven dollars each - that would total $56000. That is a lot of clothes and beer.

What is the purpose of having 8000 records?

Derrick May says he has 60,000 records, though I'm sure most of them were free.

i only cry a little when i think about the thousands of records that i have sold or traded away. even though i can't remember what half of them were anymore.i opened up a little store in philly years ago with a friend and a lot of my initial stock of records was from my own collection. i've been making up for lost time ever since. and i feel positively normal with people like mr. diamond and the surface noise around. i need lots more but i've slowed down a lot. i'm pickier now too. drove across the country last year and only came back with about 100 l.p.s or so. i listen to them all too! they get a lot of use. plus, they inspire me and get my brain going. see, i cry when i think about how much money people spend on higher education. i spent years reading books and listening to music and as a result i got to write for my favorite newspaper the village voice. if i had gone to college i would have ended up with a real job and later i would have killed myself and my whole family in a blind rage. but i'm happy now and i have a family that i adore and we live on a beautiful island in the sea. thank god for all those records!!!

i heart scott seward

my collection is now divided up into vague and inconsistant sections all over the house. theres the discs my wife likes. the discs no one likes (hidden, just, but theres so many). the discs i just listened to. the discs i listened to last week. the discs i'm planning on listening to. the discs without covers. a clump of reggae appears to be forming over there. some jazz there, but not the disc i was looking for last night.

I found it this morning in another discs cover. i wonder where its own cover is? and i wonder where the disc from that other cover is?

i am a librarian.

Gaz, In my experience of similar situations:

a) the disc that belongs in the cover you've got without the disc in it, is almost certainly in the cover of the disc you've got without the cover for it (if you're unlucky there may be additional discs and covers involved);

b) it's probably best not to even attempt to put discs back in their covers when you're that far gone - in future, just leave 'em out 'til you're feeling more together and put them away then.

Hope that was some help?

I agree entirely although it does make me wonder.... is there anyone here who thinks (any) bands (with the obvious exception of The The) should be filed under "T" for "The"?

"Acronynic band names are generally filed under their expanded name (records credited to "A.C." get filed under "Anal Cunt," "GBH" gets treated as "Grievous Bodily Harm," etc.)"

I'd agree about "A.C." (I file "PiL" as "Public Image Limited" on the same basis) but "G.B.H." are filed as "G.B.H." in my collection because (afaik) they were always called "G.B.H." as opposed to having once been "Grievous Bodily Harm" and later shortened their name.... (actually there's now a faint alarm bell ringing - weren't they originally called "Charged G.B.H."?!?).

Hmmmm. Thinking back, The Ballistics / The Mighty Ballistics / The Mighty Ballistics Hi-Power / M.B. Hi-Power used to cause me as many conundrums as Southern Death Cult / Death Cult / The Cult.

"Personal titles ("MC," "DJ," etc.) are ignored."

Hmmmm. I don't actually feel entirely comfortable about DJ Shadow wherever I put him.

Also, what about MC5? They actually represent a number of conundrums:

What do people do about numbers? Separate section or spelled out as letters (The Four Tops go under "F", 999 go under "N", 23 Skidoo go under "T"....). If numbers, do you look at the whole number (The Four Tops go before 23 Skidoo) or just the first digit (23 Skidoo go before The Four Tops)? As a side issue, is there actually some deep-seated pschological reason why they always have to The Four Tops rather than the 4 Tops or is it just because that's the way I've always seen it written?)

Do you treat Mc's and Mac's the same (i.e. ignore the "a" in Mac, like they do in the 'phone books) so Paddy McAloon gets filed before Kirsty MacColl or just treat them as ordinary letters so Kirsty MacColl gets filed before Paddy McAloon?

Finally (for now, anyway) which should be filed first and why (I guess this is basically just a question of good filing practice so.... Gaz maybe?):
Blackalicious or Black Uhuru?
Devo or Howard Devoto?
King Crimson or Carole King?
The Mob or Moby?
Patti Smith or The Smiths?
Super Furry Animals or Supergrass?

Oh and spam@me.now, I think you may be on the wrong board if you think most of us are going to see owning 4,000 records as something other than either an aspiration or a memory!

My system is best - *my genres*. e.g obv. ones like Motown, Factory, Freakbeat, Disco, Krautrock. Also some less obv like : 'Manchester 1980's non-Factory bands' 'Post-punk bands with women singers (GAOB, Slits, Raincoats, Delta 5, Liliput)'. I've never not been able to find anything apart from a Can promo in a card sleeve which was lost for a whole morning in 1999.

Genres just wouldn't work for me - some of the things I like most I like precisely because they blur those sorts of genre divides!

Also, do numbers (50 Cent, 2Pac, 10CC, etc) go before "A" or aligned to their lettered spelling (Fifty Cent, Tupac, Ten CC)?

The point is that *I* know where they are. That's all that matters.

Dr. C's system is alright - in theory... I'm arleady somewhat separating my collection by genre, as most of us are in some way. The problem is that unless you get REALLY specific (which then causes more problems with artists crossing genres), you wind up with WAY too much stuff in a particular genre to find it easily. Good lord, if I had an 'twee indiepop' section it would take up a whole shelf and I'd still never find anything unless it was alphabetised...

Why more than with any other system?

*must take up rather a lot of shelf space!*

A lot of wood, yes!