THE COLLECTOR

Owning thousands of records was one of my greatest joys in life-until it wasn't

- William Robertson

THE NIGHT AFTER I sold most of my record collection in 2018, I didn't sleep well. A sense of relief at finally having unburdened myself didn't arrive. I had trouble drifting off, then woke in the middle of the night with Billy Joel's "Allentown" playing through my head. The record from which that song came, one I hadn't played in years, was now on the other side of Saskatoon. I remembered buying the album-The Nylon Curtain and how much I liked the song "Pressure," too. What was I thinking when I got rid of that album?

The fact that "Allentown" is about a city with a depressed economy and a closed-down mill was not lost on my midnight self, a self who had become emotionally and spiritually burdened. This weighed-down feeling had led me to sell off most of the records I'd spent over half a century collecting, starting in Grade 5 with the Beach Boys' Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!). My trove of more than 2,500 was now reduced to a rump of a few hundred, including that first Beach Boys record. I told myself that the pride I'd taken in owning the entire oeuvre of a band or artist would be replaced by a feeling of freedom to move.

For years, I had worked as a concert and record reviewer for the Saskatoon Star Phoenix. In the late '70s and early '80s, I brought home armloads of records every week. Sometimes on Saturday mornings, I would put one new album after another on the turntable and give it a spin. If I didn't like the first three songs, off it went to the second-hand store. There, I'd trade in 50 to 80 albums for a dozen or so real gems. I kept buying records, too, and eventually I owned thousands.