You might recall about a year ago, my father-in-law passed away and I "inherited" his record collection. It took several months to catalog and clean and I eventually sold off some duplicates and stuff I would never listen to. Well, a couple months ago, his brother, who lived with him, passed away and I "inherited" another couple hundred records, plus some of my father-in-law's records we had missed last year. Thankfully, my wife's uncle took much better care of his records than her dad and I was able to quickly add them to the collection. There are some duplicates and things I likely won't listen to, but I'm going to hang on to them for the time being.
The main idea behind Sound Mind is what will happen to my collection after I die, so whenever something like this happens, I reflect on this mission. Obviously, since I began this blog in 2012, Discogs has come along and partially solved this problem. My father-in-law and his brother were good guys and music was very important to them. Luckily for me, they had good taste. Well, mostly good taste. In this last batch of records there were several by Neil Young, Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, Kate Bush and The Talking Heads. Nice!
The significant update to my collection is I have added records from artists I had no intention of owning. Of course, I'm talking about The Eagles, The Grateful Dead and Mr. Zimmerman himself, Bob Dylan. Old me would have already sent these albums packing. New me is going to respect that these records were important to someone else and maybe even give them a spin before I die. On the positive side, there was only one Grateful Dead album and it's the one with "Alabama Getaway", which I remember liking back in the 80's. He had most of The Eagles catalog and I will at least check out the pre-Hotel California stuff and The Long Run. There were only four Zimmerman albums and I believe they are all D-list; Infidel, Basement Tapes, Nashville Skyline and Empire Burlesque. Truthfully, I have no idea. At some point, I will muscle through and give them a spin as well. Maybe on the day Dylan dies.
To the best of my knowledge, there are no other family record collections that I will be "inheriting". I know my parents don't have any. However, I had no idea in 2012 that I would come into possession of two collections from people I had no relation to. That was the original impetus of Sound Mind. If I'm meant to save any more record collections it will happen. In the meantime, I will keep collecting one album at a time, until I die. Peace.
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