How much of a completist are you?

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At first I thought it was cool, then it got REALLY annoying. Haha. And through it all, I looked at my collection of albums by them and realized I had, for instance, three separate promo singles for "Sugar," all of which had the same track but differences in the inserts or CD artwork. And this sort of thing is repeated over and over and over throughout my collection. It's all utterly pointless!

Yep, that's where I was at around '97 or '98. By that time I'd been collecting CDs for six or seven years. In addition to near-constant scrounging runs at a couple of record stores in my area, I was also a regular attendee at several monthly record/CD shows that were held at local firehouses, Elks Lodges, hotels, etc. (side note: I really, really miss those record shows. I don't even know if any of 'em are still going anymore. I doubt it. But they were soooooo much fun! Haha.)

So I was coming home with huge hauls of weird stuff a couple of times a month. Usually everything was retardedly cheap, which was awesome, of course. But after a while the CDs were piling up so quickly that I couldn't keep track of anything. I'd buy stuff, put it in a big pile near my stereo, then the next weekend I'd be out buying more stuff even though I hadn't had time to listen to any of the the previous batch yet. Weeks or months later I'd find random CDs on my shelf or in a stack on my desk and I'd wonder "When/where/why the hell did I buy this?"

I had dozens and dozens of radio/promo singles that had only one or two songs on them, which was really stupid because hardly any of them had anything "extra" on them, maybe just a cool cover picture. It finally hit me after I bought a radio single of Down's "Stone the Crow," with just that one song on it, nothin' else. I already owned the Down album, so there was no point in me owning a whole other CD with just that song on it. I also remember buying the soundtrack to the movie "Cool World" because it had a song by the Cult on it that I didn't have. But the Cult song sucked, so I never played it, and if memory serves the rest of the bands on the album did nothing for me, so again, I'm like "Why is this thing taking up space on my shelf?"

Multiply that by a hundred other examples, and that's why I had to start cutting back. Otherwise my CD collection would probably rival yours or Ult's by now.

I've drawn the line on the discount bins. Before I would grab everything I could if it was a buck or less and I thought it MIGHT interest me. Still love the dollar bins but now I'm much more picky. I just have too much stuff that'll never get played and at this point probably impossible/cost effective to get rid of.

I´ll try to get all studio longplay albums from each band I like. EPs, Singles and Live albums only, when I find them cheap

I buy the studio albums, and if I'm really into them I get the DVD.

Now, when listening to a band I like....for example Dream Theater. I cannot pick a random album and just listen to that and skip to another band. I have to listen to every album, and only then can I listen to something else.

Not that I'm proud of this moment, but I did just receive this:



This album has the funny distinction of when new in 1987, I never listened to the second side. I had decided that the first side was so horrendous, that the second side was not worth it. I suppose I was knee deep in Thrash as a 16 year old, so yeah. As much I thought "Unmasked" to be the bands worst studio release throughout the years, this definitely tops it. Having said that, I now own every KISS studio album.

metalinmyveins wrote:

Not that I'm proud of this moment, but I did just receive this:



This album has the funny distinction of when new in 1987, I never listened to the second side. I had decided that the first side was so horrendous, that the second side was not worth it. I suppose I was knee deep in Thrash as a 16 year old, so yeah. As much I thought "Unmasked" to be the bands worst studio release throughout the years, this definitely tops it. Having said that, I now own every KISS studio album.

As much as I love KISS, I still absolutely refuse to allow this album, the Smashes, Thrashes & Hits comp ("Let's Put the X in Sex" makes me cringe), or Hot in the Shade into my house.

I guess you could say I was AWOL from the KISS Army during that period.

Every so often, that hole in my otherwise-complete KISS studio discography bugs me and I think "Y'know, I should get those albums just to finish out the collection," but then I'll listen to some of them on YouTube and go "Mmmm, y'know what, never mind."

I used to be a completist, but not anymore

Last time i acted like one, was when i picked up St Anger at my local cd shop, a couple of years ago.

It was relatively cheap, so i said what the hell, and got it.

I am a compulsive completist....