USED CDS: THE SEARCH FOR THE UNKNOWN

I've always considered shopping for used CDs to be a universally desired activity. As I've grown wiser and more mature, I've re-evaluated this belief.

There have been several instances where I've led myself and a friend or acquaintance into a used record store, street sale, or second hand store, only to find them unenthused or uncertain about what to do. Their hands fell limply at their sides like a sheepish kid, their left foot shyly covered the toes of their right, their eyes turned up to the ceiling or sky, away from all the glorious CD's.

Through experiences like these, I've come to realize not all consider looking through bins of old CD's to be an ideal plane of human existence.

Obviously, not everyone has the same interests. If a new friend asked me if I wanted to take an educational tour of the Federal Reserve Bank, or to go grab some gourmet lollipops as a snack, I would stare at them in befuddlement. However, I've found that even among diehard music fans, those who salivate over looking through a pile of unsorted compact discs are in the minority.

Another concession I've made after repeated CD scavenging, is that buying things used is very rarely as satisfying as it promises to be. I can think of very few used CDs I've bought that earned heavy rotation, or made it into my heart as a "favorite album."

Conversely, there are a decent amount of CD's I've deliberately gone to the store to buy, paid full price for, and ended up enjoying for years to follow. The reason is obvious: when faced with exciting bargains, I compromise my tastes and buy stupid crap.

That's a simplification. There are at least seven traps I fall into when buying used CDs. Trawling through used CD bins isn't simply alluring because I can get stuff for as low as $0.50. Used CD bins offer several temptations that I can't resist, most of them exploiting my taste for esoteric or unfamiliar stuff.

TRAP 1

The first trap I fall into, is buying music I've never head of. If I find a CD by a band with a poetic name, a cool cover, and enticing track titles, odds are I'm going to want it. If the recording is clearly by a group or artist that never achieved notoriety, and is horribly defunct, the item will become even more desirable to me, and more so still if the album looks like it was self-released by the band.

If the band’s name and album title are printed in a foreign language, I’ll buy it instantaneously and run home with urine trickling down my leg.


Pluxus: a bizzare four man synth pop group, sounding like a gentler Kraftwerk with no vocals. I really want to like this, but can only get into a few tracks.

A CD like this tempts me with the unknown. What will it sound like? It could sound like anything! It could be a band of bagpipe players with a dozen clacking typewriters for percussion, and a singer who raps while playing the electric banjo behind his back. The possibility of discovering a genius songwriter that went totally unrecognized, and probably now lives on the fringes of society, wearing stocking caps in summer and eating uncooked cans of beans in a large unfurnished apartment, is too appealing to me.

However, 90% of the time the band turns out to be a straightforward alt-rock group that never quite hit their stride. They'll likely sound like R.E.M. or the Pixies or whichever band was most admired the year they recorded the disc.

Occasionally, I've discovered albums that are somewhat interesting, having several striking or unique songs, but are unsatisfying on the whole. This, for me, is the most prevailing feeling caused by CD shopping: a vague sense of dissatisfaction. It's easy to forget that the reason people sold the music back to the store in the first place was that they found it so-so.

TRAP 2

Another trap is looking at used CD's when I don’t want to buy music to begin with.


I went for a walk and came home with U2's Pop, which I never listen to.

It’s a bit like going into a grocery store and buying a bunch of produce because they’re having a produce sale, when you already have a bunch of produce at home.

Sometimes I just like to look at rows of colored jewel case spines, to pull them out and see their covers and flip them over to skim their track listings. In short, I like to remind myself what bands exist.

I like to see a Fleetwood Mac CD and remark to myself, "Oh, yeah. Fleetwood Mac. They're a good band." I'll envision the expressive arm movements of Stevie Nicks when she sang, and the cool, white suits their guitarist wore while playing remarkable solos, and make a mental note to blast "Go Your Own Way" later on.

This must have to do with the basic satisfaction one receives from recognizing things. It begins as an infant, when you learn to associate a fragile, yolk-filled, white sphere, with the word "egg," and evolves into the ego-inflating ability to recognize literary references in Woody Allen movies.

Shopping when you don't need anything is always a fool's move. Used CD shopping is particularly dangerous because, as a rule, used CD bins are watched by hawklike, decrepit old men whose stores are racing towards bankruptcy. I don’t have the heart to walk out of a business after I've been seen scrutinizing various items for 45 minutes. I prefer not to admit I was killing time and had no intention of buying anything.

I often cave in instances like this, buying whichever CD I wanted most. However, it's more likely that, regardless of the watchful owner, I'll fall into one of the traps detailed in this article.

TRAP 3

"Hey! The Faint - Wet From Birth. I enjoyed their first two albums. That's gotta be good."

I really liked the first track, and that was it. (A common used CD phenomenon)

Buying albums without researching first is an easy trap to fall into. Sure, you could go home and think about your potential purchases before returning to the store, but who has that kind of self-control? We're talking about spending twos of dollars. This is another important facet of used CD shopping: there’s only one of everything. If you don’t snatch something up, someone else might, or so it seems.

Not every good band puts out consistently worthwhile albums. The world of musical criticism, which I generally take with a grain of salt, is at least useful for identifying albums that should be avoided at all costs. I've taken risks and bought albums by solid artists like Frank Black, Enon, XTC, The Cure, and even Yo La Tengo, only to find myself surprisingly dissatisfied. I later searched on the internet, and discovered that I’d purchased what was widely considered the band’s weakest album.

TRAP 4

Buying stuff you don't realize you're sick of.


Good album, but you already know it by heart.

"Hey, Rage Against the Machine's first album. That's killer! How can you go wrong?" What you're forgetting is you've heard all those songs on the radio a million times. You’ll remember when you hear the familiarly bombastic opening chords of “Killing in The Name,” identical to how they play out in your memory. You don't need to own albums like this, their music exists in our culture's collective consciousness.

TRAP 5

No quality control.

I once found myself standing outside Kim’s Video in Manhattan on a fine summer day. It was around 11:59 A.M., and a suspicious crowd began forming in front of the store. Suddenly, two burly men began dragging milk crates brimming with CD’s out to the sidewalk. They made several trips back into the store, each time returning to the sidewalk with more cargo.

The crowd descended upon the crates like vultures. Within seconds, each person had five CD’s in each fist. They brayed and moaned the names of their findings: Jazz Saxophonists, Singer/Songwriters, and 70’s folk bands the likes of which I'd never heard.

A drooling man told me the CD’s were $1.00 each, and that the store offers this special every Friday at noon. Additionally, they weren’t just the rubbish CD’s that had been sitting on the racks for years, they were all the buybacks the store made that week that they didn’t have time to sort and price. So, swept up in the frenzy of the moment, I dove into the crowd and purchased 11 CDs.


After you hit the jackpot, stop looking.

I actually got some good finds: Nirvana, Primal Scream, the Lemonheads. But seeing the new, two foot tall stack of CD’s in my apartment diminished my enjoyment of the music. The three quality CD’s were tarnished by my greed and extravagance, and I wished I’d only purchased the three best ones.

TRAP 6

Irony and nostalgia.


I like the songs "No Scrubs" and "Unpretty," but there's no need to own this.

This desire is mostly outgrown as one matures, however, I'll always have a vague desire to buy CD's by bands like Genesis, The Real McCoy, or the Spin Doctors, just so I can blast guilty pleasures or downright cheesy songs on the car stereo, in hopes of amusing myself and others. Also, there's a perversely fascinating quality in the prospect of hearing the non-singles by one-hit-wonders. Believe me; it's never worth it.

TRAP 7

This is perhaps the most relevant pitfall today: buying stuff you would’ve been better off downloading.


The Cure is not well-known for their late 90's material. I should've downloaded this and deleted the tracks I don't like.

Piracy is so prevalent in our lives, it's almost transparent. Do we really need to own physical copies of the music we love? I'm all for supporting the bands I enjoy, but bands don't get royalties from used CD's. Sometimes it's best to avoid all the trappings and download the MP3s, borrow from a friend, or stream preview clips from iTunes before buying the digital downloads.

CONCLUSION

Perhaps I don‘t need to tell anyone to scale back their used CD purchases, because no one is making any. Even I scarcely buy CD's these days. The thrill of kneeling on a dirty tiled floor, weeding through cardboard boxes of cracked jewel cases, is a scene receding into to the dusty corners of my memory. I realized I was looking for something that couldn’t be found. The hunt became unfun, though I look back on it fondly.