In case it isn’t obvious, I should point out here that we’re reprising content that first appeared on the Telstra BigBlog incarnation of The Little House of Concrete, and here we’re moving beyond the Average Consumer to explore the distinctions between the Obsessive Fan, the Avid Collector and the Music Freak.
Rant: Consuming Music
If the categories discussed in Hughesy’s Music Classifications seem slightly perplexing it’s probably because they’re an attempt to make sense of something that I, personally, find perplexing.
Several years ago I was sitting at the pub, expounding on some musical matter when The Rod Man fixed me with a flinty glare. Hughesy, he wanted to know, why don’t you like normal music?
Which, of course, begs the question of what constitutes normality anyway....
Interestingly, I regard the stuff I like as normal music but that’s where I, as an unashamed and certified Music Freak, part company with the majority of the population.
In The Rod Man’s musical universe Normal Music probably approximates what Hughesy would label as Mass Market and Mainstream, which is where the majority of the population supposedly land some time in their mid- to late-twenties.
Once they’ve gone through the regular preliminaries in the process of growing up (sequentially, Kiddie Stuff, Teenage Noise, Something For The Girls To Dance To and Mating Rituals) most people have other fish to fry and music understandably takes a back seat.
After all, for most people the important issues probably involve career paths, mortgages and raising two-point-something kids. Given those considerations, most people are probably happy to absorb whatever the major players in the Music and Entertainment Industry decide to dish up.
On the other hand we can probably sort the remaining portion of the population who aren’t satisfied with that situation into three categories, the Music Freak and two related species, the Obsessive Fan and the Collector.
There’s a fair degree of overlap between the three, but there are also fairly clear distinctions between each of them and either of the other two.
Coming from a generation where Teenage Noise was dominated by the Rolling Stones it’s more or less natural to use the Stones as a starting point, but you could come up with any number of other examples, and start from somewhere apart from Teenage Noise.
But assuming we’ve got a Stones fan with acquisitive tendencies, what distinguishes an Obsessive Fan from a Collector or a Music Freak?
All three are going to buy large quantities of recorded product.
In the case of the Obsessive Fan those recordings are going to be part of a collection that will probably aim to include as much Stones-related ephemera as the Fan can manage to accumulate. In the process, the Fan in question will transform their bedroom, or possibly a large area of their living space to a shrine to Mr Jagger and his confreres. The Obsessive Fan’s collection may well include a copy of every issue of every known Rolling Stones fanzine.
This is the type of dude who could well end up on The Einstein Factor with a special subject like The Rolling Stones.
A Collector who has started off with the Stones as Teenage Noise will go on and collect much of the same recorded output, but the Jagger-related material will probably form part of a larger collection that includes the complete works of a couple of other performers. This dude’s collection may include Stones fanzines as above, but they’ll probably tend to concentrate on the ones that contain significant amounts of discographic material.
This is the type of dude who ends up on The Einstein Factor with a special subject like English Rhythm and Blues 1963 to 1968.
The Music Freak, on the other hand, while collecting Stones records will have picked up on the fact that the early albums contain significant amounts of material that doesn’t come from Jagger-Richards and would have headed off to investigate Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and the rest of them. The Music Freak’s collection will possibly include some Stones fanzines, but will most likely have them filed beside various publications devoted to the blues and other musical styles.
This is the type of dude who’ll give The Einstein Factor the big flick pass and rock on over to RockWiz instead.