I was sorting through my record collection the other night, and I found all kinds of things that I had forgotten about. Most of them are further proof of my bad taste and poor judgement, and I was thrilled with each and every discovery. But I can't tell you about all of the fun I found until I tell you about the index cards. The index cards are the reason I was sorting my records in the first place.
The index cards came into existence ten years ago, around the same time that Linda and I lost our minds over records. We had both always been LP buyers, but that fine spring we discovered our local used record stores with a vengeance. I had been buying used albums for a couple of years at that point, but when I added Linda to the mix, we went insane.
We were an unstoppable shopping team. Visiting three or four stores in an afternoon was not unusual for us at all. You could find us all over town, hollering at each other across the musty rows. "Linda! I don't have this Liberace!" To which she would reply, "Johnny Desmond!" while simultaneously holding up the album and re-creating the pose that Johnny Desmond was striking on the cover. Tom Jones, Bay City Rollers, Wham!, KISS, you name it, we bought it. In vast quantities. We both had checking accounts at the same bank, and we would call each other sheepishly when our statements arrived. "How many checks did you write to the record store this month?" she would ask. "Uh, thirty," would be my answer. Most of the checks were for around three dollars, (we didn't carry cash), but still. That's a lot of checks.
And then one day, we realized that since we were buying so many records so rapidly, we were in danger of losing track of what we owned. That was the day our index card system was born. We went to Kmart and bought some index cards and some index card file boxes. Then we both went home and wrote down all of our albums. But we couldn't just do album titles, oh, no. That would be far too easy for Linda and me. Instead, we developed an index card standard that required each card to contain the artist, album title, complete track listing, and format. (Because, you know, once we decided on index cards, we decided to make them for our 45s as well. So we needed to specify format, even though we kept the LP cards and the 45 cards in different file boxes.)
Because we were writing them down, we were also able to conveniently keep a running total of how many albums we owned. The first card in the index file is the LP tally card. The standard indexing process was as follows:
1. Spend Saturday shopping for records.
2. Go to Linda's house and listen to portions of all of them while she worked on her index cards.
3. Go home and work on my own index cards.
a. Write cards.
b. Count new records, count new cards, make sure totals match.
c. File records and cards, making sure that each card is filed in the exact same spot as the records.
No alphabetizing errors or chronological errors are allowed.
4. Repeat.
That system worked well for me until I had a spouse. He had these friends who would come over and ask me stupid questions. Nice enough guys, but these were guys who liked to drink beer in garages while working on cars and listening to Metallica. Not that I didn't spend an awful lot of time sitting on car hoods in those garages drinking beer with them, but the beer was mostly to make me forget that I was sitting in a garage listening to Metallica. But I digress.
So these Metallica-listening car guys would come over, look at the records and say, "Have you listened to all of those?" Well, I hadn't. Many albums were filed without being played, and it had never been an issue. I would listen to them eventually. After being asked that incredibly annoying question one too many times, I listened to my collection in alphabetical order. Just so I could say, "Yes," when someone (one of his friends because my friends are cool and never say stupid crap) asked if I had heard all of them.
But that threw a wrench into the indexing system! I needed more steps to ensure that all records were listened to before they were filed. The new process (which is still in place) goes like this:
1. Bring home new record(s).
2. File them in the to be played section. They are listened to in the order of purchase, so new additions to the section go to the back.
3. Listen to a record. Make sure I hear every single note so I have officially heard the entire album. Laundry cannot be started and phone calls cannot be made unless I am between album sides.
4. File record(s) in the need index card section.
5. Eventually write up some cards, and then follow above steps 3b and 3c. (Count new records, count new cards, make sure totals match. File records and cards, making sure that each card is filed in the exact same spot as the records. No alphabetizing errors or chronological errors are allowed.)
6. Repeat.
Unfortunately for me, I have been behind on my index cards for two years because of that time I had to get a divorce and move back home. When I did that, the to be played and need index card piles got all intermingled. And since I have been doing other things for the past two years, (going to school really cut into my free time) my index card system has been sorely neglected. And since I still refuse to file anything without a card, I have an awfully large pile of records that need to be played, indexed, and filed.
At this point, one could argue that I could just give up the system, but that is ridiculous! I love the index cards! Just because I slacked for two years doesn't mean I can give up a system that has worked beautifully (and uselessly) for so long.
So the other night, I decided to straighten out the collection. I gathered up my file boxes, my blank index cards, a notebook, and a pen. The pen, by the way, has to be a black Pilot pen. No other pen will do for index cards. Once I had all of my supplies, I started counting. First I counted all of the albums filed under the letter A. Then I wrote down the tally. Then I flipped through the index cards and the records at the same time, making sure that each record had a card, and that they were in the correct order. In the A section, I found a record with no card! I gasped in horror, pulled out the offending piece of vinyl, and placed it in a brand new pile. Then I flipped through the cards and records again, and corrected the number on the tally sheet. I did that for every single letter of the alphabet, pausing only after the letter M, to re-count each letter A through M. I did the same with letters N through Z.
I knew I would have to do this eventually, but it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. Scattered through the collection, I found some records without cards, due to haphazard getting a divorce gotta make sure I get all of the records out of the house just in case filing. And I found some cards without records, due to some I got a divorce and need gas money album selling. But I didn't let the discrepancies get me down. I persisted, and now everything on the shelves is properly recorded, and the Total LPs index card has an accurate count. Whew! The records I had pulled have been indexed, added to the grand total, and re-filed, so everything is hunky dory again.
Point being, sometime soon I am going to tell you about the evidence of my bad taste and poor judgement that is my record collection, but you can't understand my record collection until you understand my collection of index cards.