A Place for My Stuff

Daddy's Junky Music, 1972-2011

This is late news, but I just found out about it as I was trying to check up on some of my lingering receipts (see previous post).

Daddy's Junky Music was a big chain of stores that bought and sold used musical instruments.  They were based in New England.  Like many musicians from New England, my first instruments were bought at a Daddy's store, and I'd traded and bought countless other things from them ever since.  In fact it was to Daddy's where I traded in a ton of extra musical stuff I was no longer using, sometime in the last year or two (I tried searching for a link to where I might have blogged about it, but I can't find it). 

Sadly, Daddy's abruptly closed their doors back in October 2011.

In a way, I'm not really too surprised.  The clerks at all these places were typically dicks.  Like most music store clerks, they were once-aspiring-and-failed rock stars, bitterly sitting behind a counter and always busy with something or somebody else.  The staff at other stores like Guitar Center have almost always been, at least in my experience, more attentive and sometimes more knowledgeable. 

Of course, I know that's not the main reason why Daddy's closed.  The main reason they closed is the same reason why a lot of brick-and-mortar ("B&M") specialty stores close: not being able to compete with the internet.  Even before the internet became a house-hold thing, I knew that if you wanted to buy or especially sell an instrument, it was always better financially to go through the want-ads.  If you wanted to sell something, Daddy's would give you next to nothing for it.  As my lucrative guitar-trading uncle had always said, "Daddy's is a rip-off".  The only reason I sold a bunch of stuff to them that summer was to get rid of the stuff once and for all, instead of having to place a dozen different ads to Craigslist and follow up on all of them.

But the internet had hurt Daddy's in more ways than just providing a forum to buy and sell things 1-on-1.  A lot of warehouse places like MusiciansFriend.com can sell you brand new instruments for cheaper than Daddy's and other stores can compete with. 

What's the advantage of having a B&M musical instrument store?  The first and most obvious one is that get a chance to play something before you buy it.  A second advantage is that you get to talk to people who are knowledgeable about the various models of various instruments and can make suggestions for you.  Some of them also host clinics, which is when a well-known musician will give a lecture and do Q&A afterwards.  Then there's just the joy of not knowing what you'll find when you walk into a used music store.

Unfortunately, it's all too easy for somebody to try out an instrument in a store, get free advice from a clerk, then walk out the door and order the same instrument on-line, without a penny going to the B&M store.  Hell, lots of people can whip out their smartphone to go check prices and buy the item on-line, BEFORE even leaving the store!

So while it's sad to see Daddy's go, again I'm not too surprised.  As one of the articles below mentions "If you can't make it with a music store across the street from Berklee, you’re pretty much sunk".  It does make me wonder how rare used musical instrument brick-and-mortar stores are going to be in the future.  There's only so much a teenager can learn by flipping around YouTube.

http://www.unionleader.com/article/20111027/NEWS02/710279965&source=RSS

http://articles.boston.com/2011-11-05/ae/30364212_1_berklee-college-music-school-instrument

http://www.eagletribune.com/latestnews/x717137553/Daddys-Junky-Music-closes-all-12-stores

Stephanie's Smurfette Folder

Recently I was asked "When do you think your clutter/hoarding problem first started?"  Honestly, I'm not sure.  For some people with too much stuff, I guess it traces back to one particular traumatic event, like having a spouse die, or being assaulted, etc.  But for me, I don't think it traces back to one particular time.  I know some people would like to think that there's one overly-simple, Freudian reason for having clutter (e.g, "You're building a psychic wall of protection!").  But such answers are just that: overly-simplified.

I can however think back to earlier times in my life when some of the same underlying components of the pack rat mentality were already there.  One of those bigger underlying components to being a packrat, for me at least, was not being able to see things being torn up and thrown away by other people (let alone myself doing the tearing and throwing away!).  I suppose I should say "is" and not "was", since it's still one of those little things that irks me, but I'm honestly nowhere nearly as bad as I used to be. 

Two incidents immediately come to mind:

When I was 6 years old and in first grade, a classmate (let's call her Stephanie) came up to me, holding up her empty Smurfette portfolio in front of my face.  It was rather beat up from use.  She said, "You see this Smurfette folder?"  Then before I could say anything, she proceeded to proudly rip it up in front of me.  First into halves, then stacking and into quarters, then trying to rip some more.  Later that day I saw a brand new green Garfield folder on her desk.

But as I was watching that ripping, what was running through my mind was "No, wait!  Maybe I could use that!  I'm a boy, but maybe there's some way to cover up the Smurfette on the front and still use it as a folder?  Tape it up, maybe?  But...but..."  For her, it was a no-brainer: out with the old, in with the new.  It's taken me 30 years to start to reach that same 6 year-old girl's mentality of feeling proud to throw something out, especially to the point where you want to let others know about it.

The other event that comes to mind was at one of the first jobs I ever had.  When I was in high school I worked in a department store, and at some point we had a stack of empty shoe boxes in a corner behind the cashier.  One day the big boss made a rare visit.  As she looked around and chatted with the other one or two workers whom she knew, she told me to get rid of the boxes.  Now I'm not a dumb person by any stretch, but this idea simply didn't make any sense to me at the time.  Get RID of them?  This whole stack of perfectly good shoe boxes?  What?  I mean you can't just throw them away like they were garbage, right?  I asked for clarification.  "Get RID of them?"  So 5 minutes later, they still weren't done.  I asked again.  Finally the boss just grabbed one of the boxes, tore it up in her hands with swift frustration, and handed it to me with a recomposed but somethat belittling smile, as if to say "That's how you do it, my little naive one!"

Again, these events themselves didn't traumatize me into becoming a hoarder of clutter.  I mention them to point out that some of the underlying cognitive seeds have seemingly been there forever.  And again, this old pet peeve is not the one and only reason for me having so much stuff.  But it's some part of the equation I'm sure.

Clutter Diet, and questioning their 20 questions

I recently just found out about a decluttering blog called the Clutter Diet blog.  It's really the blog for a more general site and book called The Clutter Diet.

I haven't gotten around to extensively look at it, but one article worth mentioning is their "20 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Keeping Anything."  The list is mostly geared towards moving, but some of the same questions are still good to ask when it comes to buying or keeping stuff in general.  Some of these other questions...well let's say that they probably wouldn't motivate me personally.  But here's my take on each one.

First, the ones that I thought were a little ambiguous, possibly ineffective for many pack rats, or just plain weird:

• "What is the worst thing that might happen if I donate or recycle it?"  Keep in mind that hoarders are good at rationalizing answers against this one.
• "Does it help create an environment that supports me in my goals?"  Wait...what?  My first thought upon reading this one was that it seemed like one of those pretty empty "motivational seminar", pep talk lines.  But now that I think about it, this is worth keeping in mind.  The thing is, you have to HAVE goals first, namely goals in addition to "getting rid of this clutter".
• "If I flipped a coin right now, and heads was KEEP and tails was DONATE, which would I secretly be rooting for as the coin is landing?" Well I would think any pack rat knows the answer to this.  Yes, we'd secretly be wanting to see it land as a keeper.  How effective is leaving decisions like this to a coin flip, instead of your own motivation?  I'm not sure.
• "Does it make me feel positive, or negative?"  I really hate the use of the terms "positive" and "negative" like this.  Yes, some of you may be saying "Hey Bill, that's negative!"  Frankly, I've always prided myself in being a humorously cynical type.  And I think the words "positive" and "negative" are too vague to have much meaning these days.  I would however say that if there's some item that makes you slouch, sigh, and roll your eyes every time you pass by it, maybe getting rid of it will do you better in the long run.
• "Does it remind me of my past, or my future?"  How, exactly, can something "remind you of your future"?  That makes no sense.  I've been blogging about my stuff for a couple of years now, and I really can't recall anytime I've found an object and said "Oh, this reminds me of that party I went to in the year 2043!"  I guess they mean "Am I keeping this thing because I'm dwelling in the past, or because it's part of a future goal of mine?"  But again, there are both good and bad reasons that could justify holding on to something for 'past' or 'future' reasons.  As this same article mentions, using the excuse of "Well I may get around to this someday in the future" is likely to be a bad excuse for keeping clutter.  That's not the same as keeping something that's part of a future goal you're actively working on.  Likewise, there's a difference between counter-productively dwelling in the past and having an object that gives you deeply fond memories of a past event.
• "If I were hit by a proverbial bus, would my family truly value this item, or even know what it is and why I kept it?"  Maybe not, but that could apply to just about anything from a box of 400 twist-ties (which is indeed clutter) and my collection of music that they hate (which is NOT clutter).
• "What would my best friend say if she were standing here considering this?" and "What would a professional organizer say if one were sitting here with me now?"  These two questions assume that they understand hoarding, at least to some extent.  Would they have anything HELPFUL to say?  That's another question.
• "Does someone else need this more than I do?"  Maybe, but who cares?  I generally don't.  If you can give away certain clutter items to a friend and have it be a win-win situation, great.  But I'm not a philanthropist.

Now, for the questions I LIKED.  Here are two particularly good questions to ask yourself when you're moving and need to decide what's coming with you, especially if it's big:

• "Is this valuable enough to me to pay someone by-the-pound to move it to another place?"
• "What would it cost, in time and money, to acquire this again?"

A thought occurred to me as I read this.  It's probably not all that hard to find a free piano.  That's because people buy one, get stuck with them, and just want it out of their house.  Sure, you're probably not going to find a beautiful grand Steinway for free.  But I'm sure there a lot of schools out there who don't have one and could benefit, even if it needs a heavy tuning job.

Here were some questions that I think apply best before you BUY something:

• "Does anyone I know have one of these I can easily borrow?"
• "Do I already have something else that serves the same purpose?"
• "What is a scenario in which I can picture myself using this, and how likely is that to happen?"

Then there were other questions which could apply for both buying and especially keeping something:

• "How much money could I get for selling this instead of keeping it?"  The only problem with this is that if the answer is "not much, if anything", there may be other reasons why keeping it could be more of a burden than it's worth.
• "When is the last time I can remember using it?"  If it's been over 10 years, you may just have a problem!
• "How often do I use it? Weekly, monthly, yearly... never?"  See above.
• "Is there a use for this that doesn't involve the phrase, "Someday when I have time?""  I think this is my favorite.
• "Is there an alternative way to capture the essence and value of this item instead, maybe in a digital format such as a document or photograph?"  Another good one, which I've used myself.
• "Will I feel good about keeping this item the next time I run across it?"  This makes a little more sense than the positive/negative thing.

 

Andy Warhol's Time Capsules

It seems that artist Andy Warhol had a lot of clutter.  So much so, that he turned a lot of it into time capsules.  I guess they're trying to catalog and sift through these to this day.

Here's a quote from one of the many artciles on the topic:

Warhol started his Time Capsules in 1974 after relocating his studio. He recognized that cardboard boxes used in the move were an efficient method for dealing with all of his “stuff.” Warhol selected items from the daily flood of correspondence, magazines, newspapers, gifts, photographs, business records, and material that passed through his hands to put in an open cardboard box by his desk. Once the box was full he sealed it with tape, marked it with a date and/or title, and put it in his archive. En masse, this material provides a unique view into Warhol’s private world, as well as a broad cultural backdrop illustrating the social and artistic scene during his lifetime. From the early ’70s, until his death in 1987, Warhol created 612 finished Time Capsules.

http://edu.warhol.org/aract_timecap.html
http://edu.warhol.org/app_aw_tc.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3666842/Lifting-the-lid-on-Warhols-Time-Capsules.html
http://www.carnegiemuseums.org/cmag/bk_issue/1996/janfeb/warhol.html

Part of me wishes that I had thought of the idea first: stow away some clutter in a box, seal it, and leave it not to be opened for years to come.  But Andy Warhol is probably one of the few people who could get away with this. I doubt one of my boxes of stuff would go for thousands of dollars post-mortem.  Still, it's a creative and tempting idea!  I'd probably put a lot of crap in but throw in the occasional treasure, which is all people would need to have the motivation to hope to find more treasures among the clutter (kind of like how scratch tickets work).  But of course in the mean time it would involve having to find a place to keep all of those boxes.  I'd also have to consider that I'd be leaving friends and family with huge boxes of crap to have to deal with.  I think I'll stick to the blog.

VHS Bootleg Graveyard

When I went on my first truly major eBay selling spree a couple of years ago, one of the really harsh realities I had to often face was having something that I originally paid a lot of money for, and having to sell it for next to nothing. 

And I'm not talking about things like clothing or furniture which naturally wears away after a while.  I'm mainly talking about things that were especially sought after at the time for being collectible items.  It seemed that the longer you'd hold on to these, the more its rarity and value would go up.  The popularity of the internet of course changed all of this.

Brace yourself for a bitter old man rant:

Do kids today make the effort to hunt down bootlegs and rarities of their favorite bands?  Do they even KNOW what a bootleg is?  A bootleg is, in the loosest sense of the term, a recording of a band that you can't find for purchase anywhere.  If you were a really big fan of a band, then you wanted to get whatever you could from that band.  You couldn't just hop on the internet for that, because first of all your home probably didn't have access, and second of all even if you did, the connection speeds and computers weren't fast enough to get much of anything.  The effort you had to exert to get a band's entire catalog and beyond is what separated the casual fans from the true die-hard fans.

It didn't matter if it was a low-quality, muddy cassette recording of a demo session, or a concert video recorded by one guy holding up a shaky camcorder.  (And how the hell DID these people sneak those in?)  If that band you loved did it, then you had to have it.  Used record shops would sometimes carry bootlegs.  Other times, you had to find somebody to trade (which you could do in the earlier days of the internet, but again you still had to find the person who had what you wanted, set up a mailing arrangement, etc.)

There was a time when VHS concert bootlegs like this would sell anywhere from $20 to $50.  This past summer, I managed to find an old used music store that sold them.  I can't remember what they were asking for, but I know it wasn't more than 5 bucks a tape.  So I bought some, brought them home, and transferred them to DVD-R.  Great stuff. 

So...what to do with the tapes now?  Well there's really nothing to do.  I could try selling them, but I doubt anybody these days would take them.  Even if you were lucky and managed to sell them on eBay (without having your ad being taken down for legal reasons), you'd just be going through the hassle of shipping them.  I wouldn't be surprised if all of these shows have been uploaded to YouTube by now, albeit of poorer quality. 

Of course, the nagging feeling in the back of my mind said that I shouldn't be throwing away things that I would have paid $20 to $50 bucks each for.  But then the more rational part of my mind has to say, "Bill, those prices were what you'd see if this was still 1994.  But it's not.  It's 2011.  And you have digital copies of these now.  If you were ever going to trade copies with other fans -- and you probably won't end up doing that -- you'd be making copies from the DVD-Rs you made."  Thus, into the trash they went.

A Word on Safety When Selling Your Stuff

Here is some advice you've heard a million times before, but it's worth mentioning at least once in this blog.

I've talked a lot in this blog about sources like FreeCycle and Craigslist.  They're great ways of getting rid of your extra stuff (so long as you're strong enough to not use them to GET more stuff when you already have too much stuff).  Often though, these transactions will include meeting up with total strangers.  This could mean giving out your cell phone number to a stranger, giving out your email address to a stranger, and having this stranger in your very home.

Frankly I've never had any problem with harrassed, or robbed, or beaten, and the same goes with well over 99.9% of the people who do transactions through want ad lists.  Boy, am I proud to be male.  Still, it pays to be cautious.

So here are some suggestions to keep in mind:

• If possible, meet in a public place.  I've had plenty of people come to my home to respond to ads and pick up stuff.  Again, no problems.  Besides, if I could pack up and drive a huge item like a file cabinet somewhere, then I probably wouldn't be selling it out of my home in the first place.  If you're moving out of a place anyway and don't have much of anything left, then again it's probably no big deal if a stranger comes by to pick up your old turntable.  But if you live in the middle of the sticks (that means a rural area, folks),
• Be friendly, but keep it quick.  Sure, you may meet a potential friend who shares your interest in something.  If a sincerely interesting conversation strikes up on a common passion, great.  But more than likely you're just never going to see this person again.  Cheerfully make the transaction and be on your merry way.
• Keep your on-line guard up.  Since you're dealing with people on-line first, you need to keep your computer defenses up too.  There are some people just looking to harvest email addresses or other information for spamming, or worse.  There's no need to give out your work email to somebody, or use your ISP's email address for posting ads.  Craigslist in particular has a nice anonymous service that hides your email address if you want to.  Here's an article with some specific tips that you should have in place anyway.
• Cash only.  Do I even have to explain this?

Here's another article of tips.

Another "30 Day Song Challenge" Indulgence

The 30 Days are already over, but I'll throw in a few more of these.  Go here if you don't know what I'm talking about.

"A song that describes you"?  Well I suppose I should go for something about clutter or being a pack rat, but nothing comes to mind right now.  A different song that does come to mind though is "Bananas" by Deep Purple.  Besides earning the nickname "Bananas" due in part to the "Banana" episodes I did for my radio show, I especially like the lyrics "Don't help me, I'll help myself" and "Now my life is richer than rich, 'cause I studied mathematics".

 

Next on the list is "a song that you used to love but now hate".  I guess that would include songs that I used to like, but heard them so many times that I got sick of them.  Pretty much anything from Metallica's self-titled album comes to mind.  I was already sick of it entering college in 1993, and EVERY person in my dorm either had that CD or had a room mate who had the CD.  And the damn thing got played every day.  I will go so far as to say that it is the most overplayed heavy metal album of all time.  I'm not even going to bother posting a clip here.

Then there's "A song that you hear often on the radio".  Well, I listen to Sirius XM radio these days, not FM/AM.  I find this song showing up a lot on the stations I listen to:

 

And finally (for this installment anyway) "A song that you wish you heard on the radio".  If there was a song I wanted to hear, then chances are good that I've already long since bought the album and can listen to it whenever I want.  Though as Alice Cooper pointed out, classic rock stations seem to select from the same 100 songs.  It's nice to get into the deeper tracks.  In fact, there's one XM radio station specifically built on this idea.  How about...ANY song from The Residents?

 

The concept of "Guilty Pleasure"

So the next song in the list of the 30 Day Song Challenge is to give an example of a song that's a "guilty pleasure".

Honestly, that term has never been part of my vocabularly.  The concept just makes no sense to me.  I have never, ever, taken any shame in the things that I like.  This has especially been the case with regard to music.  Are there people who are really ashamed to be caught by their friends or their family listening to a certain piece of music?  Really?  Sorry, but that just strikes me as pathetic.  If I like something, then I really don't give a shit if you don't, and if I don't like something, I avoid listening to it.  I guess this attitude of mine is more foreign than I thought.

I most certainly listen to music that would repulse certain demographics of people.  No matter what your age or your clique, I'm sure you'll find something in my music collection that makes you gag, whether it's my complete Journey collection, The Residents, the few hip-hop tracks I've purchased, or something else.  But these are not "guilty" pleasures for me because, again, I have no shame in liking what I like.  So I simply can't give an example this time around.

This brings us to the next item in the list, "A song that no one would expect you to love".  OK, well that makes a little more sense.  Here's a band I suppose people who haven't listened to my radio show but did read my previous post, might assume I wouldn't love:

  

Blue Screen Blues

This time around, I'd like to talk about digital stuff.  A few weeks ago I was having problems with my computer.  I kept getting the BSOD.

Eventually I was having issues just booting up.  Did I immediately give up and take it down to Best Buy to let strangers rummage around through my computer and charge me an arm and a leg for it?  Hell no.  I called some friends, got some ideas, and finally resolved the problem by unplugging my second internal hard drive which I added a couple of years ago.  A few weeks ago, the drive I mapped to it would occasionally not appear under "My Computer" until I rebooted.  I also bought a third, external hard drive to back up everything, which I did.  Though that included an annoying back-up program which started to signal the time these BSOD episodes started happening.  The latest news is that I can reboot, but I can't get that second internal drive to work.  This is still something I'm investigating.

Regardless of what is causing this, and whether or not that second hdd of mine is still working at all, I can at least say this: thank goodness I already got around to backing up my stuff!  I can at least go to sleep every night knowing that not every photo, document, and music file I'd been saving over the last so many years is unrecoverable. 

And if you're one of those self-righteous Apple owners who think that things like this could never happen to your precious Mac, guess again.  Macs CAN crash.  I know, because I've seen it happen with the Mac laptop I own.  Yes, I own both computers with Windows XP and others with Mac OS X.  I also just added Ubuntu to another one. (Yes, folks, there are more than two choices for operating systems!)  Macs can also get viruses.  The reality is that no OS is perfect.  Just as grease monkeys, off-roaders, and soccer moms are not going to drive the same car, you just need to pick the one that best lets you do the things you want to do.

More importantly, I once again quote the IT guy at a previous workplace of mine: "Every hard drive will eventually die.  It's just a matter of when."  So I'll throw out this question once again.  When it comes to your digital stuff, would it be gone if your computer was stolen?  Something to think about.

And having said all that, let's turn once again to the self-indulgent 30 Day Song Challenge.  Next up, "A song from a band you hate".  Well, it would be simple enough to put up a clip here from Creed, so I'll go one further.

 

Oh, OK, OK.  Here you go.  A real song.

 

On a related note, it fills me with such grim delight that Hair Nation has replaced Pearl Jam Radio on the XM radio station.  Granted both channels existed before and still exist now, and they were just changing the station numbers around to make everything consistent with Sirius radio.  But still, I love the idea of some Pearl Jam fanatic tuning to their beloved XM radio station and hearing Dokken.  Just as I love the idea that these asshole grunge fans I had to put up with in the '90s now have kids who play "Guitar Hero" and have developed a love for 80s hard rock, a love that fueled all the more by the fact that it's music their parents hate.  Heh heh heh.

Hoarder, or Just Unsanitary?

It seems that hoarding has gotten much more attention in the past year or two than it has before.  It's one of the latest hysterias.  Even South Park made it the topic of an episode of theirs.  I started this blog before any of that.  And now I have to wonder if people are throwing this term around too loosely.

I don't pretend to know the full story behind this following piece, but I do have to wonder if this person was actually a hoarder, or just too thoughtless to collect and take out the trash one week.

[source]

NASHVILLE, TENN. – A Nashville condominium owner likely will be forced out of an upscale high-rise after losing a lawsuit that claimed she was hoarding and living in filth.

The Tennessee Court of Appeals has upheld a judge's decision to order the condo sold and the proceeds used to pay $116,000 in legal fees to the Windsor Towers homeowner's association.

The 59-year-old condo owner, Stacy Harris, says she is not a hoarder.

The case originated when neighbors complained of a foul smell and escalated into condo managers pushing Harris to have it cleaned.

Workers at the condo testified the odor made them gag, while court records show waste from the unit filled a commercial-sized trash bin three times.

The case went to court after the smell persisted and Harris refused to allow another cleaning.