Liner Notes

Not pictured: my turntable or my records. Not sure why I used this photo.

I grew up in the middle of nowhere in a time before the ubiquity of online music. If my friends didn't listen to it, I never heard it. I bought my first record in high school. My dad gave me his old record player. The only thing I remember about it was its tremendous knob feel, solid yet fluid; the way you'd imagine the helm of a ship feels. Made to outlast mankind.

When I was younger I collected comic books and action figures. When I turned fifteen, I got a job working as a midway attendant at Circus Circus in Reno, Nevada. I had two friends there that I went to school with, Jawsh Hageman and Jeff Baer. Every first and fifteenth we'd cash our checks and head to  Resurrection Records where we'd pay for piles of records we'd special ordered the week before. It's not a coincidence that I started This Computer Kills with them. I've been collecting records for half my life. And I've never sold one. I have every record I've ever purchased. Except for a handful I donated to my buddy Alex to kickstart his collection, which I've subsequently repurchased, I keep them all. I can't count the number of times brushed off a record only to understand it years later. Or I could be collector scum. It could be either.

My memory is garbage. But when I put on a record, it transports me to a time and place. Sometimes its a memory or a feeling. Or what I listened to when I felt lonely. Each one is a bookmark in the journal of my life. And some of them are pretty goddamn rare. So I decided I'd write about what they mean to me. I won't be reviewing them. I will not be critiquing these albums. I am not qualified to. These records are so deeply tied to my sense memory and nostalgia that I am utterly incapable of rendering any kind of objective judgment about them. I love them like old friends, overlooking their faults because of time served.

I'm going to write little love letters to all of them. I'm going to listen to them and write about whatever they stir up in me. I hope you'll go with me on this experiment. And because I like collecting things, I'll probably be unable to resist talking about some of the fun details of each.