Phil Benson plays bass in San Francisco-based punk-ish/chainsaw pop band Terry Malts, and he just might be a bigger vinyl fan than we are. Terry Malts’ first releases were a six-song cassette (!!) and two 7″ singles for Slumberland, and they expanded their happily and noisily fatalistic music to release their first LP, Killing Time. As we hit Day 3 of Slumberland Records Week at TVD, Phil’s weighing in and waxing nostalgic about his own indie record store experiences and why collecting vinyl continues to be his obsession.
Check out Day 1‘s Q&A with label head Mike Schulman, and Day 2‘s reminiscing with Black Tambourine’s Archie Moore.
“I’ve been an obsessive record collector since I was 15. That’s when I ordered my very first vinyl record from a local record label, “Radio Trash,” a 7″ by a band called Ragady Anne.
I’d heard the band and how to order the 7″ on a radio show on KZSU Stanford, a station I was seriously glued to as a teen. I didn’t even have a record player yet, so I guess I must have just held the record and stared at it, ha ha.
But the most important thing was it was MY record. Sure I’d seen my parents’ collection a bunch (which I came to love as well as I grew older), but this record was MINE, no one elses.
As soon as I got my first turn table as a gift from my parents the obsession took control. I found myself making frequent trips to San Francisco to visit the many tiny record stores that existed before Amoeba basically took over the market. My favorite of which was the Epicenter Zone, on Valencia Street at 16th. It was a primarily punk/DIY store above a used clothing by-the-pound shop. I used to love riffling through rows and rows of records, bumping elbows with stinky punks. That ripe smell of B.O. still brings a pleasant sense of nostalgia to me.
Over the years the quantity of records in my collection has fluctuated, unfortunately due to occasional pressing monetary needs. Deciding which records to hold onto and which to sell has never been an easy task for me, aside from the obvious keepers. There’s always that voice in my head saying, “But wait. What if one day I really want to hear this one record and I’ve already sold it and can’t find it again?”
Obviously now you can stream or download pretty much anything you want, but where’s the fun in that? There’s something to holding a record, in exploring its cover and inserts if there are any. Something to placing the record on the turntable, physically setting the needle on the groove of the song you want to hear. Something in caring for records, keeping them nice and clean for future enjoyment. No such satisfaction can be achieved with a digital stream.
I’ve given records as gifts, I’ve traded records, I’ve made friends over records, I’ve helped produce records, I’ve recorded records, I’ve lusted after records, I’ve stolen records, I’ve broken records in fits of drunken buffoonery. One of my undying favorite activities is not really being active at all but just sitting and listening to records, doing nothing else.
I often joke these days about how record collecting is my only real addiction. I find myself spending money I probably shouldn’t on records, money I should be spending on food, rent, new socks, whatever various life necessities. And unfortunately having a large record collection is probably completely unconducive to my seemingly perpetual apartment hopping lifestyle. Yet still I continue lugging them around. It wouldn’t be an obsession if I didn’t, right?
Let’s call it a love.”
—Phil Benson
Correction: Leave it to the guitarist to try to hog all the bass player’s glory. Just kidding. We goofed, and this piece was, in fact, written by Terry Malts bass guitarist, Phil Benson — not Corey Cunningham, as originally stated.
