Beware of vinyl
The vinyl world has recently has recently been abuzz with the discovery in a small apartment in Vienna. The apartment belonged to a Helmut Freud, a great great grand nephew (on his father€™s side) of the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Apparently, going through an attic of his recently deceased father€™s apartment, Helmut’s son came across an old unpublished monograph of his fathers€™ entitled “Vinylphilia Nervosaâ€. Helmut, during the 1970s and 80s owned a shop called Vienna Village Vinyl at 31 Friedrichstrasse Street . Apparently he ran this shop as a second business. Like his famous ancestor he had a degree from the Vienna Psychiatric Institute and treated patients for almost forty years.
The monograph discovered by his son Sigfried came as a complete surprise to him. His father had apparently planned to publish it, but died before he was able to complete it. Sigfried explained that his father had often spoken of the customers that frequented his shop as †the greatest conglomeration of nuts in one place€ that he had ever seen. Getting to know them over a period of the seventeen years he owned the shop, he described his clientele as ranging from the “slightly quirky “to the “quite decidedly insane.
Sigfried recently had the monograph published in a small Viennese psychiatric journal. “Vinylphilia Nervosa†seems to be an attempt to classify the various and sundry diseases that afflicts vinyl lovers. Though loosely translated from the German, it becomes clear that Helmut was on to something. He describes a cluster of syndromes that are inevitably all too familiar to some of us. I will try to enumerate these as best I can.
The first section of the monograph deals with his obsessive-compulsive clientele. By far, the largest percentage (77.2 %) of his customers fall into this category. He divides these into four sub-categories: buying, storing, cleaning and listening. It is impossible to enumerate all of the case-histories he cites but I will touch on some of the most salient.
BUYING
These are individuals that can never have enough records. Many have more records than they can listen to in ten lifetimes, even listening 24 hours a day. They are simply obsessed with accumulating. One of his customers apparently had a fixation on Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony and owned every version ever issued on vinyl or acetate, 78s, 33s, or 45s. He categorized them chronologically by year of performance and every evening would attempt to make his way through as many versions as he could before bedtime. After several years of this, he succeeded in driving his poor wife to suicide. The sad epilogue to this is that he actually was late for the funeral service because he discovered a version of the symphony that had dropped behind a shelf and, consequently, had never heard. By the time he had cleaned and listened to it, the service had almost ended.
Freud cites another case of a client that had accumulated so many records that they filled two of his upstairs bedrooms from floor to ceiling. Visiting guests would have to sleep in the basement. His wife, a generally congenial companion, would rarely complain, even when finding overflow records in the pantry. But she eventually put her foot down when she came across several albums of Hawaiian music in her broiler.
CLEANING
The necessity of cleaning vinyl records has been well documented. But apparently some of Helmut’s customers carried this to extremes. One history recounts a gentleman who unequivocally believed his records were not clean until he washed them 24 consecutive times on his VPI machine. Every single record he owned went though this process. Often, he ran his machine for eight hours at a stretch. Not surprisingly, he was not overly popular in his apartment building. Apparently, he spent so much time washing his records, he had little time to wash himself, with the result that he had emptied quite a few elevators. Eventually he was evicted from his apartment for being a general nuisance. He also blew quite a few fuses in his time.
Another interesting case involved a collector who put his records through a succession of cleaning machines before he was satisfied, including a Nitty Gritty, VPI, a Monks, a Hannl, and a Loricraft. He never really seemed to settle on a fluid that he liked having gone through Disc Doctor, l’Art du Son, Last, Smart, Bugtussel and several unnamed solutions. Once, apparently upset about the shoddy cleaning these methods produced, he allegedly wrapped the thread of the Loricraft machine multiple times around his throat in an attempt to choke himself. Fortunately (or not) he ran out of thread before he could complete the task.
LISTENING
In this section, Helmut describes a gentleman in a town outside of Vienna with a very expensive and elaborate audio system. He was enamored of the wonderful sound his vinyl produced but had one problem: He was a stickler for a huge soundstage and pinpoint imaging. For years he searched fruitlessly for a phono cartridge that he felt would do his system justice. Finally, he found it- a $16,000 Japanese cartridge that was a revelation. He would invite friends over and with some frenzy would rush back and forth pinpointing instruments and showing how far the soundstage extended beyond the walls. It was, indeed, impressive, but came to a rather abrupt end when, trying to locate the tuba player at extreme stage right, he crashed into the wall, suffering a serious concussion. He was briefly hospitalized, and subsequently promised his wife he would listen only to string quartets.
STORING RECORDS
We may think there is nothing to be added to the already crowded rulebook of vinyl storage. But, alas, the gentleman noted here has added a new dimension to this controversy. This audiophile had several large coolers constructed to store his records. According to Helmut, he apparently believed that the vinyl must be stored at exactly 47.5 degrees. Once removed from the cooler, they may be played safely for a period of only 30 minutes. After that, the vinyl would thaw too much to play. Although labeled a “crackpot†by his fellow audiophiles, he insisted that his theory was sound. Clearly, he said, the stylus produces very high temperatures as it moves through the grooves, inevitably leading to distortion and wear. In his opinion, playing a “cold†record reduced the temperature, and thus wear,,considerably. He was only known to break this rule once when he played Peggy Lee’s “Heatwaveâ . DON'T EVEN ASK!
Helmut next turns to the MANIC-DEPRESSIVE category. Here he describes the strange behavior of one of his customers as related by his wife. She reported that he had come home one evening from the vinyl store seemingly elated. Apparently he had found a rare Shaded Dog pressing that he had been searching for for some years. He seemed “really pumped up†she said, and started doing what she described as sort of a tarantella dance, shouting, screaming and leaping. After about 30 minutes he seemed to calm down and went up to his room to play the record. His wife, concerned that she hadn’t heard anything for several hours went upstairs, only to find him crying under the covers. Nothing she could do seemed to comfort him. Apparently, after discovering that the record played only a VG+ though it was marked a M-, he abruptly feel into a severe depression. Several days passed like this until his wife, playing an old cassette of Kenny G, discovered a smile on her husbandss face., and subsequently reported him quite improved.
The next case cited is one of VINYL CATATONIA. Here is described an individual who left his Vienna apartment one morning to pick up bagels for himself and a house guest. When he returned, he discovered that his guest , during his absence, had been playing his vinyl, and had inadvertently dropped the tonearm on his prize Beatles album, Yesterday and Today (in a “butcher†sleeve), scratching three tracks. As if to rub it in, his friend recounted that the stylus bounced three times before settling on the label. Within minutes, the gentleman started shaking, and ultimately went into a rigid pose completely unresponsive to stimuli. The friend, unable to arouse him, became quite concerned and immediately called 911, but not before he finished all four bagels.
This just about sums up the monograph. I thought perhaps reporting these unusual cases might be instructive and help us all to identify those who may need help. THANK GOD NONE OF US ARE LIKE THIS!
