Saturday, August 09, 2014

I have a collection; you are a hoarder; he is... what the hell is he?

Most people who love records have a problem, as passion turns to festishism. But however you feel about your shelves of 12 inch singles, or piles of CDs, you can take comfort that you're not as bad as Zero Freitas, a wealthy Brazilian on a mission to buy all the vinyl in the world.

How many records does he have? He's got interns trying to catalogue the collection, at 500 discs a day, but they'll never succeed because he adds music faster than they can catalogue.

It's not just an obsession, though: there is a mission, too:

While Freitas thumbed through those records, Bastos was warning of a future in which some music might disappear unnoticed. Most of the American and British records Freitas has collected have already been digitally preserved. But in countries like Brazil, Cuba and Nigeria, Bastos estimated, up to 80 percent of recorded music from the mid-20th century has never been transferred. In many places, he said, vinyl is it, and it’s increasingly hard to find. Freitas slumped, then covered his face with his hands and emitted a low, rumbling groan. “It’s very important to save this,” he said. “Very important.”


1 comment:

Robin Carmody said...

Definitely more valuable than Tim Rice continuing to buy every chart single and album for years, probably decades after he started to hate most of them.

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