Curse You, Avatar Collection

Whenever I feel due for a break from music spending, I run into something monumental. A modest purchase on Black Friday turned into a collection-changing splurge on Saturday.

Great Escape acquired a huge collection of records, most in great shape and peppered with rarities (an orange wax copy of the Spaghetti Incident, transparent 2-disc sets of Bowie’s classics). The late collector had owned a Kentucky record store and took remarkable care of his trove – most records have that “one listen” beauty to them.

This announcement came a day after Great Escape’s Black Friday sale, 25 percent off everything in the store. That netted me Love’s Four Sail and INXS classics Kick and Listen Like Thieves. I could have replaced all of them from the Avatar collection, including an original copy of Four Sail, not the 180-gram reissue I listened to Saturday morning.

The patch of Beatles LPs practically glowed in their crates.For a relative bargain, a smart collector could assemble the entire run of British LPs (quick digression for the unknowing: all the CD versions come from the British releases, while the American albums had different track listings and in some cases, unfortunate overdubs).

Short of finding the ultra-rare Ghost of Tom Joad, which can run a few hundred on eBay, this was my Springsteen Holy Grail. I had everything from Greetings from Asbury Park to Lucky Town, including the Chimes of Freedom 12-inch. So long as I left the store alive, Nebraska would accompany me.

The early haul, to the tune of $50: With the Beatles, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper, Strange Days by the Doors, and for the guilty pleasure factor, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Sometimes a man just needs some National Acrobat. When the Music’s Over never sounded better to these ears.

Thanks to the stock clerk telling me the collection would continue to roll out for days, I plotted an evening return. I went back hoping for new discoveries. Yet by the time I reached the racks, I already knew what I was leaving with.

I shoved aside thoughts of the Beatles remasters getting an LP release next year, and pulled out the seven I skipped earlier in the afternoon – Please Please Me, A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles for Sale, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, and the White Album.

When I got to the counter, the clerk remarked, “I’ve never seen a whiter White Album.” Neither had I – the covers usually bear scuffs and dirt from years of storing records. With my Abbey Road at home, that completed the collection, minus the inessential Yellow Submarine soundtrack (too much George Martin score for my tastes).

The 2-disc Bowie sets were long gone, but $7 copies of Young Americans and Heroes fit nicely behind the Fab Four. Beside Waits, Bowie has been among the more difficult artists to acquire.

More metal indulgence followed in the second batch - $15 for a pristine copy of Garage Inc., the only worthwhile collection from Metallica a since the late 1980’s, finished me off. Sometimes, only Breadfan will do.

I don’t worry about spending what I did. I worry about not being done flipping through the new stock from Avatar.