Love me two times

This may be my nerdiest and perhaps longest music post ever, but I suspect it won't surprise most people familiar with this space. I freely admit that it's a window into my obsessive, fetishistic mind.

During a conversation with my hermano this afternoon, I mentioned that I did not own, but would own, the Rubber Soul we grew up with -- the old mono U.S. version. This led to a brief discussion of albums of which I actually do own multiple copies, for whatever reason. He told me to take it to the blogosphere, so here you go.

This is not a list of music I own twice; that happens all the time, with anthologies and original albums. Nor is it a list of records I have bought on more than one occasion. I'm talking about records that, for one reason or another, I have more or less consciously decided to keep multiple copies of. Some stray into the realm of alternate versions, but most do not.

∙Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles. I bought the CD the day it came out -- June 1, 1987, the twentieth anniversary of the original release. I took my late friend Tom's mono wax copy from his collection, after he died but before Amoeba bought the rest. (Side note: I have the regular CD and a bootleg mono copy of the White Album too, but I'm not counting boots here. And my stereo Meet The Beatles LP isn't quite the same as the mono CD of With The Beatles.) Anyway, the mono and stereo Beatle records provide quite different experiences. I'd just as soon own their entire catalog in both forms.

∙Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys. I have Tom's LP and my early-90s CD. There was no way I was going to let Tom's copy of Pet Sounds go into the bin with all the other records. An otherwise unremarkable pressing ("A Capitol reissue"), that piece of vinyl stirred my fallen friend's soul to the highest of heights. When I listen to the CD, it's just Pet Sounds, but when I listen to the LP, I feel like I can hear it the way Tom did.

∙Odessey & Oracle, the Zombies. Tom had a 1980s Rhino pressing; same story as above. I've got Time Of The Zombies, a two-LP collection that has all of O&O as sides three and four.

∙Lady Soul, Aretha Franklin. I have a pretty clean Japanese pressing, and a slightly noisier regular old Atlantic U.S. copy from the dollar bin. I have no justification for keeping both. But Lady Soul is magnificent.

∙Double Nickels On The Dime and What Makes A Man Start Fires?, The Minutemen. I bought the double-wax version of Double Nickels in the 1980s. The first CD issue was remixed and all screwed up, so I never bought it. Even when they issued a CD with the original mix, it was still missing a couple of songs, so I passed on "upgrading" to that one too. Later, when SST Records was in dire financial straits, I bought a second vinyl copy because I fricking adore this album and I was worried that if anything ever happened to my original copy I'd be stuck without the complete version. Then someone gave me his old copy of the original CD (later identified by SST as the "Shitty Remix"). Yep, I've got three. As for Fires, it's on Post-Mersh Vol. 1 in its entirety but I like the vinyl version better. Oh, and it's on the My First Bells tape* too, as is The Punch Line -- the other half of Post-Mersh Vol. 1 -- and Paranoid Time, which a well-meaning friend gave me on CD. I'm not getting rid of any of it. Crazy, I know.

∙Zen Arcade, Hüsker Dü. I might've bought the CD when I was living without a turntable, or maybe when I thought a five-star classic concept album like Zen Arcade should flow from beginning to end. In the end, the vinyl just sounds better -- the CD is flat and distant while the needle practically jumps right off the wax. And I love the packaging, with text in the runout groove and all. (So do the Shins!) But I don't mind having a digital version too.

∙The Velvet Underground and Loaded. The box set Peel Slowly And See has slightly different versions of both, so I kept my old copies (although I sold the banana album, and I can't remember whether I actually had a vinyl White Light/White Heat). Loaded is the old CD (not the "Fully Loaded Edition"); the third album is 80s vinyl.

∙Kind of Blue and In A Silent Way, Miles Davis. I've got old CDs from before they were remastered. Instead of buying the new ones, I bought better-sounding wax instead. My Kind of Blue LP was probably pressed in the 1990s; In A Silent Way is likely mid-70s. The CDs are still nice to have in the car though.

∙Fontessa and Lonely Woman, The Modern Jazz Quartet. Two copies of each LP; I believe I have each in mono and stereo. One copy of Lonely Woman hangs on my living room wall, just above the Deluxe Reverb. The second Fontessa used to be in the same frame, and may hang beside it one day.

∙Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen. When I bought the 30th Anniversary Edition CD/DVD box set last year, I figured I'd just get rid of my old wax copy. Then I looked at it and said, "Hey, that's my Born To Run. I'm not getting rid of that!"

∙There's A Riot Goin' On and Greatest Hits, Sly & The Family Stone. Bought around 1991, my Columbia disc of Riot is the single worst CD product I've ever owned. The mastering job is hissy (not that the original recording was crystal-clear, but never mind), and the packaging is abysmal. They used the back cover for the front cover (well, part of it, anyway), and they didn't even bother to include the real front cover anywhere. The spine identifies the artist as "Sly" -- that's it. And the purple and white song list, seemingly laid out by an unpaid graphic arts intern, doesn't include the central conceit of the album: a title track whose length is listed as 0:00. The job they did with Greatest Hits isn't much better. I nabbed wax out of the buck bin awhile ago and just haven't purged the old CDs yet. What would I get for them, anyway? Two great albums, rendered as awful products and since replaced by better ones?

∙The Who Sell Out. First I owned the old 80s MCA CD. Then I bought the wax twofer that also included A Quick One/Happy Jack, netting me an extra LP of Sell Out. MCA sent me a promo of the remaster in the mid-90s, and I purged the old MCA disc. Still have the second LP though. It's possible that I've owned it for twenty years and never listened to it.


*Cassette tape! Do you even still bother with tapes? I think this post might be a lot longer if I were to consider tapes....