The Termination of CM Punk by The Coward Tony Khan

[JLowe]

12 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I'm in a weird space. I was born in November 1980, so I'll be 43 this year, so I remember a good deal about the 80s while also being a 90s kid. I remember turning on MTV as I usually did after school to learn of Kurt Cobain's death. That hit me hard as 13 y/o me loved Nirvana. Columbine happened two months before I graduated high school. What was I doing during 9/11? I was glued to the tv. I was supposed to have a night class that night. 

My wife is May 1981 and she is just like that, but she remembers 80s more as a pop culture thing and the end of the Cold War and not the Reagan years part of it. 

[JLowe]

9 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I'll be over here waiting for cd's to become popular again. I still have a three disc changer in my house. I'm not getting rid of my cd's. 

My best friend has a huge music collection and he's switched back to mostly CDs because of cost. There is a newer Nirvana "Nevermind" reissue that was $14 for a double CD and $34 for a double LP. And used CDs are usually $3 or less.

[worldcupfever]

11 hours ago, Craig H said:

There was a really awesome period on early eBay where you could buy wrestling tapes. That's where I bought my first AJPW and NOAH comp tapes.

Same.  I got my start by buying from John McAdam then just started grabbing all of the NJPW/AJPW/random US non-ECW indies I could find on eBay.  Then I bought a billion HUSTLE DVDs and I was done.

[Technico Support]

11 hours ago, twiztor said:

 

hiding in plain sight. honestly, it might be genius. who is going to accuse a professional impersonator of being the real deal?

True!  And honestly, he could have been caught in a trap, and couldn't walk out.

[Zakk_Sabbath]

Major shirt synchronicity today

[Craig H]

8 hours ago, zendragon said:

‘There’s endless choice, but you’re not listening’: fans quitting Spotify to save their love of music | Music | The Guardian

An interesting article about the perceived negatives of spotify , I definatly think their is something to the idea of owning and physically playing media

I'll be honest, usually on Spotify, I'm just listening to stuff I already own physical media of already. Spotify is usually my way to just try and find new music, have an easy way to put together playlists, and...that's about it. I usually fall flat on discovering new music because their generated playlists for new punk music or new rock music almost always suck. I typically find a new band from a friend or from discussions on a couple different band subreddits. I will say that Spotify is nice when putting those playlists together to include some songs by bands I don't own anything for. In those cases, I'll listen to most of the rest of the album a song came from and decide the rest of the album sucks.

I'd like to get into vinyl and have looked into some affordable record players a bunch of times, but I always go back to the point my wife made to me - "You're always talking about how you want less stuff in this house and less clutter. How does owning a bunch of records factor into that?" My answer is almost always it doesn't and I have this silly thought of putting a vinyl collection on display, which is also pretty silly because who is going to give a fuck about the albums we own?

Movies are a little different. I mainly just buy anything that is a big movie or a movie I'm going to watch over and over and over again.

Wrestling is a different beast entirely. I think the best way to own wrestling media now would be to have a hard drive to stream content from. There's a reason why I would have eventually wound up unsubscribing from the Network if it continued and it's because I only ever watched the same shit. I never had a desire to go back and watch a whole PPV unless that PPV was really good. I'd rather own copies of all of the matches I like the most, but I'm not even sure where I would begin there. It would basically be like creating my own Network of sorts on a hard drive. Just matches I like the most from WWF, WCW, NWA, AWA, WWE, AJPW, NJPW, ECW, AEW, Stardom, etc.

[Log]

I've been sucked into record collecting.

I use Spotify to sample, listen in the car, at work, etc. If something really grabs me, I'll buy the record. My collections is sitting at 1,206 releases right now (LPs, box sets, singles, 10" records, double LPs, all count as a "release"). I've listened to every record I own at least once. I don't keep anything sealed or buy multiple versions of the same release. I'm in it for the music, maaaaan.

Luckily, my wife not only tolerates it, but encourages it. Both of my kids have started their own collections, too. My daughter's is mainly Taylor Swift. She does not adhere to my rule of not owning multiple versions of a record. My son just mainly wants Kiss records.

I buy a mix of new and used stuff. I'd say my new stuff leans heavily into indie rock. With used stuff, I like to go down rabbit holes, especially when it's something I can get affordably. Like, a few years ago, I was on the lookout for any Mike Nesmith solo albums (or with the First National Band) that I could find. Right now, I'm all about Willie Nelson's 70s/80s output. The only single record I've ever spent $100 on was a used copy of The Blue Nile's "Hats". Of course, like a month after I ordered it, one of my local stores had it for like $60.

I try to keep my stuff pretty organized. I have the majority of my collection in a 5x5 Ikea square shelving thing in our guest bedroom/office. Down in our tv room, where my record player is, I have this three-tier little vintage-looking display rack where I keep my current listening. We have a smaller record player in the living room where my wife/daughter do most of their listening, so there's always a few Swift records sitting there.

Of course, I wish I had more time to sit and listen to records. Luckily, the whole family enjoys putting stuff on when we're eating, cooking, playing video games, or just hanging out, so I do get to do it pretty often. I've spent more than I'd like to know on records over the years, but I do love my collection. I used to joke that my kids could sell it as soon as I'm gone, but now I think it's more likely that they end up taking it themselves and continuing to grow it. That makes me happy.

[JLowe]

As the board knows, I just moved from Austin to Philly. I moved 9 record boxes (each supposedly holding 90 records) full of my and my wife's record collection, along with an old LP carrying case that holds 40 or so. I also moved 4 comic short boxes full of 7" records. My collection is all over the map but heavy on 90s punk and indie and classic soul/R&B, while my wife's was mostly horror movie and video game soundtracks and Christmas records with the new addition of Taylor Swift. I had a perfect place in mind for my record/stereo shelves only to discover that there were no outlets in that location (along the stairs). I still have a couple hundred CDs and a couple hundred tapes.

As an example of my variety, I went to Sit and Spin records while I was in Philly for my house closing and bought a Code of Honor LP (classic early 80s Bay area hardcore), a Two-Tone comp, a sealed (but damaged) Bill Withers LP, and a second copy of John Denver and the Muppets Christmas because it had the poster included. The cashier even commented "this is quite the variety".

My first wrestling tape was a lucha comp from Bob Barnett after my first exposure to Eddy and Rey in WCW. After Ultimo Dragon and the Toryumon crew showed up in WCW, I got a best of Toryumon comp, BOSJ (with Benoit and Eddy), a Survival Tobita comp, and a joshi comp from DEAN~!. I eventually gave them to a friend after I lost interest in wrestling in the mid-2000s; he now lives in Louisville I think and is still a big wrestling and music fan (I ought to invite him here, one of his collections is wrestling-related records). I got several of the Goodhelmet 80s sets, and those are either still at the bar I used to frequent or with my friend Josh who is a huge territories fan. Only tape I still have is the WOW PPV I taped.

There is still a lot of garage/punk wrestling crossover fandom. The Inspire AD promotion in Austin is booked by a guy who booked/managed the punk club Beerland, and the crowds are about 60% punk/garage/metal folks. 

[Zakk_Sabbath]

45 minutes ago, Craig H said:

ll be honest, usually on Spotify, I'm just listening to stuff I already own physical media of already. Spotify is usually my way to just try and find new music, have an easy way to put together playlists, and...that's about it. I usually fall flat on discovering new music because their generated playlists for new punk music or new rock music almost always suck. I

It's funny you say that because I am a hostage/subscriber of YouTube Music, and I'm always jealous of the stuff Spotify puts together for my girlfriend. Our whole interface is traaaaash. When it was Google Play Music, I feel like the 'similar artists' function worked way, way better. With YTM now, its pretty bare bones - just as an example, Im a huge Sabbath nut (obviously) and whereas the former Google Play Music would feed me all kinds of cool, semi- obscure (to me) stuff in a similar vein, the new YTM is content to just feed me Pentagram and Witchfinder over and over and over. But they hooked me by including YouTube Premium - there's simply no going back for me, I can't sit through a 60 second ad for a :30 video again

[Craig H]

Yeah, I'm on YouTube Premium too for the same reason, but I don't think I'd ever use YouTube Music. It just seems like Googles way of dumping off a product they killed so it still has some kind of support. Ultimately, they probably don't care.

[twiztor]

i have just shy of 500 vinyl records. i was bought a super cheap console record player maybe 18-19 years ago and grabbed a few cheap vinyls from a garage sale. In the next few years, my collection really started from a base of my mom's, her sister's, and her brother's records. Then my (at the time) boss gave me all of his. That was probably ~200 between all of them. Almost entirely 70s and 80s rock. So i've continued that trend, piecing together a really fantastic collection that centers on classic rock. Although my wife will occasionally pick up a new one, we both prefer used. https://www.discogs.com/user/twiztor/collection?sort=artist&sort_order=asc feel free to critique.

i read recently that 51% of vinyl buyers don't listen to them. WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM?!? there's no better feeling than chilling in my basement, beer in hand, and spinning an old record. just a whole different set of vibes.

and streaming? hell nah. my mp3 player is loaded with like 50,000 songs. why would i ever pay somebody else to play music for me, when i can select exactly what i want to hear? i've spent decades curating this digital collection, procuring music, and creating bomb ass playlists. ain't no way a Spotify or YouTube algorithm can top that.

[HumanChessgame]

12 hours ago, Craig H said:

There was a really awesome period on early eBay where you could buy wrestling tapes. That's where I bought my first AJPW and NOAH comp tapes.

Wrestling tapes and CDs were a majority of my ebay purchases from 2000-2005 or so. For both things you'd often see people offering lots where there were two or three selections you'd really want then one or two other shows or artists that you weren't really familiar with but just took because they came with the rest of the pack and hoped they'd be good. I still have one of those 120 sleeve CD binders that's half full with wrestling DVDs of various quality and dubious origin and a shelf of tapes. A lot of stuff I haven't watched in forever but is still decent stuff I'm not going to part with quite yet. There was an independent video store down the street from my college that sold all sorts of cult movies (and in the pre-torrent days they had a bunch of bootleg DVDs of currently running movies behind the counter if you knew how to ask), porn, anime, and other stuff you couldn't find at Suncoast. They had a pretty decent collection of indy and Japanese wrestling there as well and I still have my clamshell tape set of the 2000 Super J cup.

Being Gen X (1981) I am also attached to my physical media and have no intention to stop buying it. I think part of it is that so much of my CD collection I bought on ebay, a long defunct music store that specialized in metal, or overseas distros and with all the trouble I went to I don't want to just get rid of them. I remember one ebay seller from Russia that I bought from several times where the CDs would take at least a month to arrive and come wrapped up in thick paper and tied with twine and covered with customs stamps that I always thought looked really retro. That and I like to actually own a physical piece of whatever it is. Not to mention the process of putting on an entire album/CD/tape and listening to the whole thing, which it seems streaming music services are pushing by the wayside. My vinyl buying is either 1. all time favorite releases I want a copy of 2. new stuff from artists I really like that I'm going to enjoy an immersive listening experience instead of background music 3. low priced used stuff I happen to find. I still buy new and used CDs but am not terribly big into the recent trend of cassettes making a comeback. I've got fond memories of making mix tapes and still have plenty of my old ones, but overall it's not as good a format as CD. I'll buy stuff on bandcamp if the digital release is just the best option but have no interest in using spotify. My phone has my entire music collection on it (probably close to 1000 albums) and I use that in the car, which is a 2015 and would have cost an extra $1000 for the next trim upgrade for a CD player. 

 

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

13 minutes ago, Craig H said:

Yeah, I'm on YouTube Premium too for the same reason, but I don't think I'd ever use YouTube Music. It just seems like Googles way of dumping off a product they killed so it still has some kind of support. Ultimately, they probably don't care.

YouTube Music was insufferable when I used it. I have a 500 song playlist I like to shuffle through my work day and their idea of "shuffle" is "we'll randomly select 20 songs and send you through those". That's if the app didn't crash.

I've been using Apple Music for a couple of years now and I'm a fan.

[The Natural]

11 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I love what this thread has turned into. I've got some facts to keep it going. I was born 10 days early. My birthday is 11/28/80. I was supposed to be born 12/8/80, the day John Lennon was killed. 

On my 14th birthday, 11/28/94, Jeffrey Dahmer was beaten to death in prison. So, happy birthday to me?

My late great Mum was born on the 8th of December 1960.

[Curt McGirt]

2 hours ago, HumanChessgame said:

ebay, a long defunct music store

I didn't know about Spotify until I started taking show trips with a buddy of mine and that's what he did with his car radio, and still don't really understand it. I guess you put in some music you like, or a genre, and the Corporation starts picking stuff for you? Anyway, I'm truly a pirate til death. What I do is get everything off Soulseek, take a thumb drive and curate my own playlist with a hundred or so albums on each, knocking off stuff that doesn't sound good in the car or I don't like enough to keep on the drive. Drive gets full to an unwieldy extent, it's on to the next one for a fresh start. The only problem is you can't organize things beyond the order you put them on, and at a certain point the drive starts dropping them in random places on the list. Also, cycling through the list while driving is a distraction so it's best to think ahead of time or be someplace rural if you plan on doing some serious jamming. I like to just drive and listen to music, frankly I probably do more of that than play the vinyl which is ridiculous but whatever. 

EDIT: Oh, and if you wanna do the radio thing you can put it on to randomize and it'll pick whatever. Not my favorite. Tends to pick different songs from the same albums, for example. Doesn't Spotify do that too?

Edited September 13, 2023 by Curt McGirt

[Curt McGirt]

13 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

On my 14th birthday, 11/28/94, Jeffrey Dahmer was beaten to death in prison. So, happy birthday to me?

Oooo shit, I just opened this thread up and this is at the top. I REMEMBER WHEN DAHMER GOT CAUGHT ON THE NEWS AS A KID. That was some freaky shit to think about when you're that young, and already into horror movies and scary stuff... probably why I have an encyclopedic knowledge of serial killers now.

[Curt McGirt]

11 hours ago, SturmCRF said:

obsessing over collectible colour variants of multiple LPs that have the same music on them

Satan help the poor people with that affliction. I have some neat colors and picture discs and stuff but I'm only a completist to the extent that I want what's pressed into the wax or plays on the reel. Hell, one of the bands I have the feeling to have all the actual LPs of is a band (Sabbat Japan) that have 1000 variants and incidental releases and if you had to keep up with that you'd have to be legitimately insane. One of their rarities is actually one of the coolest records I own, a triple 6" (heh) set that unfolds into an inverted cross. And guess what? I never listen to it and it sits collecting dust at the very back of one of my shoeboxes of 7''s. 

[Coletti]

I truly loathe the oversaturation of people using the term vinyl. I bought vinyl, I love collecting vinyl, I like listening to vinyl... How about calling it music? You love music, you like listening to music, etc... Just drives me nuts.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Coletti

[Curt McGirt]

[JLowe]

I will admit that I've bought some reissues of semi-valuable records that I already own, just to avoid more wear on them. Although in the case of The Queers "Don't Back Down" the reissue is a different mix and is mastered way too loud, so I might end up selling that. 

[Zakk_Sabbath]

2 hours ago, Sparkleface said:

YouTube Music was insufferable when I used it. I have a 500 song playlist I like to shuffle through my work day and their idea of "shuffle" is "we'll randomly select 20 songs and send you through those".

 

43 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

, and if you wanna do the radio thing you can put it on to randomize and it'll pick whatever. Not my favorite. Tends to pick different songs from the same albums, for example. Doesn't Spotify do that too?

 

I can't remember if it was iTunes or the Zune software (which I'll defend to the death, I LOVED my Zune) but one of them ended up having to create their own 'shuffle' algorithm because they found that a truly random shuffle lead to user complaints of hearing the same stuff too often - wonder if any of that is in play here

[Curt McGirt]

I've not used the option enough to totally pinpoint it but it feels like that, yes. Same albums at least. 

[Zakk_Sabbath]

34 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

Oooo shit, I just opened this thread up and this is at the top. I REMEMBER WHEN DAHMER GOT CAUGHT ON THE NEWS AS A KID. That was some freaky shit to think about when you're that young, and already into horror movies and scary stuff... probably why I have an encyclopedic knowledge of serial killers now.

Talking about weird millennial shit: I think I'm a couple of years younger than you (35) and while I definitely feared serial killers as well (along with quicksand) you know what public enemy #1 was for me back then? AIDS. That Magic Johnson special on Nickelodeon fucked me up. Since it was a kids show they were obviously skirting around the whole "IV drugs and sex is how it's transmitted" thing, so I ended up thinking anytime I touched anyone/anything in public I had a decent shot at walking away with HIV.

[AxB]

I bought a copy of Radiohead’s Creep EP on 12 inch in 1992. I still have it. I think it might be worth more now than the 99p sticker implies.

[Curt McGirt]

Don't recall that special, but I thought Nick was pretty clear in their ads and stuff that you can't get it from kissing or touching. Imagine growing up a couple years earlier before they knew what caused it...