Former Black Flag frontman, spoken-word artist, and notorious opinion-haver Henry Rollins has penned a heartfelt and oddly apocalyptic ode to his beloved vinyl collection in his latest column for LA Weekly.
“Every fiscal quarter or so, I meet with the accountants who handle my affirs,” he writes. “I always ask if I’m doing anything financially irresponsible. They say no, but from the receipts, I seem to exist on small expenditures for essential items, and then the rest of my spending is almost entirely on music.”
Rollins then recounts his attempts to explain to his beleaguered fiduciary managers that his record collection is in fact an investment and won’t one day “be half-lifing in a picked-over used store, heaped on top of the thousands of Burl Ives albums that are turning the Spike Jones records underneath them into a petroleum-based goo”.
“One day, I tell the accountants, when the going gets rough, I can … and that’s where my idea runs out of steam, because I don’t know what I would do with my records. More importantly, I don’t know what I would do without them,” Rollins adds.
From there, the alternative icon goes on to explain in great detail how the Earth is essentially being choked out by human beings, who are themselves constantly finding new and innovative ways to kill each other and how everything is terrible and there’s no hope for any of us.
“Climate change is basically Earth on its back, involuntarily kicking its legs at the sky. It’s almost completely dead but still thrashing around,” Rollins writes. “Preening precariously at the top of the heap, humans don’t even want humans around!”
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What does all of this have to do with Rollins’ vinyl collection? “The point I am making is that I buy records because I medicate with music. It makes the day-to-day horror show of existence endurable. It’s like waking and baking but with a different stash,” he explains.
“This is what I can’t explain to the accountants, because it is way too intense for lunchtime conversation. In a way, my records are an investment — an investment in the preservation of what’s left of my sanity.”
“I am less an audiophile than I am a vinyl cat lady. You can never have too many records, aren’t they all just so wonderful?” Rollins concludes by declaring that it is in fact “you, humans” who have driven him to “vinyl addiction”. We can relate to that.
