From cassettes to CDs to 8-tracks, music has had a variety of platforms over the years, but according to collector Geoff Koch, records are by far the best.
“Nothing sounds like a record,” said Koch, sitting in the room dedicated to his collection. Records spread from wall to wall, ceiling to floor. One side of the room is taken up by a record player and two humongous speakers.
A record, he said, transfers sound vibration directly into the wax, instead of recording them electronically like a CD. “When they reproduce the vibration that was recorded, it’s like the band is standing right in front of you,” he explained.
The room represents only a portion of his collection. “Only the stuff that I play,” said Koch. In the basement are more, including 10 boxes of 48s and Koch’s first turntable from the 70s, which he’s too scared to take out of the box in case the rubber belt snaps.
Koch began collecting when he was only 14. Music runs in the family. His mother had a record player near the kitchen table and two brothers had turntables. Koch took up the habit as well, bringing his budding collection with him when he moved out at 18.
Koch’s collection grew when he spent some time as a DJ in Port McNeill.
Surprisingly, when companies stopped producing records in the late 80s and early 90s, Koch’s collection grew even more. “People knew I was a collector, so they would say, ‘Oh, you want mine? Nobody plays them anymore,’” he explained.
At its high point, Koch’s collection boasted over 5,000 records, but lately he has been working on cutting it down. “I’ve got way more than anybody really needs, but I’m trying to go through them and get rid of some you can’t play anymore, or I don’t listen to,” he said. He’s already sold off or given away more than a thousand.
Koch’s records cover all the bases, from country to classic to pop to jazz. “The only thing I don’t really listen to is opera,” he said, “and I never really was a rap fan for some reason.”
He even has a small cabinet dedicated to modern house and electronic music. “I have trouble playing them though, because my speakers are so big that when you put them on, the deep base makes the records jump,” he laughed.
His collection is kept in a makeshift shelf divided into smaller squares. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, classical music and jazz music each have a square dedicated to them. The rest are arranged alphabetically, from Abba to ZZ Top.
At the same time he is culling records from his collection, Koch is always searching for more. “I’m always told, if you go to the economy store don’t bring home anymore records, but once in a while I do,” he said.
With such a large collection, there isn’t much he’s still looking for. According to him, he already has all of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, and 27 different Rolling Stones albums.
Now, he tries to look for obscure names he’s unfamiliar with. “I just look for names I’ve never heard of,” he explained. “They’re not easy to find, because not a lot of people bought those. They just bought mainstream.”
For Koch, many records represent some sort of memory. Led Zeppelin was his first concert in 1972, and remains one of his favourite bands. A record from 60s band the Churls is signed by Powell River’s own Sam Hurrie, who used to play with them.
His oldest ones are over 100 years old and his most valuable ones are pristine copies of famous Beatles albums such as Please Please Me and Magical Mystery Tour.
Koch also has a special binder that holds unique albums he’s found, such as the Lynyrd Skynyrd record Street Survivors, which was pulled off shelves after some of the members died in a plane crash, and Alice Cooper’s School’s Out, which came wrapped in a pair of paper panties.
Records don’t involve much upkeep, said Koch. He brushes them off before he plays them and makes sure to keep them in an inner sleeve. For a while, he was scared of replacing the needle on his record player if it broke, but that problem was solved once he found and bought eight of them at a RadioShack. “That’ll last me until well after my lifetime,” he laughed.
Mostly, the challenge is finding the time to play them all, he said. He tries to pick records from different sections of the shelf and loves when guests come over with new suggestions.
“That’s one of the drawbacks with my way of collecting, that I play them all the time. They’ll wear out and eventually skip,” explained Koch. “But with this many records, I don’t think that will happen in my lifetime.”
