DJ Jim Q's Playlist: Treasure

While I’m well aware of Australia’s deep and rich history of incredible music, I was delighted to learn that The Saints, one of my favorite Aussie bands, was from Brisbane specifically. This month’s CreativeMornings theme is Treasure, brought to us by our fine friends from the Brisbane chapter. And a quick trip over to Bandcamp led me to a roster of great bands from the coastal city like the Violent Sohos, The Riptides, Custard, Adele and the Chandeliers, and Nice Biscuits, just to name a small sample. As you would expect, Brisbane is a treasure trove of fantastic bands and further digging will be necessary.

Music discovery has always seemed a lot like treasure hunting. When I was a young explorer, my maps were simple. With no internet or 24-hour TV, clues to finding music were scarce. My earliest discoveries were limited to radio and my older sister’s record collection. It was through these finite sources that I unearthed such treasures as Hall and Oates, Van Halen, Billy Squier, AC/DC, The Gap Band, and Loverboy (okay they can’t all be gems). Soon MTV replaced the radio and my access to new music expanded when I started to trade magazines and records with my friends. I still recall swapping my Iron Maiden tapes for King Diamond records, a decision I still regret. For years, this word-of-mouth, friend-to-friend collection sharing was the majority of my musical exposure.

The summer before my freshman year of high school my family moved to a more urban area on the East Coast. This meant I could ride my bike to the mall and browse the records whenever I wanted. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the best era for record stores, especially the chain stores located in the malls. Everything was pretty ubiquitous, mainstream, and expensive, especially for a kid whose sole income was from mowing the occasional lawn. Friend-to-friend sharing was still the main source for finding great music.

Around this time I met a kid who was a DJ, like a Jam Master J, Jazzy Jeff, Eric B type DJ, and in 1989, that was uncommon. We became fast friends. He got me into DJing and initiated my life long relationship with vinyl records. At the time, records were considered archaic. Very few music stores carried vinyl and almost no new vinyl was being produced outside of DJ-related genres and small indie releases. So looking for records became a hobby, or more like a hunt. Fortunately, some of our older friends were getting drivers licenses and this unlocked a new level of treasure hunting. Our weekends were spent driving from record store to record store looking for the rare shops that still actually carried vinyl (most of it used). We would dig through crates in flea markets and yard sales looking for diamonds in the rough (and there was a lot of rough). After a day of hunting, with stacks of old LP’s under our arms, our fingers black from sifting through the countless milk crates and cardboard boxes, we would gather in my friend’s basement to check out our bounty. We would stay up all evening listening to records, sampling beats, creating makeshift remixes, and talking about music. Over time, my friend’s basement started to look like a king’s vault, filled with records instead of gold. Towers of vinyl leaned in on us from all sides, every surface had a stack of records on it, it was fantastic. Vinyl, at that point, outside of collectors circles, was virtually worthless to most people. This was the era of the compact disc. People would put ads in the paper trying to get rid of their old record collections and we would gladly answer the call and haul it all back to the basement for consumption. As they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

This golden age lasted for quite a while, well into my college years. One day my roommate asked me if I had seen a website called Napster. We all know what happened next, but it’s still impossible to overstate how much the mp3 file sharing ecosystem changed our relationship to music. All at once, anything you ever wanted to listen to was just a simple search away. It was incredible. I remember spending staying up all night searching for obscure recordings that were impossible to find in the real world, and there they were, one click away. This free-for-all coincided with the proliferation of music blogs, which flooded the internet with people sharing their knowledge and fanaticism around music. It was a different type of treasure hunting: no longer would you have to drive 30 minutes and sift through 20 boxes of mediocre records to find a couple of decent picks. It’s now less about looking for a rare find and more about sifting through a ton of fools gold to find the genuine treasures. With increased convenience, enthusiasm around new discoveries has waned a bit for me. The hunt just isn’t quite as thrilling. That said, I do still enjoy discovering new music. And pulling these playlists together each month has been a great catalyst for continued treasure hunting.

Oh, what sonic rewards await your discovery in this month’s playlist. The theme is treasure and these precious gems are sure to rattle any pirate’s booty. From Rhinestone Cowboys to Grillz of gold to Diamonds and Pearls, you will be enriched by these sonic jewels. Enjoy the bounty and indulge in the riches found within this month’s playlist.

Thanks for listening, I hope you discovered a new gem. If you enjoy these playlists I would love to hear from you — give a hollar on Twitter and be sure to follow me on Spotify. See you next month with a new treasure trove of tracks.