How Racist is Your Record Collection?
 

I listened to an MF Doom album earlier and didn't flinch once. Does this mean I'm not racist?

i have a muslimgauze record, does that count against me?

I've got Four Tops, Eddie Murphy, and Prince in there. I do need some rap records though.

Geto Boys


'nuff said.

Well, I've got lots of records by groups of different ethnicities, mainly stuff from the middle East and Japan, but I also do have an Arghoslent record, and they are most definitely racist but their music is an awesome power/black metal hybrid. I don't agree with what they're probably singing about, but the lyrics are unintelligable anyway.

Arghoslent rule \m/

I don't own any NSBM.

So I'm kind of a huge racist.

Yeah, NSBM is weird though. I got a friend to translate the lyrics to a Burzum record once, thinking it was gonna be full on 'Birth of a Nation' stuff, and they just said it was all about goblins and trees. The same with Graveland from Poland. Really racist in interviews but their songs all seem to be about mist. Gabber can be really racist - or at least a lot of people into it can be.



I don't think listening to records by black people counts either way though. I mean, look at Eric Clapton.

I own this album and it fucking HATES my cracker ass.

Let's just say I disowned Metallica when they released the black album, and I've still got the Beatles' white album in my collection.

Lots of white. Some black. Some asian. That covers everything right?


Edit: Does Yo La Tengo count as hispanic?

I think they prefer to be referred to as a 'latino' band.

Not racist at all because I'm too disorganized to arrange by category and do instead by most played artists. So I don't have a "jazz section", which would inevitably lead to dividing things by race. Instead my two most played artists, Sonic Youth and Sun Ra are side by side, just like the keys on Stevie Wonder's piano (which you have to assume he always judged by height rather than color)...

Geto Boys is black?

I could really use some hip hop records, but my record store only carries new releases (AKA 808s and Heartbreak, Common's new album, and a fuckload of others I have no interest in purchasing.)

I have a pretty healthy supply of jazz, though.

Ah. I'll keep that in mind.

i think atleast 90% of my vinyl is black artists, my collection is so unracist that it's actually kinda racist

There's Jews up in that band, so you're OK.

My record collection is BOXXY-approved.

I won't lie....it's mostly a lotta white people in my record collection. But I've got nearly a complete collection of records from the Tien an Men 89 label which includes "punk rock" from places like Iran, Madagascar, Nepal, many of the -istan nations, etc.

I have complete discographies of some plain-ass white bread shit, i.e. Bright Eyes, Pavement, Belle And Sebastian, M. Ward, but that's about as white as it gets.

I have a ridiculous amount of old blues albums, jazz, hip hop, etc, tons of the afrocentric jams, Brand Nubian, Public Enemy et al, some reggae but it's not really a genre I can specialise in. Been stepping up my funk game lately too.

So overall I could have a black guy come over and be like 'hmm ok'

HAHAH YEAH!!

thats what i love to see

once someone (a white person) whilst looking through my music collection, thinking he was clever, asked me why i had so few records by black people, it was one of the stanger displays of ignorance i've seen, as i own about 400 or 500 records made by black people.

I don't really like black music post the civil rights movement. freedom fucks with the funk.

Inappropriate.

Tom Waits, John Fahey, just white excuses to listen to black music.

Not accusing you of this specifically, but I know people who think they can relate to certain people of other cultures just because they profess to know a thing or two about the music that other people like....or perhaps, the music that they think such people would like.

Some dudes I know convinced the owners of this roadhouse out in the boonies to let them play records there one night. Now, this is a "roadhouse" like the kind you might've seen in the movie Roadhouse starring Patrick Swayze. Its regular clientele are your salt-of-the-earth folks who work their own farms which surround the place for miles in every direction. The clientele is perhaps 90% white and 10% Mexican-American. All the Mexican migrant laborers who drink either do it at home or somewhere else...not here! Yet, inasmuch as this clientele might seem ruler-class or manager-class, this is all small-scale farms for the most part, and some of them really do struggle to stay solvent at least. It's not like anyone strides into this place in alligator boots, fancy gallon hat, and giant gold-plated belt buckle or anything.

So, these friends of mine had been on this huge kick for over a year collecting old country & western records, and they'd amassed so many, that they even compartmentalized a collection of just the more depressive/depressing kinda C&W....like tearjerkers from Tom Jones, Porter Wagoner....even all the way to the extreme of Red Sovine. At first, it was just a sorta novelty thing to them, but then they really started to get serious about it.

They got to thinking that this stuff was so great, and that so many people at this roadhouse would enjoy hearing it while they tip back beers after a hard week of working their fields. Of course, these farmers also trudge through some daunting balance sheets, too.

"Ain't you got any AC/DC?" one of the farmboys asked.

The DJs declined, explaining that they had only brought depressing country records. That turned into the beginning of a lecture about how great and overlooked this old stuff was, and how it was better for this environment than AC/DC.

Before long, nearly the whole bar was up in arms about the music. They felt that my friends had overgeneralized about country people and what kinda music they would or should like.

"We don't come here to get more depressed," one guy yelled. "We come here to see friends, feel better about life, and cut loose to some AC/DC! So take your country & western records back to the city where you came from!"

It was seriously like an angry mob.

I told my friends they better not ever try to foist their ideals of what black people would or should like on black people.

I think the more reasonable point about Tom Waits, etc is that they give white 'alternative' types an excuse to listen to black music.

The white 'mainstream' w. classes, at least in Britain, listen to little else but black music, be it hip hop, r'n'b, garage, whatever. It's only the so-called alternative sector that seems to have such a hang-up about it.

Obviously any dive bar prefers AC/DC.

Except TV On The Radio!

what point is that?

also, i'd take ac/dc over any country and western ever made

Good point P. And to think that Dear Science came out the same month that Obama was elected.

This one:

are those guys supposed to sound like black people?

My record collection goes from Burzum (batshit mentalist fascist bleugh) to prime Archie Shepp (in kill-whitey mode). I've not made room yet for some of the more militant dancehall (I have a problem with homo-murdering lyrics - sue me) or Oi punk (facking 'ell, we white, innit?). I love soul, reggae, techno, hip-hop etc.

I am Switzerland, basically. You may laugh now.

Um...I have a Stevie Wonder record. That's about it.

Mine's nearly all white, plus some Japanese stuff.

If you're looking at my vinyl alone, there's very little white people. I am obsessed with buying as many ancient gospel records as I can find.