Even though I'm perfectly aware that the "reset" button on what I've dubbed "Project 3000" will be massively adjusted sooner or later, my quest has now reached 2,980 with the receipt of Manuel Gottsching's pioneering electronic album E2-E4 (currently #2967).

Since there's been some curiosity, I figure now's as good a time as any to reveal the 20 albums on the current top 3000 that I do not own. Three are actually on order via Amazon or Ebay and simply haven't arrived yet; the others are all either out of my price range (often ridiculously so) for an album ranked that low, or simply unavailable:

2417 Smokey Robinson, Warm Thoughts
2433 George Russell, Jazz in the Space Age
2593 DumDum Boys, Splitter Pine
2643 Joao Gilberto, Brazil's Brilliant/Gilberto and Jobim
2649 Artists United Against Apartheid, Sun City
2674 John Handy & Ali Akbar Khan, Karuna Supreme
2736 Trouble Funk, Drop the Bomb
2750 Julius Hemphill, Dogon A.D.
2766 The Sound, Jeopardy
2789 Nits, Ting
2797 Evan Parker, Monoceros
2798 George Russell, Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature
2834 T-Bone Burnett, Proof through the Night
2847 Sam Rivers, Streams
2884 Donna Summer, The Wanderer (on order)
2897 The Cables, What Kind of World
2906 The Stray Cats, Stray Cats/Built for Speed (on order)
2911 Albert Ayler and Don Cherry, Ghosts/Vibrations
2965 The Fugs, Tenderness Junction
2991 Marillion, Script for a Jester's Tear (on order)

I have a few questions about this, and I hope these don't seem like prying questions.

1. How long have you been doing this?
2. How much did all of this cost?
3. Where do you keep all of these records?
4. Lastly, have you listened to them all?

I don't think he likes the cost question; he ignored it when I asked on his last thread.

1. Technically, since I bought my first CD player 11 years ago. Specifically to this, I first expanded my "wishlist" to the entire top 3000 following the July 31, 2007 update.
2. I have no idea. I'm not bothered by the question, but it's not like I keep a ledger or something. It ain't a cheap hobby, even if I have been buying tons of stuff used over the last few years.
3. I keep them in my apartment - in storage drawers, large and small boxes, and an old toy chest. The top 3000 are arranged by rank, and I just finished alphabetizing my "bubblers" by artist.
4. I have absolutely listened to them all. I suppose the collecting is the main point, but I started doing this because I love music, so it wouldn't make any sense for me to buy something and not listen to it - even if I have a large, large number of CDs I've only listened to once.

I remain in awe, Harold. I had a copy of Artists United Against Apartheid but lost it in my house fire 3 years ago...if that hadn't happened, I would have lowered your number to 19 for ya.

Out of curiosity, which of these last 20 is hideously overpriced, and why?

I see this one regularly in the bargain bin - haven't bothered with it yet...

When there is a copy available, SUN CITY itself tends to go for over $200. The Sound's JEOPARDY (British first-wave postpunk) is also quite expensive. I've had Ebay bids on both that I abandoned when it became clear that there was someone out there who wanted them a LOT more than I did.

My unofficial price thresholds are as follows:

* Top 2000: pretty much no limit (the Fingers Inc. CD proved that - although it took a long, long, LONG time for me to land it at an amount I felt at all comfortable shelling out for it)
* 2001-2500: $40.00 (I did break that rule for 1/2 GENTLEMEN/NOT BEASTS, because I was so shocked to find it used on Amazon - but it was -just- over)
* 2501-3000: $20.00

Because I'd like to be able to listen to the CDs, I also pay attention to advertised condition. For me, New is always preferable when I'm ordering online, or Used-Like New. I'll only order Very Good if it's under $20 and I'm desperate. I wouldn't touch anything below Very Good with the proverbial ten-foot pole.

I've been extremely lucky sometimes. Reckless Records, a great Chicago store with three locations, keeps its online inventory regularly updated; one day I found that they had a copy of Coil's extremely rare HORSE ROTORVATOR (#2211), which had been one of those "way-beyond-my-range" albums. I immediately called and had them hold it for me. While I was waiting for them to bring it out for me that evening, I glanced over the counter at a batch of new classical arrivals that hadn't been entered into the database yet ... one of which was a copy of the original recording of Karlheinz Stockhausen's KONTAKTE (#2076). So I went home that night with two relatively high-ranking albums that I was convinced I'd never find.

$200 for Sun City? Wish I'd known that before I talked to the insurance adjuster...

when you started collecting the top 3000 on july 31, 2007 how many of the top 3000 did you already have?

Harold, if you go to the german version of Amazon (amazon.de) you can pick up a used copy of Ting by Nits for 4 euro.

According to amazon.co.uk, Proof Through the Night by T Bone Burnett will be re-released on CD on the first of January. The Price is £18 which would be a little outside your pirce range, but it might be cheaper in the States.

You can pick up a new copy of Drop the Bomb by Trouble Funk for £15 on amazon.co.uk. That would be marginally over your spending limit. I hope all this is some help to you and I,m not just being an annoyance.

A little over 2200, if I recall.

Beans, thanks for the tips. I appreciate them. It's always thrilling to see albums I want/need get reissued - I was counting the days for that PACIFIC OCEAN BLUE re-release last year.

How many total ablums do you have?

I envy you. I have two questions.

1. Do you collect only CDs or vinyl too?

2. What do you do for a living?

Well over 3,500. And once the next site update is followed by my personal update, I think it would be wise for me to slow down a bit...

1. CD only. And it's all physical product - no downloads. I'm not morally opposed or a Luddite, I'm just a physical-product guy.
2. I'm a college administrative staffer.

Do you go beyond the AM 3000 in terms of what you seek out? For instance, after the Pitchfork list came out, even if something wasn't in the AM 3000 did you go seek out what you didn't have?

Well, if you pass through Copenhagen, pop in and listen to my vinyl copy of T-Bone's "Proof Through the Night"; as I remeber, it cost me the equivalent of $6 at a bargain sale back in the early 90'es. I'd send it to you if you did vinyl as well :-)

It sounds very strange to me that SUN CITY costs that much. I think I bought my vinyl copy second hand for like $1 or something...

And I don't like it much so if you email your address Harold, I'll be happy to mail it to you.

Sorry to keep barraging you with questions, but when the next site update comes around, are you going to keep pursuing these, or just get the new albums added to the list?

Just for curiosity I checked on Spotify those 20 albums and there were only three. You got already two of them in order (the Stray Cats and Marillion ones) and the other is the DumDum Boys one.

For a long time, everything I bought was based solely on the list (or, for the current year's albums, those which were destined for the list). A few months back I started diving into the Bubbling Under pool, with my purchases falling into two main categories:

* Albums I really want, often by top artists with a lot of entries in the database (e.g., Dylan, Zappa, the Stones)
* Albums which, based on their inclusion in lists to be added in the next update, seem to have a good chance of moving up to the top 3000

My most recent set of purchases - which I've more or less decided will be my last one of pre-2009 albums until the update - offers a good example of my mindset when I'm in a record store. I acquired the following six CDs:

*Dr. Alimontado, Best Dressed Chicken in Town
*Marvin Gaye, I Want You
*The J. Geils Band, s/t
*Kool & the Gang, Wild and Peaceful
*Fela Kuti, Open & Close
*Mountain, Climbing!

I buy a lot of Sixties and Seventies soul and classic rock; the Fela was the last one in the database that I didn't have yet (the same is true for the Marvin Gaye, by the way); and the Dr. Alimontado is on my list of "potential new entries" based on its appearance on a couple of the new lists. (It also falls under my interest in weird mid-70s Jamaican music.)

Incidentally, the Dr. Alimontado album - he was a DJ a la Big Youth or U-Roy, who toasted over existing tracks - contains a great example of the kinds of unexpected discoveries and connections that often arise when you listen to a lot of music. The liner notes indicated that the original vocalist on one of the tracks is Horace Andy, the veteran who later reached a whole new audience via his work with Massive Attack. And, lo and behold, when that track came on, I heard this: "There's a man who live next door ... in my neighbor'ood ..." Holy s--t! I had no idea that the great MEZZANINE track was based on something Andy had done 25 years earlier. Wow.

You're more than welcome Harold, its just a pitty I couldn,t have stumbled across a cheap copy of Jeopardy. I gave up when I got to the Japanese version of amazon, that was fun. I,m currently working my way through the top 500 albums, which has been greatly helped by the reissues of Crazy Rhythms and Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music this year so I appreciate that little thrill you get when you realise your not gonna have to shell out a small fortune for an album.

Splitter Pine is quite cheap in Norway, by Norwegian standards at least. I can get it for you if you want.

Well, I'm sure at least a few of these 20 will still be -in- the top 3000 after the update, so obviously they'll remain on the wishlist. As for the ones that fall out, since they'll still be on the database as Bubbling Unders they'll still technically be fair game. But, yes, albums that fall below the top 3000 will become far less of a priority.

For that reason - and probably also a little because of the old "thrill of the hunt" factor - while I certainly appreciate the offers I've received here to help fill in some of my gaps, I think I'm good for now. I reserve the right to change my mind in the future, though.

One more question: Does your pursuit of the AM 3000 limit the amount of $$ you can spend on stuff outside of the AM realm that you'd like to hear?

Truthfully? I've been so focused on this for so long - and, really, there's just so much stuff already INSIDE the AM realm (come on, there's 4,650 albums to choose from!) - that the question isn't that relevant to me. I -have- bought a bunch of albums contained in 1000 RECORDINGS TO HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE that, for the time being, are outside the AM database, but other than that it's just not something I think about much.