Home Grown: First-edition Blue Note rarities and mint Bang & Olufsen speakers

Home Grown: First-edition Blue Note rarities and mint Bang & Olufsen speakers

Because every record collection has a story.

Home Grown is our series profiling you lot and your excellent record collections. Taking our cue from the brilliant submissions to the #VFRecordCollections thread on Instagram, we want to share a little of your hard-earned love for vinyl with the world.

Each week, we’ll be profiling a different collector from around the world and finding out what makes them tick. Want in? Send us a pic and a few words about your collection to [email protected].

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Eric Murray

Location: Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Number of records (approx.): 300

How long have you been collecting for?

I started collecting by inheriting my father’s collection when I was about 14. This was around 1995 at the time my father transitioned from vinyl to CDs. He has always had an intense love for music and it’s likely where I developed my interest. I’ve since been visiting local record stores like Luna Music since before I could legally drive a car.

What part of your set-up are you most proud of?

Over time, I’ve also slowly inherited many pieces of my father’s hi-fi system as he has upgraded components. This includes his Bang & Olufsen Beovox S75 speakers, which are easily the one thing that I get the most comments on from visitors and from commenters on my Instagram posts. They are very rare, and very hard to find in mint condition with the optional stands. So, not only are the phenomenal speakers, they also hold great sentimental value for me, as they belonged to my Dad and were the speakers he had in his system as I was growing up. I’ve literally been listening to this pair of speakers for my entire life!

What record(s) are you most proud of?

I’m particularly fond of the small collection of first-edition Blue Note records that I own. I’m a graphic designer by trade and became infatuated with the Blue Note label in college as I discovered jazz and Reid Miles, who designed all of the Blue Note album covers during their heyday. I was also very into the punk / hardcore / emo scene as a teen in the 90’s and own several original and out-of-print albums from small indie labels like Polyvinyl and Jade Tree.

What does your record collection mean to you?

To me, my record collection offers a way to experience music in a more deliberate way. Being in my middle-thirties, in the middle of my career, with a wife and two young children in 2017, I often feel like life is moving by at break-neck speed. My record collection offers me a respite from that hectic-ness and affords me an opportunity to slow down, unwind, and connect with an art form that I’ve been appreciating since I was a very young child.