This was originally posted on the IDM Mailing list back around 1999 as well. I don’t remember who made it, but its yet another clipping (and list), cracks me up every time I read it. First, an explanation of the word trainspotter. It was originally coined for these guys who would hang around train yards, watching trains, and looking for numbers they had seen before and the like. Not a very social, but nonetheless intelligent pursuit. It eventually got co-opted for use for hardcore music fans of the same nature, who know all the records, stand and watch the DJ play, and generally obsess over a genre of music (usually either IDM or DnB).
10 ways to know if you’re a trainspotter:
1. You know all the Warp catalogue numbers off by
heart
2. You find yourself chatting up a girl at a club and
saying ‘…this record is using the Apache break. You
know what the difference between the Apache and the
Amen is don’t you? Well, let me explain….’ and then
being surprised when you see her walking out with your
best mate 5 minutes later.
3. You have the Skam frisbee
4. You were in the front row next to the speaker when
Aphex Twin played the Sandpaper disc at Disobey.
5. You get a black eye after spilling your pint on the
deck’s at Metalheadz trying to sneak a look at that
dub plate Grooverider’s dropping.
6. You boast to your mates about being onstage in the
Aphex Teddy Bear suit.
7. You wake up in a cold sweat after a nightmare about
Skam re-issues.
8. The guy in the local record shop knows you by your
first name and stops talking mid-sentence to other
customers to serve you.
9. You agonise about indexing your singles by label or
by artist.
10. Your name is Lance (sorry Lance!)
*a bit of explanation about #10, there used to be this guy on the IDM list named Lance McGannon, he basically owned every IDM record (amongst a dozen other genres as well) ever released, and was basically like a human version of Discogs.com. Whenever people would bring up obscure release reference questions and such on the mailing list, Lance would answer them like an encyclopedia. A true trainspotter.
Ha ha! Love this list and think I may have seen it back in the day. Number seven kills me!
It’s amazing how far away from this type of culture we seem to have gotten. Warp doesn’t really release a lot of stuff in this vein anymore, and the next generation of labels (i.e. Merck, Schematic, U-Cover, Expanding, etc.) seem to be fading.
Good thing music isn’t disposable as I can pull any of these great records off the shelves.
Looking forward to the Deru on Ghostly and the Secede and Kettel on Sending Orbs….
Loved Deru’s release on Merck and I really do need to get caught up with Sending Orbs, as I only have a couple from that catalogue, and the artwork from them is exquisite.
But yeah, this is true Kemble. I collect music (mostly cds for me)like some folks collect art, or model trains or whatever, and I listen to the stuff, a lot. Still, though I might personally fit slightly in this “trainspotter’ category, you gotta be able to have a laugh at it, right? I mean, I’m sure there are some folks who HAVE actually woke up in a pool of sweat after nightmares of rare Skam reissues, and really, that is kinda funny, in a tragic sort of way perhaps.