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Music

My Stupid Interview with the Couple Behind My Wife's Stupid Record Collection

One good blog is worth a thousand thinkpieces (or something).

My Husband’s Stupid Record Collection was met with fury of a thousand thinkpieces invoking the “problematic nature of gendered music fandom” and the like. But, as they say, one good blog is worth a thousand thinkpieces (or something). So rather than espousing his opinions on the matter, Serg Ornelas looked over at the thousands of records his wife had accumulated over her career as a DJ (among other things) and got to blogging himself, starting the site My Wife's Stupid Record Collection.

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Unlike the protagonist of Husband, Serg is an avid music consumer, a trusted OG of the rap internet, and a hilarious dude. He runs the podcast Stay Hatin, firmly dedicated to rap music (“because we don’t give a fuck about that hip-hop shit”). But he only really cares about rap and metal. So Stef hand picks things that are out of his wheelhouse.

I spoke to them on the phone last week about the project, the difference between their site and the original, and Stef’s experiences as a woman in the record collecting universe.

Noisey: Why’d you decide to start the site?
Stef: It was Serg's idea.
Serg: Yeah I think I was looking on [record nerd message board] SoulStrut and somebody posted it, then there was commentary on Slate and there were postings looking down on her as justifying that whole shit of “women don't know jack about music and they just learn shit from their boyfriends” or whatever. There was a specific tweet that said "would you be sharing this as much if it was ‘my wife's record stupid record collection?’" and people were like "oh no that would be sexist" … you know what? Fuck that, I could easily do that.

You were like “my wife has a stupid record collection!”
Serg: Yeah, totally. And the thing too is like, she's going only through 1500 records in alphabetical records and this dude has some pretty shitty records. Who wants to listen to Adam Ant? I thought it would be more interesting but I still wanted to keep the cluelessness of the woman … like she doesn't know anything about music! I have some understanding but that's why I didn't want to review things that I knew or particularly liked.

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It would defeat the purpose.
Serg: Yeah. So I set a couple of ground rules. Also our records aren't organized in alphabetical order. The first couple, I made her leave the room when I listened to them because I didn't want any influence. With the Larry Heard record she started dancing, I was like "you have to get out."

Did you say "our records" before?
Serg: Yeah, we merged our record collections a while ago, but Stef still by far surpasses anything that I have. When I moved in with her I was like "holy shit", I had a box of maybe 200 records. I didn't have a turntable for a long time.

Stef, you should probably chime in here and say how many records you have and why you have them.
Stef: I think it's safe to say somewhere over 5000. I've been buying records since I was little but I started DJing in the late 80's and that's when I really started buying records and acquiring things. When I was publishing The Vinyl ExchangeI was getting a lot of promos and records to review. Meeting people and connecting with labels, that added to my collection too. I never switched to Serato and I don't DJ out as much as I used to, but I'm always looking for what new rap is on vinyl. My regular party is rap, punk, and metal and I don't have as much punk as I would like to have, so I've been buying old and new punk just to fill out my collection. My tastes run the gamut and that's been terrible for my wallet.

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The important point here is that you have a fuck ton of records across a number of genres and Serg is violently myopic about his taste.
Stef: Right, I'm not handing him any underground hip-hop or black metal or punk rock for the most part. At least not at first. I also don't agree with the idea of that blog being sexist at all. The woman even explains it, which a lot of people don't read, that it's kind of a fun, stream of consciousness type of writing. And that's what Serg likes about it too—you don't have to do research, you don't have to be an expert so people don't get angry at you or whatever. I thought it would be fun to make him listen to music he thinks he doesn't like. But to be honest, the first record, the Mr. Fingers, I felt bad. I looked at his face, he looked really sad. I felt terrible!

So are you trying to pick out stuff he might like?
Stef: I know he's not gonna like any house music, but I think he can find some merit, even if he hates something … he has been listening to them carefully, and I've been impressed. If he does find merit in something, "this part was good then this came in and ruined it", at least he finds some kind of musical merit to a genre he doesn't particularly like.
Serg: I have to sit there and listen to this shit so I have to find some redeeming quality of the 10 minutes I'm wasting of my life.

Have you gotten any feedback yet?
Serg: Mostly our friends and whatever DJ's we know … there was one kid on Tumblr and was like “this is Serg doin his WWF thing, he's gonna shit on stuff, that's expected of him.” I was like dude, this is the most honest thing I've ever done on the internet. There's no agenda. He also said I was reinforcing the role hating on things, hating on the taste of a woman -- based on one post, me hating on house music—but at the same time, I have no say on what's coming at me. If anything, I've given her all the power. I have to sit there and take it.

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But this isn’t a gender-neutral scene.
Serg: To an extent … there are still women nerds who are into records but they're outnumbered by dudes.
Stef: I realized how many nerds were into records when I started going on Soulstrut and meeting the nerdy types. When I was coming up, it was the guys in the record pools, the guys in San Francisco, these are hood dudes. They weren't gangsters but they were like dudes that grew up in the city or in Daly City that played rap music, a lot of Filipino mobile DJ’s that went to the same shops that I did and played the same music I did. Then I got into all different kinds of music later and started digging for breaks, then I met the sort of typical white nerd we're talking about.

What about women?
Stef: Yeah I don't really know any. (laughs) When I was young, when I was in junior high, going to the record store, my friends who were female, we were looking at album covers and saying "which one is the cutest?" It didn't mean we loved the music any less but … you know, what are their names? Let's read the liner notes, look at all the pictures. When I was young, I had a few friends and a cousin who were into it that way but they kind of grew out of it and I never did.

But as a woman that's into records, you've been in the minority the whole time, whether it was you amongst mobile DJs or you amongst crate-diggers.
Stef: Always. Throughout all the different scenarios.
Serg: It's like comic book collecting. It's a lot of fucking nerds. I like music and I like buying records, but I don't give a shit about like "oh I got this record because the cover's slightly different.” That's cool but I'm not gonna buy the record three times. Who gives a fuck? I just buy music I like then I'm gonna listen to it a bunch. Sometimes you run into people who seem to buy music for the rarity of it and that drives me up the wall. I mean, women do collect things. It's not like they don't. But for some reason, record collecting, and comics, it tends to be so dude oriented.
Stef: Especially with hip-hop with finding the original samples and breaks, it takes a degree of obsession that most women I know would not want to spend time on.

It's kind of like circular logic though, it's like being a Black quarterback 15 years ago. You have to work so much harder for people to notice you, it's easy to get frustrated.
Serg: That was kind of why I thought about doing this… there aren't gonna be that many people who are gonna have the ability to do this with their wife's record collection. I was thinking maybe more copycats would pop up but who else is out there? There aren't that many.
Stef: If there is a woman out there with a big record collection, I want to find out who she is and I want to be her friend!

You can't spell "Skinny Friedman" without "EDM." He's on Twitter - @skinny412

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