Drew TewksburySo you think you're indie. Well, why don't you prove it? That's the provocation set forth by Chunklet Industries whose writers have penned the ultimate litmus test for indieness everywhere: The Indie Cred Test. The book is a series of ruminations, reports, and quizzes that aim to put your indieness to the test. It's a DIY affair after all. The Atlanta based group raised the necessary cash via microdonation site Kickstarter, eventually reaching their goal and hitting the presses. The book hits the stands April 12th, but LA Weekly has an EXCLUSIVE excerpt from the book specially picked for you.
Here are Indie Cred Test's Top 33 1/2 Acceptable Reasons to (Finally!) Sell Your Record Collection:
33 1/3. It's 1987 and CDs just came out. Duh.
33. You finally realized you'll never get into John Zorn and Johnny Paycheck.
32. All you need is fuckin' Led Zep 4 anyway, man.
31. You found a dead cat under your picture discs.
30. Your employer at the record store has started paying in vinyl. It's a wonderfully vicious cycle.
29. You heard on NPR that it's no longer hip to like music “that much.”
28. You've decided once and for all to not be a loser.
27. To subsidize a hipper, more cred-worthy record collection.
26. They sound all poppy and scratchy.
25. Some French guy wants to give you a house for it. [Ed.'s note: well played, Indie Cred Test, well played…]
24. It's just a buncha fuckin' jazz.
23. Your wife needs that closet for her shoes.
22. Your insurance won't cover treatment for SuperEbolaCancerAIDS.
21. Your wife needs a kidney. And not just any kidney, but a gold kidney with diamond inlay.
20. Your Russian mail order bride is C.O.D.
19. You're 60. I mean, come on. You're not going to live long enough to listen to the whole thing anyway.
18. Your financial advisor suggested that you move your money to CDs and you didn't know what he meant because you majored in bong hits and Super Mario Brothers in college.
17. You just realized you have a limited edition copy of ESPN Jock Jams on marble vinyl, signed by Stuart “Booyah” Scott, and thus no taste at all.
16. You realized that colored vinyl sounds really racist, and that's not what you're about.
15. Just because they're vinyl doesn't mean that you can melt some of them down into a sweet pair of pants. Too bad you tried anyway and now you need money to cover the extensive skin grafts.
14. You just found out you're deathly allergic to vinyl and hazmat suits make you look fat.
13. How else are you going to pay for that fancy-pants lobotomy?
12. You move once a month (to a different friend's couch).
11. We all need to sacrifice in this time of war.
10. A spiraling descent into honesty allows you to finally admit you can't tell the difference between records and MP3s.
9. Because last night's episode of Hoarders hit a little too close to home.
8. Because 400 records at ten bucks a pop…that's like 100 bucks!
7. You're joining a religious cult that reveres 8-track recordings.
6. By pulling the ultimate cred move, you now refuse to listen to anything not on wax cylinders.
5. It's beginning to take up valuable space that could be used for a collection of stamps, coins, kidney stones or deer heads.
4. A blow up sex doll collection is slightly less pathetic…and slightly less chafing.
3. You need a few hundred million dollars to get this one super-rare record.
2. You finally realized that over-consumption of collectables for the sheer sake of collecting is a waste of your finite life force.
An the number one acceptable reason to sell your record collection is:
1. You don't actually listen to the most valuable ones anyway because they suck…because that's what record collecting is; it's the arbitrary assignment of value to things that are rare, and the rarest and therefore most valuable things are generally rare for one reason: because they suck. Or else they're extremely valuable because they're both rare and very good, in which case you don't listen to them because you don't want to damage them, which means they're essentially useless, which also sucks, and which also means that they're of no actual value. So you might as well sell them. And while you're at it, might as well sell the whole fucking thing, because as much as you enjoy listening to your top 500 favorite albums on vinyl, what are you, a fucking baby? You need to swaddle yourself in a sonic womb for the rest of your life? You can get money for those things and spend it on, like medical attention for starving children in Haiti, you dick bag. Why not sell it? Do you actually think you're exempt from pitching in just because you don't “work for the man” and you have enough “integrity” to “get along just fine” with “only” making like 30 grand a year, and you've “worked really hard” for a long time to compile this massive, useless collection of shit that nobody cares about and, further, doesn't actually help anybody? I dare you to look yourself in the mirror and say you're doing this for any reason other than your own self-obsessed neurotic compulsion to exclude yourself from the rest of human society by spending years of your pointless existence digging through musty crates, reading and talking about this stuff, getting high on drugs that were sold to you by a network of murderers, putting some stupid black (or color or picture) disc on a machine, listening to a bunch of guitars go “woo woo woo” and going “wow, man, I did a great job finding, buying, and subsequently owning and displaying this for the eyes and ears of all whom I elect into my circle of the lucky chosen,” like it's some kind of a badge of honor that precludes you from the inescapable existential misery of life and renders you, in some small but important way, immortal.
Sell it, you delusional motherfucker, because: Cha-ching! Money!
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