Welcome to the first month of the HMO Challenge 2013! I’m attempting to half my previous year’s spending on music based on last year’s spending, so I’m giving myself £50 to play with this month. I don’t know how much other people spend per month on music but, for me, that’s a tight budget.
January is a tough month. There’s usually good stuff showing up in sales: online and in the shops. All the magazines and websites are also full of tempting best-of lists. On the other hand, new releases tend to be thin on the ground and Christmas usually leaves me with enough new music to amuse myself for a while.
I have, as always, a very long wishlist. Here are the things that are tempting me most this month:
Pentagram – Relentless and Day of Reckoning I’ve been listening to the First Daze compilations heavily for the last few weeks so these guys have to be a strong consideration. I could probably pick up both of these, their first two albums, for £10-£15 through the Amazon Marketplace.
Cirith Ungol – Frost and Fire, King of the Dead and One Foot in Hell Early Metal Blade band with awesome album covers taken from Michael Moorcock books. If I order from the US I can get these for £3-£4 a piece so these are strong contenders. No idea what this band sounds like but Fenriz of Darkthrone rates them and that’s good enough for me!
Metallica – $5.98 EP Garage Days Re-Revisited I’ve wanted this on vinyl for a while. Shouldn’t set me back more than a tenner on Discogs. I do have it on the Garage Inc. CD so maybe I can hold off on this. For a while, at least.
Enslaved – Eld and Below the Lights (Vinyl Reissues) I spotted some really appealing vinyl reissues of some Enslaved albums at the Earache shop. They are about £14 a pop which isn’t bad for new vinyl, but would still put a sizeable dent in my budget.
The Cult – Pure Cult Not having any of The Cult in my collection seems like a major gap and Aaron at WhatOwnsMe reckons this is a great place to start with them. I imagine I could get this pretty cheap. A fiver in my local FOPP maybe?
Girlschool – The Bronze Years The most tempting “new” release of January 2013. Especially considering my current NWOBHM kick. This compiles the first four albums the band recorded for the Bronze label. I’d mainly be buying this to add CDs to existing vinyl copies so this could probably wait.
In addition to these wishlist items I’ll be keeping an eye out for any deluxe editions that happen to show up in the sales (deluxe editions can often be found pretty cheap at my local FOPP). I’m especially interested in the Dio series and buying some of the Thin Lizzy and Queen ones that I’m still missing. But the price would have to be right.
So, as you can see, limiting my spending to £50 is going to force me into making some painful decisions! I’ll do my best. I think concentrating on second-hand shops and the sales are maybe the best way to go this month. Let me know what you think. Anything here I must buy or must avoid? What’s on your wishlist for January?
Stay tuned. At the end of the month I’ll be posting a Buying Round-Up of the month’s purchases. We’ll see how I get on…
I don’t limit my spending that low, but that’s probably a huge mistake on my part.
The Cult disc is great, but also keep your eyes open for a similar but different one called Pure Cult – The Singles. It has an updated track listing, remastered, blah blah, but it’s essentially just as good. Take whichever one presents itself affordibly!
I paid $50 for Garage Days on CD, back in 1996.
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Thanks for the Cult info. I saw an edition of it that had a bonus DVD too. Do you know anything about that one? I certainly wouldn’t want to pay over the odds for a compilation though
$50?! And did Garage Inc not come out quite soon after that?
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They did a Pure Cult DVD with all their videos…I would imagine it’s a double pack.
And yes. Garage Inc came out a few years later. Sigh.
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It’s always the way! It puts me off buying some of the rare stuff… there always seems to be a reissue as soon as you’ve bought it. Expect a reissue of Headless Cross sometime soon in that case!
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Oh I do hope so. It doesn’t seem that any more Ozzy-era deluxes are coming (or they would have already?) so I can only hope for Headless Cross!
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I’d be up for Headless Cross and Tyr certainly… and I’d probably like revisiting the other Tony Martin ones too.
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All but Forbidden!
I wonder if the demand is there, though. For Headless, I could see it.
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Definitely for Headless… and I think Tyr has become a bit of a cult one too. They were certainly a bit ahead of their time doing the whole Viking thing.
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And they were trashed at the time for doing it, too. Martin didn’t want to sing about Satan anymore, and still wanted to sing about some bad dudes. Made sense to me! Great album.
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I loved it! I was a bit disappointed they didn’t do more Vikingy stuff.
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Dio was gonna do his own thing on Dehumanizer obviously, and by the time Martin came back, I guess Vikings weren’t on vogue anymore!
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True. It’s a shame. I guess they didn’t realise that Vikings are always cool! 😀
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I think so. In I found a picture of a past Sausagefest, where Meat was wearing a Viking helmet. In his pants. And Zach was sucking off one of the horns!
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Sounds like a cry for help to me!
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Strangely, I was looking for the photo today, and where did it go? I can’t find it! Maybe it was all a fantasy?
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Someone’s destroyed the evidence…
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I hope the Meat Man shows up here to explain himself!
I really don’t know where that photo went! I was gonna post it.
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What happens at Sausagefest stays at Sausagefest.
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£50? That seems low, even for trying to rein things in! However, that’s still £600 for the year, and that’s a good chunk of change, right there. I wish you luck on this one, my friend, it will definitely be tough.
What will you do if you go over, in a month? Is there a penalty box for you to sit in and feel shame? (you NEED to see Slapshot). Or does an overage in the current month deduct from the next month’s £50? Or will you buy ahead (without telling us) and just add the overage to your next month’s £50? Or will you report on all overages and at the end of the year just see your GOAL versus your ACTUAL?
Thanks for the shoutout, there! I assume that anybody clicking on that WOM link is gonna be pretty frickin’ surprised, especially if they’re expecting something more like your fine site. I’ll whisper them to boredom. 😉
Pure Cult rules. Mike can tell you that the remaster is fine, but I say there’s only one to have, and that’s the old Pure Cult. The first one. That’s the track list that works. (also, I generally dislike remasters). You oughta be able to find it cheap, and it’ll be a WELCOME addition to what’s in yer ears, lemme tell you. Turn that shite UP and RAWK!
As for the rest? Damn, man, it all looks good. I’m no help on choosing, there. But defo buy new-to-you first, before you replace formats of something you already have. Sales bins can be your best friend, it’s how I survive.
My wishlist for January? Well, there’s some hold-overs from my Christmas list that I didn’t get, mostly Rollins-related. And he has a new book coming SOMETIME, so whenever that happens, I’m there. There’s a new GBV EP I’ve ordered, because I cannot go without the next thing from them. But I’ve already got my Valentine’s gift for February on its way, the 7CD Wynton Marsalis box from the Village Vanguard. That juicy baby will keep me going for many pseudo- (because this winter is PATHETIC) winter nights.
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The budget each month will vary a little depending on last year’s spending but I’m going to keep it close to the £50 mark each month. It’s seems like a good amount, not TOO restrictive! It’s a good chunk of change though, as you say, but I think I can live with £600 a year (if I manage it).
No penalties for failing. Just the ignominy! I’m think it’ll be running total of the goal amount and the actual amount. So if I overspend this month it won’t affect next months total goal amount but I’d have less to spend if I want to come in under the total budget. Likewise though, if I spend less one month I’ll have more to play around with the following month.
No worries about the shoutout, I’m sure people will love having a nosey at your goodies! 😉
Cheers on the Cult info, I’ll just need to see what’s out there and what’s cheap. I don’t like to spend a lot on comps because if I like it I’ll just end up getting their albums anyway.
I think I’ll defo be concentrating on new-to-me stuff but we’ll just have to see how it goes. I’m going to try to go with my musical moods rather than buying a band just because they are a band I collect. I seem to be buying less reissues as time goes on anyway. A lot of them just seem increasingly unnecessary or excessive.
You’ve got you year off to a good start with that Marsalis set anyway! What a find! Can’t wait to see the vid.
HMO
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Maybe what you should do is set the limit, and do your best to meet that in the month. If you go over consistently, month after month, what you’re really looking at is the actual amount you would spend in a year on music when forcing yourself to be selective, regardless of the goal amount. It may work out to being pretty close to the goal you’ve set, or more, but it’ll be an accurate picture of your monthly expenditures. We’ll know next January.
If people have the patience to sit through my poorly-shot, whispered videos of all my crap, power to them, for sure.
The Marsalis is gonna rule. I am so ready for that to get here.
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That’s a good way of looking at it. Even if I go a bit over budget I’ll still have spent a lot less than in 2012 so I won’t beat myself up too much!
This monthly format will hopefully make it easier for me to post about all my purchases more accurately anyway. Last year I kept missing/forgetting stuff so the running totals became a bit meaningless. This year they’ll be spot on!
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