With LPs, CDs & guitars galore, his collection is music to the ears

Vinyl records are like catnip to Shailesh Shinde. The 44-year-old mechanical engineer from Nigdi, who has revelled in several genres of music since his childhood, is passionate about his formidable collection of analog sound flat discs. While he has smartly catalogued his stash to produce on demand an LP (long-playing) or EP (extended play) record in seconds, he admits to having embarked on a few failed missions to count his possessions. His best effort was counting around 10,000 records, and there were still a lot more staring at him from the numerous cabinets and cardboard boxes in his house.
But that doesn't stop Shinde from purchasing at least 10 to 15 records every month even now. His stockpile, which straddles the English and Hindi music spectrum, is fed by pickings from his contacts at Juna Bazaar, online retail sites and whatever his knowledgeable suppliers at Fort and Lamington Road in Mumbai fetch him.

Shinde digs his collection of double live albums from the 1960s to 80s, especially Thin Lizzy (Live and Dangerous, and Life), Scorpions (Live in Tokyo), The Allman Brothers at Fillmore East, The Who (Live at Leeds), Wishbone Ash (Live in Chicago), Deep Purple (Made in Japan), Iron Maiden (Life After Death), Rory Gallagher (Irish Tour) and the platinum bestseller, Frampton Comes Alive. He has hundreds of such double live albums. His collection of jazz and fusion is vast too, with entire album discographies of stellar artists like Stan Getz, Johnny Hodges, Joe Pass, Allan Holdsworth and Steve Morse. He has a particular affinity for Miles Davis, with 60 albums of the jazz musician adorning his shelves.

Alternatively, his musical armoury features albums of Bollywood music, soundtracks of vintage regional films from the 1940s to the 1990s as also the renditions of Bhimsen Joshi, Ghulam Ali, Shobha Gurtu, Pandit Jasraj and his eternal favourite, Mehdi Hassan. He aspires to acquire Hassan's entire discography.

Shinde began his hunt for records around 10 years back. Vinyl had long made way for audio-cassettes and compact discs. Two shops, who had negligible sales and were hence engaged in transferring music from records onto cassettes, collectively sold him 7,000 LPs and EPs in mint condition for just Rs 60,000! He painstakingly collected another 4,000 records over time from Juna Bazaar, buying them for a maximum of Rs 50 then. He recalls picking up the Ijaazat album, composed by R D Burman and sung by Asha Bhosle, for a mere Rs 11. Today, it would fetch a price of around Rs 20,000, but Shinde isn't selling.

Shinde says good-condition vintage records are hard to come by these days and some rare ones never sell under Rs 3,000 each.

Shinde isn't partial to vinyl alone. He also has around 5,000 original audio CDs, an equal number of audio-cassettes and even around 2,000 original movie blu-rays & DVDs, including Satyajit Ray's rare criterion blu-ray edition of Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito and The World of Apu) which he procured from a contact in Brazil.

Besides, Shinde owns an assembly of 20-odd record players — some that play regular vinyl records and the others being the spring-operated, hand-wound ones that play the 5 mm thick shellac records. He also has a few high-fidelity spool players and 30-odd spool tapes. As if that weren't enough, he has around 24 delightfully-crafted guitars, some of them self-tuning, kept nicely in wooden cases.

The buzz is that vinyl is making a comeback, but Shinde believes it never went out of fashion. Not in the West, at least. "Vinyl remains the mainstay for music connoisseurs there, thanks to its high resolution and musical warmth. It's only the poorer sections abroad who go for music CDs and digital media," he says. He deplores audio and video piracy and says that the internet revolution has killed proper music with free downloads, making the artist and the music company mute victims.

For all his efforts, Shinde doesn't think he would be able to listen to his entire collection in this lifetime. "Sometimes, I start getting a kick only after listening to an album 50 times over. Though I have purchased this collection, I can only consider myself its custodian. It will be someone else's tomorrow," he says.

Quite like the voracious diner at an eat-all-you-can restaurant, Shinde's appetite for music remains insatiated. But even the restaurant will cater only till the kitchen shuts. For Shinde, someone's constantly serving up the music.