Confessions of a Completist
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I’m listening to In a Silent Way, the Miles Davis album that opened his electric period, but I’m not really listening. Reviews of his other albums have distracted me. Which should I try next? He recorded a lot, it is intimidating, but if the past is much guide to the future, I will eventually get to them all.
Whatever the word suggests, being a completist comes in degrees. For some, it is enough to acquire and appreciate everything an author has published, or everything a musician has officially released. But the real fanatics want every diary page, or every bootleg and radio broadcast. Even for this most extreme variety, some stuff may be beyond the pale. Thom Jurek says, of one Miles Davis CD that’s filled with crappy “radio transcriptions,” that it is “no place to end up, even if you are a completist.” But for the extreme completist the boundary is way out there. There’s an Aerosmith live bootleg from 1978 that was “taped using a mono home recorder” and has “disappointing sound quality”—surely big red flags. The reviewer says “only a completist would want” it. Completists take that as a recommendation.
Completism might be motivated simply by a desire to find good stuff: good writing, good music, whatever. When I read Michael Chabon’s novel Moonglow I was enthralled, and immediately bought all of his novels—and his short story collections, and his essay collections—because I wanted to feel that feeling again. The sleuthing that completism motivates can reward this desire. Bob Dylan is famous for leaving some of his best songs unreleased; their sweetness (or bitterness, as the case may be) was available, before the internet, only to certain fanatics. This kind of completeness, though, doesn’t move one to finish every page. Some of that Michael Chabon stuff, I started it, and it didn’t do it for me, and I put it aside.
Another kind of completism is motivated by the social standing that esoteric knowledge can provide. If you know about something great that few others have heard of, that’s cool. You’re the Nirvana fan who has liked them since Bleach. But finding those hidden gems can require a completist impulse: one needs to look at what has been overlooked. The impulse might not go to your core; you might wear an interest in rare tracks loosely, ready to abandon it if a faster path to coolness presents itself. But for many it is an end in itself, a part of their identity: that’s who I am, the kid who knows a bunch of awesome music that’s off the mainstream radar.
These varieties of completism, I regard as superficial. Unlike Dylan, the Beatles were not prone to discard their best stuff. There’s no doubt that the officially released versions of “Help!” and “Day Tripper” are the best takes. But there’s a kind of completist, not yet discussed, who will still want to hear the others. A bootleg exists of unreleased Beatles material, including vocal-less versions of “Help!” and “Day Tripper,” on which “John Lennon’s rhythm guitar...can be fully admired and appreciated”; these cuts, the reviewer admits, are ones “die-hard Beatles completists may require.” But, really, why? The overall experience of listening to the unreleased version of “Help!” cannot be as rewarding as listening to the official version, no matter how much clearer Lennon’s guitar is. What’s the point?
The theme of “this is mostly crap but the completist will need it” recurs. Son House’s performances on the Complete 1969 Recorded Works “aren’t as strong as similar sets he recorded in the 60s,” so this collection is “one for the completist”—but “serious fans will find it necessary.” A misleadingly-titled Greatest Hits album by blues-guitar legend Michael Bloomfield contains “undocumented, low-quality recordings... [with] some characteristically inventive lead runs”; “only a completist would need it.” Shake, Rattle and Roll (the album, not the song) by Big Joe Turner is a “curious gaggle of poorly recorded live tracks, late period studio tracks, and what sound like Atlantic outtakes.” Still, “Turner is in fine vocal form throughout, no matter how lame the backing.” The verdict? “It's really not worth the effort to acquire unless you're an obsessed completist.” The completists for whom records like this are “worth the effort” cannot be those looking for a diamond in the rough.
It sounds a little kooky, but I think these completists are in something like love. Love—in the best case—involves finding every feature of your beloved beautiful, and endlessly fascinating, including features others overlook or consider unremarkable. Also part of love is being moved to discover and to appreciate features of your beloved that you have not yet beheld: an unquenchable curiosity. To be in love, that is, is to be a completist about your beloved. And so maybe, also, to be a completist about something is to be, in a way, in love with it. The bootleg where John Lennon’s guitar work can be clearly heard, you will want to hear it, even if that guitar’s importance on the finished track is minor—because you don’t care; because, in fact, nothing about the band’s music is truly minor in your eyes.
An earlier version of this piece was posted May 2023.
The completist mindset is an interesting one. On one hand, I have to certainly been there - have wanted to consume every last iota of content from a specific artists/writer/etc.
I find it much harder to do with books than my music though. Literature is so time consuming, and while there are indeed authors whose ouevres I've voraciously consumed, I often hit a point where I get burnt out. Or, maybe, my book conscience starts to ping me, reminding me that there are so many other books/Authors out there as well.
You're missing an important Completist: The one who wants to understand the artist better. My reading/listening to/watching everything produced by the artist, they think that they can have a better sense of the what, how, & why of the artist, even when he swings and misses, bunts, or hits a foul.
It's not an act of Love (unless you equate Love with knowledge), but of Groq.