Featured Conversation: After the Fire - Scott Dudelson Reflects on Losing His Record Collection in the Palisades Fire

Published on Feb 2, 2025

Today’s featured conversation is with Scott Dudelson, an entrepreneur from LA who lost his house and 8,000 of his records in the Palisades fire. Here, he talks about perspective and kindness as well as his losses.

First I just want to say I’m sorry for the losses you suffered. I know this is probably a very hard time for you, so I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. So you lost your house as well as your community, how have you been coping?

You know, it’s one of those things. It’s a huge shock, but I’m doing okay mentally. I’ve been living in the Malibu area for 20 years, and there’ve been a number of fires over those years, and I’ve had times when I’ve had to evacuate. I’ve had times where my house barely made it, whereas every other house survives around me, or every other house burned around me. So I’ve kind of had this, not denial, just it’s a realistic possibility living where I live. So, I’ve always accepted that that’s the risk and it’s what happened, and I’m gonna persevere through it.

How many years of collecting is 8000 records?

25 years. I started when I was about 20 years old in college. I didn’t really have money to buy CDs at the time, and CDs were still expensive. It was the early days of downloading and Napster, but I still wasn’t hip to that. So I could go to thrift stores and buy records for $1 sometimes. People would give me collections because they just didn’t want it in their house. The burden was then on me to move it from every single place I moved.

Tell me what record collecting meant to you a both a hobby and a way of life.

I’m a music junkie, and I try to listen to music from home. You know, at my previous house, I’d have music on all day. Record collecting for me started as music discovery. So at that time again, we didn’t have Spotify, We didn’t have YouTube. It wasn’t like somebody could say a band and a song and you could go find that right away, right? So for me, it was about learning about the artists who shaped the music that I was also listening to in the 90s, and in the 80s, so a lot of the old stuff. It started as music discovery, and it’s always remained as music discovery. But as I got older and started doing work, I also used it in practical ways, like time management. On a record, each side would be 20 minutes or 23 minutes, however long it would be, and I would dedicate tasks. I’d be like, I gotta work on this project, and I’m going to do it during the course of listening to this Byrds album or the first side. And after this side is over, I flip it and I move on to another task. And it really just kept for a while. I did that, and that kept the clock.

That’s a great way to manage your time.

Yeah, it was fun, and it was really effective. And then, I just love digging through boxes of records. I love seeing covers that I’ve never seen before, particularly by artists that I know. I’m like, wow, I’ve never seen this album. I love flipping it over, and I love looking at the liner notes, and I love making the connections between who played on what albums, like stuff in the 60s and 70s. I love looking at the session musicians, and then noticing a guitar sound or a drum sound, and then seeing that credit on another album. And then picking up that album, even if I don’t know what it is, but knowing that I’ve seen those names and on a number of records.

That’s a much deeper level of discovery than Spotify can offer you.

Oh yeah. I mean, the liner notes are always, always the key, and the credits. I obsessed over that because, again, it’s those connections. And especially in the 60s and 70s, there was a lot of overlap. You had the session musicians who played on a lot of records. So those sounds were transferred to a lot of different artists. And you can’t learn that on Spotify’s algorithm, it doesn’t tell you who the creators, the real creators underneath, are.

So you evacuated with the help of your ex-wife. How many records were you able to save before you had to stop?

I would estimate, I’m still going through them, but it’s probably about 450 albums, and they’re good albums.

How did you make the decision on what to take in that amount of time you had?

The short version of a longer story is this, in 2018 there was a fire I went through, and I had to evacuate, and everything around me was destroyed. My house made it with some smoke damage, and at that time what was valuable to me were my records. It’s something I went through. So there’s a fire approaching. I wasn’t in danger, but the fire’s coming. And I’m like, grabbing records. So after that experience, because I said I’ve lived in this area, and now you can’t be in denial that this is something that could happen. I started separating and making sections of my favorite records, and those records were both my favorite personal records, let’s say the mintiest, shrink wrapped, hype stickered copies of really great albums or really rare, expensive records, things that if it burns, I’m not going to buy again. And these are records I love too, but like Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, or the late great Townes Van Zandt or the 13th Floor Elevators. These are records I love, and also they’re very expensive, and I’m never buying again. I’m not gonna spend $400 on Pink Moon. I got it for like, four bucks. You know, 18 years ago, that was how I got it. But what happened? What happened was I ended up all my boxes, all my records, were at one home, and about five months ago, I had to move them all to this place I was living, in the Palisades. So when I moved I had to box them all up. And I never unboxed them, because this move, where I was living temporarily, that burned, that had all my records was not where I was permanently going to settle. That was a transition home until I finished building a house that I’ve been working on for a few years. So all the records were in boxes, and they were very easy for me to grab. We grabbed about six of them, which is what fit in the car. And I had some other, you know, personal items and things like hard drives, camera stuff that I grabbed.

So there were definitely albums that were personal to you, that you wanted to save.

I was looking through them, and as I was going, I was really excited, like, oh yes, that record is in. That record, yeah. There’s a lot that’s missing. And over the last year and a half, I was not very diligent in separating records. So the losses, there were some massive losses, well not massive. Loss of human life is massive. Losing a house is massive. Losing my fucking Time Out of Mind original press or my Jutta Hipp Blue Note sucks. They’re valuable, but yeah, I should have…I’m going to now be better and be diligent. It’s all about keeping up in anything you do. You know, if you have a routine or discipline or there’s something that’s important, you’ve got to keep up on it. Garden maintenance, it’s just what it is. And I didn’t keep up. But we had six boxes labeled and ready to go.

You were able to leave with something. How much of a priority is starting your collection again?

Music is everything to me. It’s what accompanies my life. Financially, it’s just not feasible to rebuild in the way that I had it, which is what my first instinct was, It sucks, but what am I going to do? I’m going to either have a breakdown on it, or I’m just gonna just enjoy life, and I’m gonna buy the records I want, and maybe find a new way to refocus how I collect and what I collect. I can’t have it all, you know, I got really lucky in buying it in such early days where a lot of it was free. Or it was $. So my base cost is pretty low.

But what ended up happening, which is unbelievable. It’s absolutely amazing. So I’ve got thisInstagram account called all day vinyl. And all day vinyl is all about celebrating vinyl culture, celebrating, you know, great albums, but the deeper cut albums celebrating the session musicians. And I do a podcast around this where I interview a lot of classic musicians. And so I posted on that page after the fire, I actually posted as I was evacuating, I was showing the boxes that I’m removing. But after I learned that the fire took the house I made a post and said, hey, I lost the records. I’m okay, I’m safe. I’m going to be okay. Life is good. It’s horrible, but I’m not going to be broken by it.

I got so many messages that came in. I got so many text messages, the amount of community that came around. And this is not just me, but for everybody in LA, right, unbelievable.

People are, people are beautiful. It really showed a lot. But what happened with this Instagram, which is incredible, is people were messaging me, you know, 75 or 100 people right after I did that, saying we’re so sorry for this. This is horrible. If there’s any records you want, let me know, or just give me an address, and I’ll send you a package of records. This is like 75 people, 100 people, and then over the course of January 7, when the fire was and now. So over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve been getting, I don’t know the number, but so many messages from people who want to send me records. So I don’t have a place to live. I’m bouncing between hotels. I’m storing some stuff at my girlfriend’s place, storing some stuff at my ex wife’s house, some records. But I opened up a PO Box, and I’ve gone a few times, and each time there’s, like, 50 records, 70 packages that weigh nine pounds. And I open them, and they’re amazing records. It’s like all the classics. And some people have offered me collections. There’s this gentleman and a woman in Malibu who had a collection that was passed down to them that they didn’t want anymore, and so they messaged me, and I went over and I grabbed the collection. And it’s awesome. It’s like the Cream albums, all the Pink Floyd albums, all the John Prine albums, and so much else is in there. Just really great stuff that was a core to my collection, the core that I listened to. I try to go deep, and I know a lot of avenues, but really, my core is Creedence and Pink Floyd and Tom Petty and Neil Young and the Temptations and James Brown and Miles Davis. It’s kind of left of center. So having those and all that again, is this joy.

You found a little bit of joy in all that’s going on.

Yeah, because I thought, even right after the fire, I’m thinking, how do I reframe the collection? Well, you know, I gotta buy all the Petty, I gotta buy all the Pink Floyds. I gotta buy the Creedence. I gotta buy all the Temptations, the Miracles album, all the Motown stuff that I love, and now I’m getting it sent to me, and it’s really pretty amazing, and I’m really grateful and appreciative and it’s pretty beautiful.

That’s incredible.

Oh, and record labels, so I’ll give a shout out to like Rhino Records and Universal Music Group and Fat Possum records and the Missing Pieces Group.

They all gave you records?

Yeah, they’ve all, they all reached out and said, whenever you’re ready - some of them are local in LA - come to the office and grab some records, Fat Possum sent me the full X discography. And, I mean, no one has to do anything, but the fact that they kindly offer, it’s incredible. And again, it’s not just me, it’s people all over LA are, are supporting other people.

So what are your plans moving forward? You said you have a house that you’re building?

Yeah, so I have another house I’m building which did survive the fire. A few weeks before this fire, there was another fire in Malibu, and that was very close to where my house I’m building is, but that fire created a burn scar that prevented the Palisades fire from going deep into Malibu. You’ve probably seen all the beach houses in Malibu that went down, but there’s, that’s about half of Malibu.Then there’s another path, And the only reason West Malibu did not take this fire was because of that fire a few weeks ago, which just shows that it’s absolutely crazy that in the same general area, within a few weeks, we’re having major fires. Yeah, very bad.

Makes you nervous for the future.

This experience was very crazy. And there were a lot of fires. I was in the Palisades fire, and there was one in Altadena, and there’s one in Santa Clarita, but they just kept popping up. And no matter where you went in LA, you were being followed by the smoke and the fire. I went north to Ventura and Oxnard and Santa Barbara, thinking maybe it’s safer there. And in that time, in those first few days, just fires a mile away. It was traumatizing. It was just on edge. But, you know, I have a good mindset on it in that I’m not going to change it. I’m okay. My records are lost. There’s bigger tragedies in the fire than my records and yes, so you gotta have perspective.

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