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From: "B. George" <[log in to unmask]>
> Everyone -
> ARC tries to save every popular music recording, regardless of  quality. 
> Our collection is well organized and half of our 2 million  recordings are 
> catalogued.  No one can judge quality or importance in  their own time - 
> some are just really good guessers.  Why would anyone  in their right mind 
> save five Bert Sommer LPs?  But that's what Ang  Lee wanted to hear for 
> his Taking Woodstock film.  Sad to say, we had  them all.    A story we 
> tell to illustrate our Molly "yes, Yes, YES"  Bloom approach -
>
What does "ARC" stand for? To me, this means "American Record
Corporation"...an entity which ended in 1938!
> Emanuel Boundzeki Dongala wrote a wonderfal short story called "Jazz  and 
> Palm Wine".  In it, the earth is invaded from Outer Space and the  advance 
> ships land in Zaire.  Aliens conquer the world.  Spacemen  explore the 
> various cultures and societies on this planet and decide,  quite rightly, 
> that the only things of value are palm wine, a West  African intoxicant, 
> and Jazz.  The tipsy, hip and benign rulers make  Sun Ra the president of 
> the United States and John Coltrane the Pope.   "A Love Supreme" replaces 
> the "Gloria" in the liturgy.
>
I'd vote for beer (Canadian, of course!) and the popular music (often
jazz-based) of the 1900-1946(+/-) era...!

> We view the past through the artifacts that survive, and future  societies 
> (spacemen?) will reshape the past, creating their own  version of our 
> culture(s).
> So the ARChive collects and preserves everything that’s issued, hoping  to 
> define ‘what happened’ in terms broader than those usually  described by 
> selectiveness or availability.  Taste, quality,  marketing, Halls of Fame, 
> sales, stars and value are as alien to us as  they are, well, to Aliens. 
> The ARChive's job is to make sure "A Love  Supreme" will be there when it’s 
> needed.
This is pretty well the reason I collect (accumulate?) 78 rpm phonorecords?!
My current holdings (c. 55,000 different examples) represent around 2% of
all the 78's ever issued (my estimate?!); the point is that I KNOW examples
of each record I own still exist! I suspect in a very few cases I have the 
last
remaining example of a phonorecord...?!

Steven C. Barr