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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
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