ARC in the Times

Besides the regularly fun & overwhelmingly cool WFMU Record Fair, one other event has quickly jumped up to the number two spot on the short list of Best New York Record Shows. And that's the two annual sales that go on to support the Archive of Contemporary Music during late spring and late fall every year. Founded in 1986 by Bob George, the ARC is a not-for-profit archive, music library and research center. The purpose is to collect, preserve and provide information on the popular music of all cultures and races throughout the world from 1950 to the present. And they're doing a damn fine job of it. Keep an eye on this space for announcements on their upcoming shows this year. The next one is in June.

The following story ran in today's NY Times:

If It Rode the Airwaves, It’s Probably Here
by David Gonzalez

Bob George’s office smells of cardboard, wax and ink. A soulless sort might dismiss it as a dusty, musty funk, but to music lovers of a certain age (middle and up), it is a glorious bouquet, familiar to anyone who has ever dug through the crates.

The collection, housed in TriBeCa, includes celebrated and obscure recordings made around the world since 1950.

It smells of records. Tons of them. They hang from walls and are stacked on shelves. They beckon with wild covers, corny covers or blank covers. Some famous ones are signed by the artists, while obscure ones have been written off.

They have all wound up at the ARChive of Contemporary Music, which Mr. George helped to found and still directs on White Street in TriBeCa. He bills it as the largest collection of popular music from around the world and recorded since 1950, with more than two million sound recordings on tape, compact disc and vinyl. Last month, he entered a partnership with Columbia University to allow the archive to be used as a research and classroom resource.

You want rockabilly? Well, the first dozen recordings on Sun Records, including some signed by Johnny Cash, hang proudly on one wall. Feeling in the mood for Fela? Another wall displays covers of the late Nigerian superstar. And of course there are lesser known gems, like Fearless Iranians From Hell, or “Miss Calypso,” which was recorded in 1957 by a very young Maya Angelou. The collection of unlikely calypsonians also includes a record by the Charmer, now known as Louis Farrakhan.

It’s all there, from Aerosmith to Zappa, and religious recordings he files under “God,” plus all sorts of how-to albums. The collecting credo is downright Joycean.

“We’re like Molly Bloom,” Mr. George said. “We just say yes.”

Bill Adler, a writer and former record company executive, sees an elegant simplicity at work.

“What Bob has done is to successfully make permanent in the modern world an entire culture that was designed for impermanence and disposability,” said Mr. Adler, himself known for his funky collections of holiday music. “Bob George deplores the planned obsolescence of all that stuff and its fragility. His idea was, is there a way to save it? All of it. All of it!”

Actually, it’s two copies of every recording, as well as any variations on label, cover art, notes and the like. Yet when Mr. George first approached libraries in the 1980s about housing the archive, the best he got were puzzled looks.

“Nobody wanted this material,” he said. “I had 47,000 recordings, which I thought had some value. Somebody had to save this. But people had a hard time accepting commercially released sound recordings as valid cultural artifacts. I mean, it’s like trying to convince somebody tapioca is good. They either like it or they don’t.”

The only things some libraries wanted back then were the recordings he had made of Laurie Anderson, like “O Superman.” That was art. But he saw an equal value in records that came and went unnoticed. After all, someone had thought they were worth recording.

Mr. George had come to New York in the 1970s after studying art at the University of Michigan. He had a fellowship at the Whitney Museum of American Art, then went on to record Ms. Anderson and others. Later, he wrote a well-received discography of punk and new wave music. As his reputation grew, so did his record collection.

He and a friend set up the archive themselves in 1985 when it was clear that no established library was up to the task.

Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones guitarist, has been one of the archive’s more generous supporters, having endowed a blues collection that has allowed Mr. George to purchase rarities, like old Robert Johnson 78s. Other musicians have been enthusiastic about the archive, including Nile Rogers, Youssou N’Dour, Paul Simon and David Bowie, all of whom serve on the board of advisers. So, too, do two music-loving filmmakers, Jonathan Demme and Martin Scorsese.

Dan Zanes, a musician best known for his albums of children’s songs, recently made a large donation from his own collection.

“It’s important that we take recorded music seriously and treasure what we have,” said Mr. Zanes, whose own albums reflect a great respect for various American and ethnic musical styles. “As much as I say the live experience is paramount, recorded music is how a lot of us learn the songs we play live. That was my first inspiration. I wasn’t born by the time Leadbelly died, but I was able to listen to his records.”

The longer Mr. George kept at it, the more he grew concerned that the future care of the archive needed to be assured. Earlier this year, he and Columbia forged a partnership that eventually may include finding a permanent home uptown for the archive, which includes books and musical ephemera. For starters, it will be used as a resource.

“The idea is they can integrate this into their courses and we could supply the musical component,” Mr. George said. “Say somebody is studying the Depression. We could supply Dust Bowl ballads and music written by people who actually experienced it. John Steinbeck is one kind of artistic expression or chronicle, but so are singers who might offer another view.”

Even before the Columbia partnership, the archive — as well as several databases run by Mr. George — had been providing useful information to musicologists, musicians and music companies. Filmmakers have also relied on the archive, like the time Martin Scorsese asked him to find the Italian song whose melody inspired the ’60s pop hit “I Will Follow Him.”

“I went to Little Italy and hummed the song to a lot of old guys,” Mr. George said. “We finally found a guy who knew. He told us it was ‘La Chariot.’ We found a copy in an archive in Milan.”

How the archive will continue growing is something of a technological challenge. Since more music is being sold online, a staff member may have to be hired to do downloads, rather than spend a weekend trolling flea markets.

“I believe this will always be valuable, either as nostalgia for the physical object, or as a primary source,” Mr. George said. “You can’t love digital music, but I like the zen of it. You own nothing, but you still have the music. And as you get older, everybody experiences that.”