Welcome to the Compulsory Blog devoted to audio archives.
As a public library employee, I often have the pleasure of informing a patron of my library's massive collection of LPs. And not quite as often, I have the un-pleasure of informing someone of our abandonment (long ago) of other recording technologies--cassette or 8-track tape, for example. Of course, CDs are here to stay, aren't they? ...aren't they?
Each of these formats has its own strengths and weaknesses--but discussions in this area tend to be kind of dull, generally. It is not my intention to add to that slowly-growing body of literature. I am more interested in the contents of the recordings. That statement sounds a lot more smug than I intend for it to--perhaps I should say, I am more interested in the contents of the recordings, and the more oddball, the better. Of course, I am also interested in historically important or otherwise unique recordings, and especially those that have been rescued from some especially perishable medium, like a wax cylinder.
My interest in this corner of the recording museum grew out of a recording that I bought about 10 years ago, one I bought completely on speculation--it was called Early Ragtime: Roots and Offshoots, and it contained one track from the 1920s from a group calling themselves the Manila String Circle, a string band from the Philippines. That they played horribly out-of-tune by western standards was obvious, but what was just as obvious was that they cared about as much for western tuning standards as I do for boats--which is to say, not at all.
Here was a recording that, by most standards, should have been consigned to the musical slag-heap of history--but I'm so glad it wasn't. Return here to read more about things that probably should have been lost, but weren't, as well as things that are being done about that--especially in public libraries, but also elsewhere.
As a public library employee, I often have the pleasure of informing a patron of my library's massive collection of LPs. And not quite as often, I have the un-pleasure of informing someone of our abandonment (long ago) of other recording technologies--cassette or 8-track tape, for example. Of course, CDs are here to stay, aren't they? ...aren't they?
Each of these formats has its own strengths and weaknesses--but discussions in this area tend to be kind of dull, generally. It is not my intention to add to that slowly-growing body of literature. I am more interested in the contents of the recordings. That statement sounds a lot more smug than I intend for it to--perhaps I should say, I am more interested in the contents of the recordings, and the more oddball, the better. Of course, I am also interested in historically important or otherwise unique recordings, and especially those that have been rescued from some especially perishable medium, like a wax cylinder.
My interest in this corner of the recording museum grew out of a recording that I bought about 10 years ago, one I bought completely on speculation--it was called Early Ragtime: Roots and Offshoots, and it contained one track from the 1920s from a group calling themselves the Manila String Circle, a string band from the Philippines. That they played horribly out-of-tune by western standards was obvious, but what was just as obvious was that they cared about as much for western tuning standards as I do for boats--which is to say, not at all.
Here was a recording that, by most standards, should have been consigned to the musical slag-heap of history--but I'm so glad it wasn't. Return here to read more about things that probably should have been lost, but weren't, as well as things that are being done about that--especially in public libraries, but also elsewhere.
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