Gimme Shelter

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

At The Archive’s webpage, Paul Mawhinney highlights the scope and impact of the collection, writing:

If you started listening to the music in this collection on the day you were born, and listened every minute of every day, by the time you finished, you’d be 57 years old. That’s a lot of music. And it’s a lot of history.

Agreed.  Make one wonder how a place of higher education, like Miami University, can drop millions into expansion and construction, but apparently can’t consider the historic preservation of this music collection and the enrichment it would bring to the public.  In my head, I keep returning to what Mawhinney said in the documentary about how the Library of Congress had assessed that of Mawhinney’s recordings from 1948 through 1966 only 17 per cent of that music is available to the public currently.  Incredible.  That means, roughly, that 83 of every 100 songs recorded in those twenty years isn’t/can’t be listened to anymore.  In a discursive sense, it illuminates how the vast majority of those chords, harmonies, rhythms, expressions, behaviors and opinions committed to record–and given quite a chance to circulate–never make it in the end.  What facet of life did they reflect and reveal, narrate and question?  For Americans, just like our appetite for the easy, lifeless mp3, our sonic genealogies are compressed, reduced, and commodified.

A larger, HD video is also available here at director Sean Dunne’s site.

Cheeseburger In Paradise

David Browne for this week’s Rolling Stone (RS 1054) writes about the return of vinyl as a desirable (and, increasingly, profitable) medium for listening to music both old and new.  According to the article ‘Vinyl Returns in the Age of MP3‘, the groovy format has jumped 15 per cent in sales from 2006 to 2007, and could double in sales to 1.6 million pressings retailed by the end of 2008.  Recently spurred by creative marketing strategies (Radiohead’s release of In Rainbows in special discbox pushed 13,000 copies, Elvis Costello’s April release of Momofuku was available only on LP for the first few weeks), people realizing how shitty MP3s actually sound, and a good bit of nostalgia, vinyl is staging a definitive comeback.

I can certainly agree.  This past year I purchased at least ten copies of both favorite albums and new releases on vinyl.  The sound is irreplaceable, even compared to ripping CDs with Apple Lossless or AIFF.  Plus, I really enjoy listening to entire albums; I love the ritual associated with appreciating album art, taking the time to set the needle and turn the disc, as well as appreciating the warmth vinyl innately brings to the house.  That, and I can empathize with Browne’s state of mind:

There’s also something less technical lurking behind vinyl’s mini-renaissance.  Whether it’s inspecting a needle for dust or flipping the record over at the end of a side, LPs demand attention.  And for a small but growing group, those demands aren’t a nuisance.  “There’s nothing like putting the needle into the groove of a record,” says country singer Shelby Lynne.  “it’s about as real as you can get.  You got your vinyl, your weed, your friends, and while you’re rollin’ they’re pickin’ out another record.  We’re all taking music for granted because it’s so easy to push a button.  I mean, come on, music should be fun.”