June 1985 • The ARChive of Contemporary Music (ARC) is launched by Robert George (B.George), the current director, and David Wheeler (1957–1997), a record collector and author with a masters degree in Library Science from Columbia University. The physical collection begins with 47,000 sound recordings collected by Mr. George accumulated through his work as a DJ, a producer and author. At this point Mr. George is providing all of the funding, the ARC operating out of his loft, an 800 sq. ft. third story walk-up in Tribeca.
December 13, 1985 • ARC is incorporated as a not-for-profit educational corporation by the State of New York. A five-member working Board of Trustees is established with Mr. George as its President. ARC is the first independent institution dedicated to preserving popular music ever created in America.
November 24, 1986 • ARC granted 501 (c)(3) not-for-profit status by the Department of the Treasury.
December 1986 • Publish a one-page newsletter, The News From Nowhere, to inform supporters, the industry and the general public about our activities, and to offer commentary on recently donated new and notable recordings.
January 1986 • ARC launches with a party at the Limelight nightclub in Manhattan. The celebration features performances by Laurie Anderson, Arto Lindsay, Suzanne Vega, David Johansen, Daniel Ponce, UTFO and Peter Holsapple, with DJ-ing by producer Jellybean Benitez. Hosts included Debbie Harry, Frank Zappa, Bill Murray, Lydia Lunch, Joey Ramone, Lenny Kaye, Andy Warhol, Doc Pomus, and William Burroughs. Late Show bandleader Paul Shaffer played piano in the VIP room. Many of these artists are friends of Mr. George, and graciously donated their time in support of this new idea. Mark Kostabi donates the poster image.
September 1986 • Isaac Tigrett, founder of the Hard Rock Café, donates computers and audio equipment for the ARC office.
October 1996 • Research Memberships offered to the recording and publishing industry. Tommy Boy Records becomes our first Research Member, looking for authoritative information to assist in locating rights for sampling used in creating hip-hop recordings. A graduated membership for the general public also inaugurated.
November 1986 • A Board of Advisors is created, comprised up of well-known music professionals, to lend their names and monetary support to the ARC. First Board member is the legendary producer, John Hammond. Other early board members include Ellie Greenwich, Todd Rundgren, Jellybean Benitez, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Jerry Wexler and Nile Rodgers.
May 1987 • Provide contacts along with DJ and booking services for the first Art Against AIDS Benefit, hosted by Liza Minnelli.
August 1987 • Deeded “The Jeep Holland Collection,” an important group of more than 100,000 essential rock, jazz, blues and pop recordings. Jeep is a legendary Boston-based collector, the founder of A-Squared Records, who’s house was sinking from the weight of his collection. One treasure was the first Rolling Stones album in mint condition, signed by the entire band.
November 1987 • Newsletter becomes a quarterly, expanded to four glossy pages.
August 1987 • Software developer donates $50,000, our first major gift.
October 1987 • DJ Francois Kevorkian donates materials from the legendary dance club Paradise Garage when it closes down. Francois continues to be a major contributor offering thousands of dance recordings every year.
December 1987 • ARC prints our first informational brochure with an image, Unidentified Hit Record, donated by artist Edward Ruscha. Unidentified Hit Record.(pastel on paper, 22-1/2 x 28-5/8, from the collection of Teresa Bjornson, photo by Douglas M. Parker). Logo taken from the last page of the British magazine, the Face, pirated with permission.
January 1988 • Provide research and soundtrack performers for the film, The Last Temptation of Christ and director Martin Scorsese joins our Board of Advisors.
May 1988 • Collection trip to North Africa to collect materials and record author Paul Bowles reading his stories.
June 1988 • Begin regular music programming at the World Financial Center, booking musical acts for the Winter Garden and dance bands on the outdoor plaza. Other 1988 DJ and music supervision services provided to benefits for Artist’s Space, BAM, Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA) and Creative Time.
November 1988 • Awarded grant through the Media Program of the New York State Council of the Arts to catalog the 1500 sound recordings by visual artists in ARC’s collection.
May 24, 1989 • Provides DJ services for the Don’t Bungle the Jungle benefit at BAM in support of saving the Brazilian rain forest. Provide lyrics of song, “I Got You Babe,” for Madonna and comic Sandra Bernhard to perform.
October 1989 • ARC database of over 25,000 music industry professionals purchased by research member Time-Life, to provide contacts for a new start-up magazine, Entertainment Weekly.
November 26, 1989 • ARC moves to a third floor, elevator building in Soho. The 2600 sq. ft. space allows us to consolidate our collection, for the first time all of our Rock and Pop recording were in the same place. Musicians on our Board pitch in to buy new shelving.
December 4, 1989 • Rockrose Development hosts our “Raise the Roof” dance party benefit, with celebrity DJs, including Nile Rodgers, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Penn & Teller and Christian Marclay. Lou Reed joins the Advisory Board.
1990 • Begin a series of articles around LPs in the ARC collection for the re-launch of Creem Magazine titled “Attic Cuts.”
September 1990 • First research project for the Microsoft Corporation, providing details on all recordings released in the US for the previous year.
February 1991 • Keith Richards joins the Board of Advisors and funds the Keith Richards’ Blues Collection. This is the first specialty collection started by a Board member. Mr. Richards, a passionate devotee of early Blues music, continues to donate annually to this sustain this collection, now numbering over 12,000 Blues recordings.
March 1991 • Rockpool, a major promotional distributor to DJs, closes and donates 30,000 twelve-inch discs, mostly dance singles.
August 10, 1991 • Donations of recordings are so plentiful we inaugurate a record sale to get rid of triplicate copies (we keep two copies of every version of all recordings). Sale a great success and the London Time Out Guide begins listing our sale as a thing to do when in New York.
June 1991 • New Research Member Rolling Stone Magazine uses ARC to scan 31 covers from the collection to illustrate their upcoming “100 Best Albums.” Renting and scanning cover art continues to be a major source of earned income for ARC.
July 1991 • ARC saves 10,000 plus LPs from being destroyed as the NBC Music Library is scheduled for disposal. For decades this material was used for needle drops, the technique of using recordings for snippets of music played in real time, during live radio and television broadcasts.
July 1991 • B. George is the music contributing editor for the first issues of Benetton’s Colors Magazine. Issue one is a world music timeline (It’s a Baby! July 1991), “Hybrid Music” (Immigration, #2 199?) and “Teen Idols” (Evolution, #3, March 1993).
October 1991 • Laurie Anderson headlines our Fifth Anniversary Party, hosted by Academy Award winning Director Jonathan Demme and DJ’d by Fred Schneider from the B-52s.
Summer 1992 • Film consultation earns us credits in Robert DeNiro’s Bronx Tale and Tom Hanks, That Thing You Do.
July 1992 • Invited by the government of Morocco to attend a series of rehearsals and concerts, by various Bedouin groups and traditional musicians, to mark the 500 Anniversary of ‘La Reconquesta’ in Marrakech, and a final performance at the Seville World’s Fair.
August 1992 • ARC picks up over 14,000 LPs donated by the Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., the largest ever de-accession of sound recordings from our National Library.
September 1992 • Release our first recording, MAS! A Caribbean Christmas, a CD on Rykodisc. MAS! remains in print for 10 years and a great example of what can be accomplished using rare and out-of-print material discovered within the ARC’s collection.
November 10, 1992 • Benefit Party features soul singer Ann Peebles. Hosted by David Byrne with Dj-ing by Super DJ Dmitry Brill of Deee-Lite. Party attendee David Bowie is convinced to join the Board of Advisors.
March 1993 • First ARC music tour offered to Members, the group traveling to the Festival de Musica del Caribe in Cartagena, Colombia.
April 1993 • Research for Jonathan Demme’s Academy Award winning film, Philadelphia.
May 1993 • ARC attends the 12 annual Tejano Conjunto Festival and does research at the Guadeloupe Cultural Center in San Antonio.
May 1993 • Begin to regularly supply LPs for Dave’s Record Collection, a feature on TV program, Late Night with David Letterman. Stopped after Dave begins throwing sleeves at end of an on-air segment!
Summer 1993 • Research includes tracking down music for Willem DeFoe and the Wooster Group theater, fact-checked numerous books, including Patti Romanowski’s biography of Annette Funicello. ARC’s director elected to the Association For Recorded Sound Collection’s committee awarding the Excellence Award in music scholarship.
1993 • B. George lecture, “Introduction to the ARC.” WOMEX, Berlin, Germany.
March 1994 • Located master recordings and publishing data for Ken Burns’ PBS documentary, Baseball.
May 1994 • Major research project providing data for Muze, a New York-based company supplying electronic inventory software and informational kiosks to music retailers.
August 1994 • Present two Finnish folk groups, JPP and The Maria Kalaniemi Group, at Fez Club in Manhattan.
November 22 , 1994 • Benefit featured Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed performing a rare concert of duets to benefit the ARChive.
January 1995 • Microsoft Corporation hires ARC for a year-long project to digitize album covers. This involved creating an electronic photographic database of six thousand classic LP and CD covers for Music Central, a production CD-ROM and website. The ARChive was chosen for this job over other competing institutions, including the Library of Congress, because of the completeness of our collection and our organizational skills.
May 2, 1996 • Open house at our new 6,000 sq. ft. location on White Street in Tribeca, a ground floor space and basement with our own entrance. Chambers St. continues to house our collection of World Music.
Aug 9, 1996 • Friend and long-time ARC volunteer Scott Laucius is killed in a freak accident in the East Village – a great soul with an odd take on everything, who will be missed.
February 13, 1997 • The benefit this year, despite the actual tally, was dubbed our 10th Anniversary. This elaborate dance party featured celebrity DJs Nile Rodgers (who also hosted), Fred Schneider, Matt Dillon with pals Cameron Diaz and Joey Altruda, Monica Lynch, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Todd Oldham
April 1997 • Jerome Levinson donates the contents on his entire store, 22d Street Records, when he retires.
June 1997 • Launch ARC website, designed by Scott Stowell, for many years the head designer at M&Co. [Archived version up and running @ arcmusic.org/old]
September 1997 • Mark Kramer donates 19,000 records from the Robert Hall Library of Sound Effects.
June 1998 • Wendy Newton, the founder of Green Linnett Records, made a gift of her personal collection of 1,000 folk fiddle and accordion LPs.
November 18, 1998 • Benefit Party this year was the Premier screening of Jonathan Demme’s concert film, Storefront Hitchcock. Robyn Hitchcock performs live, joined by Peter Buck and Michael Stipe of R.E.M., who commandeered the block in front of NY’s Film Forum and performed outside for over an hour! The evening ended with drinks served by bartender, Cameron Diaz.
1999 • Begin a long-term research contract with the Music Publishers Association and The Harry Fox Agency. Rights organizations Harry Fox asks ARC to do detailed cataloging of recordings appearing on eight separate Billboard charts. The CDs are stored in the permanent collection at the ARC and the data used to monitor payments due to authors and publishers.
August 1999 • ARC Director attends Percpan, the 6th Annual Panorama Percussivo Mundial Festival in Salvadore, Brazil. This is the second record collecting excursion to Brazil, with 40 kilos of materials brought back to the ARC.
September 1999 • “Fiddler on the Roof” composer, Jerry Bock, donates his personal collection of 9,000 Broadway and original cast albums, and organizes the gift of an entire public library of recordings in Westchester, NY.
November 1999 • ARC announces the acquisition of our one-millionth sound recording when ABC Radio donates 52,000 seven-inch singles from its New York location, and 10,000 from Los Angeles. The ABC 45 rpm Record Collection preserves a rich heritage of material as the radio as the station transitioned from a music to a talk format.
February 2000 • Warner Chappell, a leading publisher, donates 20,000 discs when they move their offices.
May 2000 • ARC attends the annual Gypsy pilgrimage in Saintes Maries de la Mer in the south of France to record and collect materials.
November 14, 2000 • Nile Rodgers reunited his seminal Disco-Funk group, Chic, for our Benefit Party hosted by David Bowie. David had attended ARC parties in the past and was using our research services for his website. Fabinvite designed by Eric Zim.
September 11, 2001 • The attack on the World Trade Center closes the ARC for over two months, the Chambers Street office just four blocks away, White Street twelve away from the towers. No City, State or Federal assistance was given by any agency to help us clean or adjust. Benefit party canceled. After three months we were fully up and running again.
May 2003 • Keith Richards’ purchases an original Robert Johnson 78 recording, “Me and The Devil Blues”/”Little Queen of Spades.” ( Vocalion, 04108, 78rpm, 10″, 1937) for ARC. Johnson (1911–1938) was a seminal blues-man, this disc is one of the eleven known 78s released before his death.
Summer 2004 • Acquisition of the Jean Gallia Collection of French Popular Music, comprised of nearly 6,000 mint condition LPs and seven-inch singles. From 1969 to 1993, Mr. Gallia hosted the only French radio program in New York City, “The French Moment”. When added to our existing holdings of 7000 discs from French speaking artists, ARC is the largest and most complete collection of French pop music in the United States.
2004 • ARC researches and provides rare singles for use on Jonathan Demme’s latest film, The Manchurian Candidate.
October 2004 • ARC provided all the scans and multimedia images for the opening exhibit at the The Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame at the AOL-Time Warner Building in New York in conjunction with Lincoln Center.
February 11, 2004 • ARC hosts a Benefit Dance Party at SOB’s in Manhattan with guest DJs Mike D (Beastie Boys), Fred Schneider, Nile Rodgers and Dr. John.
May 26, 2004 • NARAS and The Grammy Foundation awards a grant of $35,000 to clean and catalog the tens of thousands of World Music recordings that were covered in dust when the World Trade Center fell.
December 2004 • Youssou N’Dour, Senegalese singer and UN Cultural Ambassador, joins Board of Advisors.
May 2005 • First collecting trip to Cuba to attend annual music conference, Cubadiscos, in Havana.
May 17, 2005 • ARC blog launched and running at www.arcmusic.wordpress.com
August 2005 • Ron Saja donates the entire contents of New York’s most important store of Broadway and Film recordings, Footlight Records – a gift of over 35,000 recordings.
October 2005 • BMI donates more than 300 modern experimental Classical LPs from New World Records, CRI, Opus One, Orion, Serenus, Turnabout Vox, Demeter, Fortuna, Crystal, ICMC, Echo and numerous vanity pressings. Gift organized by BMI archivist Dave Sanjek (1952-2011).
2006 • Research for and appearance (B.George) in, The Mayor of Sunset Strip, film by George Hickenlooper, on the life of Rodney Bingenheimer.
June 2006 • Grant from the Internet Archive to catalog and preserve ARC’s collection of comedy recordings. Second copies are deposited at the Internet Archive in San Francisco.
December 19, 2006 • ARC Director B. George testifies before The Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board, Public Hearing on the State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States. “Preservation challenges and practices in archives and libraries,” The Princeton Club, NYC, NY.
January 10, 2007 • Awarded $250,000 to create the New York Musicians Index and Archive (NYMIA) – a freely available online database designed to provide information and access to all aspects of the popular music industry based in New York State. ARC originated the project, funded by ARC, Columbia University and a $250,000 grant from the New York State Music Fund. The grant is administrated by the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors.
Posted @ www.nymia.org
January 2007 • ARC creates the soundtrack to accompany the exhibit “Making of a Governor.” CD also be played at the New York City election reception for the new Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, at Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Station and at various rallies throughout the state.
July 22 – Oct 28, 2007 • ARC does research, and contributes artwork and record covers for the Rock’n’Roll 39-59 exhibition at the The Fondation Cartier, Paris.
August 2007 • Adam Goldstone Collection donated in honor of the successful NY DJ of over 10,000 dance recordings by his family upon his death.
October 2007 • ARC Logo, designed by Scott Stowell, is featured in the book, Logo, by Michael Evamy. The book is considered, “The logo bible.”
October 25, 2007 • B. George lecture, “What is the ARC.” WOMEX.
January 2008 • Jazz piano scholar James Doran, makes his second donation of his substantial jazz book and record collection to create the James Doran Piano Jazz Collection.
February 2008 • Music Publishers Shapiro , Bernstein & Co. made a priceless donation of 2304 ten-inch acetates. These one-of-a-kind, one-sided discs were created by songwriters, publishing companies and song pluggers to attract potential performers and record companies.
February 28, 2008 • B. George lecture, “World Music in the ARChive of Contemporary Music,” Collecting World Musics from North Africa, the Middle East,and Asia session, Music Library Association (MLA), New London, CN.
July 2008 • Lois Weiss donates her archive of 60s material documenting her years as a principal in the Joshua light show, an integral part of music performances at New York’s Fillmore East. Accompanying these valuable photographs, negatives and slides of shows and stars is a slide and film scanner so we can digitally save this treasure trove.
December 6, 2008 • Supply all the scans (over 800) for the new Grammy Hall of Fame opening in LA.
March 2009 • Partnership agreement forged with Columbia University to create a major cultural institution merging academic study and popular music, to enrich and enhance course study and the cultural life of New York City, the country and the world.
April 16, 2009 • ARC hosts meeting of the New york Chapter of ARSC, with talks by Archivists HILLEL ARNOLD and TIFFANY LOISELLE of the Woody Guthrie Archive and engineer STEVE ROSENTHAL of The Magic Shop.
May 2009 • ARC director begins the first of two segments on re-discovered sounds for National Public Radio’s Sunday Edition, broadcast Aug 16 and Sept 13, 2009.
May 27–30, 2009 • B. George lecture, “One Click Hit! The International Discography,” presented at Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) annual conference, Washington DC.
July 2009 • Launch of Brazilian Collection, spearheaded by producer and filmmaker Béco Dranoff, with initial contributions of recordings coming from David Byrne.
August 2009 • Presentation of ARC overview and future projects with Columbia University at the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) conference in Athens, Greece.
September 2009 • ARC launches first major project with Columbia University, Muslim World Music Day, scheduled for April 12, 2011.
September 2009 • Travel to Amman, Jordan, as guest of the Columbia University Middle Eastern Research Center (CUMERC), to set up office to oversee the Muslim World Music Day and host an archive of Middle Eastern music.
October 2009 • Jerry Rappaport, former head of Island Records, donates the first batch of two major world, rock, jazz and blues collections, over 6,000 LPs.
November 2009 • ARC and the Arts Initiative @ Columbia University bring five young Chinese bands to perform on the East Coast.
November 19, 2009 • Greil Marcus delivers a lecture as performance, based on his book Lipstick Traces, the first in a series of lectures sponsored by Columbia University Libraries and ARC.
January 2010 • Champion of the American Songbook, singer and pianist Michael Feinstein becomes the latest member of ARC’s Board of Advisors.
July 2010 • Gracenote, the company that supplies all the identifying data and graphics for i-tunes, e-music and most online music websites, begins a massive two-year scanning project of 100,000 record covers at the ARC.
September 2010 • Acquisition of the Eric Schmuckler Collection, over 10,000 LPs and 5,000 CDs in pristine condition. Eric was a well-known critic and writer for Mediaweek Magazine.
September 2010 • ARC featured in the film, ‘Vinylmania – When Life Runs at 33 Revolutions per Minute,’ a documentary by Paolo Campana, Italy.
October 2010 • ARCsters Dan Neeley and B.George revamp one of our blogs on 45 Adaptors for the Japanese Edition of Wax Poetics Magazine.
Nov 2010 • A.P. Joseph Collection comes to ARC. Mr. Joseph, a former banker in the Middle East, donates over 6,000 LPs and 300 music books.
March 2011 • Partnership with San Francisco’s Internet Archive, ARC is donated a scribe machine and begins scanning it’s 25,000 music books.
February 2011 • Fred Patterson, head Archivist is a panel member at EMP Conference in LA.
April 12, 2011 • Muslim World Music Day launch. The website brought together millions of educators, scholars, artists, institutions and music fans. ARC entered data on 10,000 recordings, harvested over 1000 youtube videos, posted 2000 relevant links, initiated three major seminars/symposiums around the world, inspired ten new blogs, and six new academic papers featuring original research were presented for the first time. Organizations including Smithsonian Folkways and the Musical Instrument Museum created webpages just for this event and the project was the focus of an hour along NPR syndicated Afropop Worldwide radio program. Carnegie Hall and the Alliance Francaise held concerts.
June 2011 • Formal work begins on creating the website for the Keith Richards Blues Collection.
September 2011 • ARC Director B. George travels to Brazil to oversee the donation of 20,000 Brazilian LPs from a donor in Sao Paulo. Lectures are given in Sao Paulo and Rio at Studio X, a Columbia University initiative.
Fall 2011 • Artist Steve Powers creates and hangs the new shingle so you can find the ARC even in the dark.
October 13, 2011 • ARC was awarded the “Innovative Use of Archives Award” by the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York (ART) for the creation of Muslim World Music Day. This award “recognizes an individual or organization for use of archival material in a meaningful and creative way, making a significant contribution to a community or body of people, and demonstrating the relevance of archival materials to its subject.”
November 15, 2011 • ARC officially launches Brazilian World Music Day.
December 1, 2011 • Former Def Jam executive Bill Adler donates 1000 Christmas LPs and CDs. Together with the ARC’s existing 5000 relevant recordings this will become the Bill Adler Holiday Music Collection, curated by Mr. Adler.
Early 2012 • ARC become a prime training ground for Library Science students @ Pratt University. Students complete the scanning of the first 1000 music books not available online or through Google.
September 7, 2012 • Brazilian Music Day launch. More than 25,000 Brazilian recordings are catalogued, 3,000 videos and 6,000 links populate the website, www.brazilianmusicday.org. Project grows from Day to Week with the next year focusing on India.
October 2012 • ARC Director B. George delivers a paper at a plenary session of the IASA (International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives) Conference, New Delhi and begins building the collection for India Music Week.
October 2012 • Provided research services and graph materials for the documentary film Muscle Shoals – archivists Fred Patterson and Quinn MacRorie pulling 90s LPs in the dark by flashlight during Hurricane Sandy!
October 15, 2012 • Edward J. Ward drives his U-Haul van from deep Wisconsin and unloads 46 plastic tubs containing hundreds of magazines, music folios and 46,000 forty-fives, mostly country and pop vocalists.
December 6, 2012 • The Members only Holiday party features live performances and a record launch party for Jamie/Guyden Records’ lovingly reissued Arctic Records boxed set, Cooler Than Ice: The Arctic Records Story. Joining us are 50 Philly Soul artists involved in the project including performances by The Volcanoes (“Storm Warning” and “A Ladies Man”), Winfield Parker (“A Change Is Gonna Come” and “Funky Party”) Kenny Hamber (“These Arms of Mine”) and John Ellison (“Some Kind of Wonderful”). People danced, people cried – a great time was had by all.
December 22, 2012 • ARC reached a milestone by cataloging it’s 10,534th CDs – the most we’ve ever done in a year, about 4000 more than usual. All-in-all more than 150,000 new recordings are loaded on the ARC this year, two by two, as always. More than 2,000 books are scanned and we added 1,875 Blues recordings this year, the total now 6,420 CDs and 4,198 LPs as part of the Keith Richards’ Blues Collection.
January 14, 2013 • ARC begins the New Year with an important scanning project to create a digital archive of avant-garde jazz musician Steve Lacy’s (1934 – 2004) handwritten manuscripts and notebooks, done in collaboration with the Estate of Steve Lacy. These one-of-a-kind documents contain over 500 published and unpublished compositions.
April 1, 2013 • B. George jurors the Vilcek Prize honoring immigrant contributions to American culture – this year’s music recipient, Yo-Yo Ma.
April 2013 • The Voice of America (VOA) in Washington, DC., donates 32,000 LPs and 7,000 seven-inch forty-fives. VOA is the official radio service of the US government broadcasting overseas and the station had accumulated a great many recordings over the years, seldom referenced these days. Thanks to Dr. Brian Silver for organizing this gift.
May 2013 • With the donation of 48,000 ten-inch seventy-eight rpm discs ARC creates The Barrie H. Thorpe / Batavia Illinois Public Library Collection. This collection will be housed and digitized through a generous grant from The Internet Archive in San Francisco. Artist Allen Ruppersberg will be working with this collection to create an exhibition and book, in the spirit of his earlier, Collector’s Paradise.
May 22, 2013 • Board Member Paul Simon visits ARC.
October 6 – 13, 2013 • India Music Week, our third live and online explorations of the music from other cultures. The IMD website drew millions of visitors and a webpage that can be scrolled for more than six feet. Project also catalogued 24,061 recordings on an innovative, searchable display page, along with links to nearly 4,000 musicians and a wide range of activities, projects essays and musings highlighting the vibrant culture and music of India. On OCt 6th DJ Rekha led thousands of dancers at the South Street Seaport in NYC at our attempt to set the Guinness World Record for the Largest Bhangra Dance.
October 2013 • More than 643 Blues and R+B seven-inch singles donated by Don Voisine. Mr. Voisine’s collection also includes an impressive amount of punk, art, rockabilly, garage rock, rock’n’roll LPs and 45s and loads of wonderful music books.
October 5, 2013 – September 21, 2014 • Poster designed by Tom Klinkowstein in the early 1980’s for a benefit performance by Laurie Anderson was included in the Designing Modern Women 1890–1990 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
October 15, 2013 – Jan 19, 2014 • The single, Punkappella, by B. George included in the Europunk exhibition at the Cité de la Musique in Paris. The flexi from 1978 was one of the few actual discs on display, and was also illustrated in the catalog. B’s not European by the way…
April 1, 2014 • Artist Allen Ruppersberg open his show in London based on a large collection of 78rpm recordings here at the ARChive, FOR COLLECTORS ONLY (everyone is a collector) Source materials was The Barrie H. Thorpe/Batavia Public Library Collection donated to ARC last year, comprising some 48,000 seventy-eight rpm discs.
June 17, 2014 • Matthew W. becomes our 6,000th donor with his gift of 406 LPs and 125 CDs for the collection, including a batch of South African LPs, including a German pressing of a Dollar Brand [Abdullah Ibrahim] album.
Sept 19 – October 3, 2014 • Our first gallery exhibition featuring British photographer William Ellis. The exhibition offers 50 portraits of musicians holding one of their favorite albums. Portrait here is of Jack Bruce with his copy of Olivier Messiaen’s L’Ascension.
October 28, 2014 • ARC helps launch the prototype of a Listening Room through the largess of the Internet Archive (IA). A comfy room in San Francisco where you can listen to more than a million albums at our ipad listening station. Read all about it on the IA blog. The NY Times thought it was a good idea also, giving ARC a teeny, tiny plug.
March 1, 2015 • ARC Director B. George becomes the Curator of Sound Collections at the Internet Archive in San Francisco.
Spring into Summer, 2015 • Materials lent or scanned for exhibitions, Folk City: New York and the Folk Music Revival at the Museum of the City of New York and International Pop at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. B. is in Havana organizing Cuba Music Week (May 2016) and speaking at the Simposio Internacional Cubadisco. He and Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle also spoke at a plenary session at the ARSC Convention in Pittsburgh and he went solo at the IAML/IMS confab, Music Research In the Digital Age, here in New York.
March 25, 2015 • ARC Director B. George attends Rolling Stones’ concert in Havana as a guest. Tattoo You in Cuba >>>
September 30, 2015 • Presentation @ IASA Conference, Paris, “Building Shared Collections,” by Alexis Rossi (Internet Archive and B. George (ARC).
October 7, 2015 • Presentation @ the British Library, London, on new alliance between ARC and the Internet Archive.
April 25, 2016 • Teenage Kicks Are Hard To Beat: John Peel in 2016, part of Colloquium for Unpopular Culture, New York University, hosted by Sukhdev Sandhu, Associate Professor of English, Social and Cultural Analysis. Panel discussion with ARC Director B.George, Dan Fox and Paul Myerscough.
May 14 – 22 • Cuba Music Week + Cubadiscos.
May 17 – 24 • ARC’s first tour to Cuba.
August, 2016 • 70,000 plus 78s are donated as The JM Jr. Collection. This material was appraised at $500,000 and were shipped from Rhode Island to San Francisco, to be resleeved, boxed, palleted and stored, all thanks to our partners, The Internet Archive. The next step will be cleaning and digitization. With this collection the ARC’s holdings of 78s is now 225,000 discs, one of the largest collections in America. Here’s a few picks of how they arrived and our reboxing to get ready for shipping to the digitization center.
October 17, 2016 • B. George join Brewster Kahle, head of the Internet Archive @ the SF Musictech Summit to give a talk and more importantly, play and display a pile of 78s on a vintage Victrola to the delight of wonderstruck attendees.
October 26, 2016 • 20th Anniversary Party @ The Internet Archive in San Francisco. Fred Patterson, our head archivist, DJ’d and even DJ Spooky was in awe…
December 28, 2017 • ARC acquires Geoffrey Rezek’s ukulele collection consisting of 778 pieces of sheet music and song books, 225 Lps and countless pieces of paper ephemera and photos with a primary focus on Arthur Godfrey and Tiny Tim. One stellar piece is a ukulele signed by Eddie Vedder and all the members of Pearl Jam. Hear the ukulele album Eddie made. Mr Rezek is an educator and a member of Ukulele Hall of Fame. Maybe one day we’ll get the uke made out of Lego pieces!
April 2017 • ARC provides research for Taschen Book’s Art Record Covers by Francesco Spampinato. (Hardcover, 11.5 x 11.5 in., 448 pages). The book presents 500 covers and records by visual artists from the 1950s through to today. ARC owned more than 200 covers they were searching for and provided scans for this important publication.
May 10, 2017 • The Great78project
officially launched at the ARSC
conference in San Antonio by
the Internet Archive,
George Blood LP and ARC.
25,000 pop 78s posted
– 225,000 to go!
The digitizing turntable here and
you can Listen to 78s here!
September 25 -27, 2017 • As guest of the Danish Royal Library B. George speaks at the Internationalt Kulturarvs Symposium, held at the Ragnarock Museum, Roskilde, and at Dokkr1, Royal Library, Aarhus, Denmark. “Saving All the Music In the World”
December 10, 2018 • ARC hosts a Dance Party at 99 Scott in Bushwick. Celeb DJs include Laurie Anderson, Jellybean Benitez Craig Kallman, Fred Schneider (B-52s) and Hank Shocklee (Public Enemy), with help from DJ.
Bunny Ears and Phast Phreddie – ARC’s head archivist Fred Patterson.
A great time had by all PLUS a great poster designed by artist Peter Coffin.
March 12, 2019 • Rolling Stone Magazine posts “Rebuilding The ARC“ an online story on ARC’s Fundraising Campaign that raises more than $100,000.
June, 2019 • B. does a radio interview on Sundown in Denver, an online radio show that revolves around VOLUME, the book he wrote in the late 70s and updated early 80s. Fans call in and talk about and play punk records they have that are in the book. The show logo even mimics the book cover.