As we prepare our year-end review we realize we never posted an important new Special Collection that came in at the beginning of the year.

The Erik Brady Music Collection is a vast group of primarily new and somewhat unheralded music that filled in many gaps here at the ARC – like the 49 Lambchop recordings to supplement our 8. Then again there are 30 Dinosaur Jr., 16 Giant Sand, 27 John Vanderslice, 71 The Beautiful South and 48 Spoon recordings. Who else was saving the Jack’O’Nuts, the Waterstrider, and Dr Dog? Far and away the most important material are his 6,240 live off the board CDRs. Erik was friends with many New York DJ’s and gig sound technicians that allowed incredible access resulting in crystalline preservation of thousands of performances. There are also heaps of slightly more mainstream artists, including 175 CDs and LPs by Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention and a pile of lesser known Hendrix (above). All in all the collection numbers 17,566 items. The vast majority are mint, near mint, or sealed; variously original releases, reissues, promo copies, iterations and variations, foreign releases and the occasional bootleg. And three cheers to Erik for the 22 Pere Ubu’s!