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galleries

Galleries are related groupings of visual artifacts preserved at the ARC.  Usually they are record covers. Some are scans of books, sheet music, photographs, posters, films or music related graphics. Sometimes they are not ours or here at the ARC, but lent for a project.  We’ll let you know. We do ask that anyone who ‘borrows’ any of these images to please credit The ARChive of Contemporary Music, and of course, make a contribution of materials or a monetary donation to the library. We are working towards making our themed record cover galleries into a series of illustrated books. Have a sneak peek.

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Space helmets

ARC has hundreds of outer space related recordings here, where we make a great many physical and electronic ‘sorts’ based on themes — like this one, a bit goofy. There are Mars records, moon records, comedy space records. You get the picture.  Unlike other sites, all these recordings are owned by ARC – part of the permanent collection – not just downloaded from the net.

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Flexi Discs

The gem of our flexi collection is the entire set of the seven Beatles 1963-1969 UK fan club only Christmas flexi-discs with picture covers and six inserts. A bonus is the rare 4″ x 8.5″ ad for “The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics” book, which was inserted in some copies of the 1969 flexi.

Here’s a sample of the more than 500 other cardboard records and flexidiscs in the ARC’s collection.

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Cha Cha Cha

Latin music has spawned a great many dances and dance crazes, producing some of the hottest music and delightful cover art here at the ARC. Here are a few in our collection from the Cha Cha craze that swept the world in the 1950s.

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