{"id":793786,"date":"2019-03-12T11:28:28","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T17:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=806987"},"modified":"2019-03-12T11:28:28","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T17:28:28","slug":"rebuilding-the-arc-americas-largest-music-collection-needs-your-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/rebuilding-the-arc-americas-largest-music-collection-needs-your-help\/","title":{"rendered":"Rebuilding the ARC: America\u2019s Largest Music Collection Needs Your Help"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The day the music died is a lie. Music never dies. It\u2019s the one thing our minds protect at all costs. If only our wallets were so loyal. Now they have a chance to be: This week, the largest popular music collection in America (3 million recordings!) is, for the first time, asking the public for financial help. Is New York\u2019s legacy as a music town worth $100,000? That\u2019s the question the Archive of Contemporary Music<\/a> is asking.<\/p>\n

The Archive is a massive private research library that has been in downtown Manhattan since 1985, when Bob George balked at the price of rent in SoHo \u2014 $100 a month \u2014 and instead took over a $65 a month space in what would become TriBeCa, where bums burned wood in 50-gallon drums. \u201cIt had no walls, no ceiling, no floors, no electricity, nothing,\u201d he tells Rolling Stone<\/em>. \u201cWe built it ourselves. We made this place with our own determination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Far from the kind of crackpot hoarding that sometimes happens in cities, George\u2019s archive has been supported by powerhouses in music and entertainment. It houses Keith Richards\u2019 blues collection. Their current board is varied enough to include both Youssou N\u2019Dour and Paul Simon (Lou Reed and David Bowie were both once members). It consulted for Tom Hanks on the making of That Thing You Do<\/em>. It\u2019s the go-to repository for album art for everything from Grammy exhibits to Taschen books.<\/p>\n

In a quirky explainer on their site about how they are ready for an alien invasion<\/a>, the archive notes: \u201cThe ARChive collects and preserves everything that\u2019s issued, hoping to define \u2018what happened\u2019 in terms broader than those usually described by selectiveness or availability. Taste, quality, marketing, Halls of Fame, sales, stars and value are as alien to us as they are, well, to aliens.\u201d<\/p>\n

George\u2019s commitment is dogged. When Martin Scorsese wanted an obscure Italian song in Goodfellas<\/em>, George roamed Little Italy humming the tune until someone recognized it (\u201cYou can solve every problem in New York if you just walk through it,\u201d he says).<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat pisses me off is that through six mayors and 25 or so people of the Department of Cultural Affairs, which is five blocks away, none of them have ever visited us,\u201d he says. \u201cNot even the local Community Board. Nobody gets it.\u201d The Woody Guthrie Collection left New York in 2013 for Tulsa. The Bob Dylan Archive joined in 2017<\/a>. George is not keen on being the third in line.<\/p>\n

In a snobby world of collectors and curators, George has offered a different take on his archive\u2019s music collection: open arms. \u201cWe\u2019re the Molly Bloom of music,\u201d he says. \u201cDid you read Ulysses<\/em>? The sex scene, y\u2019know? Yes! Yes! Yes!\u201d At a time when some in the city were scrubbing Keith Haring murals off subway platforms, George was welcoming every genre, including then-unpopular punk and hip-hop (among the archive\u2019s greatest collection is a trove of punk 45s). \u201cWe could make the good and goofy come alive,\u201d he says, \u201cbecause no museum or university library is going to do that. They only want things after they\u2019ve gotten valuable. It\u2019s a small view of value. We see things differently. We see the value in everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saidah Blount, a brand manager with Sonos who is organizing a joint podcast with the archive in April, sighs when asked about the archive. \u201cIt\u2019s a little secret,\u201d she says. \u201cThose in the know and are connected to music really know about it. It\u2019s not just Bob in record form; it\u2019s a storytelling hub. It\u2019s a place that\u2019s lived countless lives in 40 years. It\u2019s the magic that helps the rest of the city happen. You feel the love, the sense of belonging it builds.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the first time in a generation, the archive is now asking the public for help: On Monday, it launched a $100,000 GoFundMe<\/a> (supported by a $50,000 dollar-for-dollar matching grant from the Jaharis Family Foundation). The money aims to avoid eviction by paying $90,000 in owed rent that the archive has built up since its rent jumped in 2016 from about $10,000 a month to $21,000 a month, George says. \u201cWhat\u2019s crazy,\u201d he adds, \u201cis that it\u2019s still a deal; well below market value. But the city has become a place where even deals are unaffordable.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time that New York is giddy about unveiling a $150 million stairway to nowhere<\/a>, George is asking for about half the worth of a Wall Street worker\u2019s annual bonus. He recalled the newspaper ad that funded Woodstock \u2014 the one that read \u201cLooking for young men with unlimited capital\u201d \u2014 and suggested that maybe he try something similar.<\/p>\n

For $500 a pop, he\u2019s offering spots on an entry-level board called the Players Association, but every little bit helps ($50 buys you entrance to a members-only party). \u201cAt $500, even the drummer can afford it,\u201d George says, laughing. \u201cBut, seriously, if we can\u2019t get $100,000 in New York to help and advance the arts, the city truly is dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The day the music died is a lie. Music never dies. It\u2019s the one thing our minds protect at all costs. If only our wallets were so loyal. Now they have a chance to be: This week, the largest popular music collection in America (3 million recordings!) is, for the first time, asking the public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-793786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-15 08:14:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}