Hey there! Count me out of listening to "everything." Honestly, if I had unlimited time to listen to the music I love, I'd get to where I didn't love it any more. It's a finite set, albeit large. Thus, better to have limited time to _really_ enjoy it and keep the love stoked. Just by having much of it on the iPod and keeping the iPod running at work, I've churned the pile to bring back some really deep sonic memories.
-- Tom Fine
PS -- in your Star Trek world, I don't have to wear a red uniform do I? We're talking original Star Trek, too, right? Not any of the cheezy follow-ons.
----- Original Message ----- From: "phillip holmes" <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 11:17 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Libraries disposing of records
Hey, I will! I'm going to lobby the UN to officially start "The Taste Police". I have French heritage, so I'm already better qualified than most. Also, my French roots are Cajun, so I can probably prove some mixed racial background and claim that "I know black music" or "I know the blues" or "It's a mixed racial heritage thing and you wouldn't understand" or "my great uncle was half brother to a Seminole Shaman, and I know deep things you don't know". And I'm from Texas, so I have a simple answer for every difficult problem (by the way, why haven't we started any new wars recently?). But honestly, what you're saying is: if it was ever recorded, and there is an extant recording, it should be saved. That's a fair proposition, and I agree kind of. But it only works in a fantasy Star Trek world where everyone works for "the man", and "the man" has decided that anyone like Steven Barr or Phillip Holmes or Tom Fine can spend all their hours playing records and making sure they have complete runs of every label. I wonder who's going to clean the toilets and dig ditches in Utopia?
Phillip
Steven C. Barr(x) wrote:----- Original Message ----- From: "phillip holmes" <insuranceman@xxxxxxxxxx>
You know, I'm sure there were hundreds of sides that were the equivalent of Britney Speers' "oops i did it again". Pop music doesn't necessarily need to be preserved if it takes resources away from something truly unique (interviews, broadcasts, lectures, etc.) or productive. I'm sure many of us got into this because of a love for music, but you know there's lots of crap out there that doesn't merit being saved. Maybe one of you can look me in the face and tell me that we MUST preserve the outputs of The Backstreet Boys and Vanilla Ice. I say fine, YOU pay for it. But if their entire catalog was "sent to the cornfields" by Billy Mumy, I wouldn't miss a minute of sleep.
One VERY important point! No one of us has such perfect taste as to be inherently qualified to say "save THIS" and/or "trash THIS" as far as some ultimate uber-archive might be concerned!
We can make such decisions (and usually do, if only by what we buy and what we don't!) for our own personal "archives"...but we can't in any realistic way say "This is what civilization must preserve and include in its histories..." and the implied "And this NOT..."
Steven C. Barr