Sneaky Santa Holiday Sale!

Do you like music? How about the holidays? If you answered “yes” to both, then you’re in luck! It time again for the ARChive of Contemporary Music’s big Holiday Record & CD sale!

It all gets going on Saturday, December 8th and we’ll keep it going everyday, from 11-6, until Sunday, December 16th. We have 20,000 items for sale, and we’ll add new items daily. CDs are NEW donations from record companies, NOT used, returns or defects! We have mostly pop and rock recordings, but keep your eyes open for CDs from Rough Trade and reggae from Trojan and Sanctuary! Collectible LPs are priced below book value – all sorts of new things. Hundreds of CDs are priced at $1 to $5 each. cassettes $1.00 ea./ 12 for $10. Just released NEW & HOT CDs are $5 – $10 • MOST LPS $1! BEST DEAL = BOXES of 125 Pop, Soundtrack or Classical LPs = $5 a BOX • TONS of Film Soundtrack & Broadway LPs + CDs – MOST for a BUCK • Signed records • 100s of sealed/unopened LPs (Aretha, Troggs, Smiths) • BEATLES and more BEATLES LPs • African & world-music • Classical LPs $1 or LESS each! • Vintage punk, new wave & classic rock LPs • music books • videos • 7″ singles • PLUS, you’ll find CHRISTMAS Records to suit all of your holiday needs!

Here’s chilly Volunteer Jessica wearing one of our flea market sweaters and restocking a hot off the shelves Feotus On Your Breath LP.

(Wow, look at all that stuff!)

There’s even stuff for the dis-en-vinyled out there at our Astroturf Yardsale of 50s kitchen stuff and clothing!!! THERE IS STUFF FOR LITERALLY EVERYONE! YOU GOTTA BE THERE!

(Don’t you just LOVE that Dress!)

Admission is free! You’ll find us at 54 White St, just three short blocks south of Canal, between Broadway & Church in Tribeca. Take the 1 train to Franklin, or any train to Canal.

Dues-paying members of the ARChive, were treated to a cocktail party on Thursday, December 6 (6-9 PM) and treated to the hillbilly sounds of Susquehanna Industrial Tool and Die Co. It was ballads, boogie and blues to all, and to all a good night! (BTW, members get to shop before the general public! If you’d like to JOIN, call 212-226-6967 for details.)

The ARChive of Contemporary Music’s Holiday Record & CD sale promises to be THE musical event of the season. It’s cheaper than downloading and the shopping is LOADS more fun, so spread the word and tell EVERYONE you know to be there!

EDIT 12-3: We got Dugg on Digg! Click here to have a look, let everyone know, Digg us up, whatever man!

EDIT 12-4: TONS and TONS of Rough Guide CDs arrived TODAY. Music from all around the world!

(ThailandScotlandSouthAfricanJazz LuckyDubeBrothersJamaicaDominicanRepublic KlezmerNativeAmericanOkinawa ColombiaCanadaANDMORE.)

(Really amazing stuff, all between $3 and $10!)

EDIT 12-5: A HUGE shipment of CDs from those pioneers of weird electronic dance music, Warp Records! (Brothomstates, Gravenhurst, Prefuse73, Maxïmo Park, Req and MORE.)

It’s Official

It’s Official – Today, The New York Times became the Onion – the headline reads :

“Study Links Drop in Test Scores to a Decline in Time Spent Reading”

And may we suggest:

“Music Linked to Instances of Listening”

The Irish Session of the Future!

We have lots of Irish music here at the ARChive (the entire Green Linnet catalog, for example), but I don’t think we’ve got anything like this. Here is a video of someone playing a very convincing set of jigs on a game for the Nintendo DS called “Daigasso! Band Brothers.”

I’m not sure how well it would go over so well at a session (especially the ones I like), but played that well I imagine it’d fare no worse than a poorly-played bohdrán.

There’s lots of music out there on youtube that’s made strange/beautiful because it’s played on an anachronous instrument.  I love this one of someone playing Britney Spears’s “Toxic” on the ukulele. What else in the strange/beautiful category is out there that you like? Report your findings in the comments, please!

Dr.D.

Tis the Season…

 

Tis the Season. This time of year every night is party night in the city.

Tuesday it was The Gish Prize ceremony for Laurie Anderson. The event began with a short piano solo by Phil Glass, lots of nice words and some new-fashioned story tellin’ by LA. One bonus was the reunion of all of us who had worked on ‘O Superman,’ Laurie’s breakthrough single from 1981, the first time we had all been together in years. Lou Reed snapped photos like the proud partner he is, and I had a chance to speak with another old pal, Meredith Monk. For Laurie is was a well-deserved honor and a very nice evening for everyone.

Wednesday it was up to the Whitney for the Lawrence Weiner opening. Lawrence has been a good friend of the ARC, making sure we have all of his recordings/sound art pieces.

On Thursday I walked through the Lower East side (shockingly shinny boogie all of a sudden) for the launch party of Punk 365 at Manitoba’s bar. That’s Handsome Dick Manitoba of the Dictators, and the book is by longtime ARC pal, Holly George Warren. Thick as a brick, this swell book offers little known photography, gritty + pretty, of America’s last iconic rock movement that will keep you occupied, well, for at least a year. A good time was had by all, despite the petty support from publisher Abram’s, who offered a cash bar and asked Holly to bring the snacks! Even the ARC offers its supporters a free drink now and then.

Next it was off to unashamedly boogie Soho for the Creem book launch at the John Varvatos shop. If everyone at Manitoba’s was dark, and wrinkled and long in the tooth, the Creem crowd had a born yesterday look, taller, dapper, thinner. I had gone to school in Ann Arbor during the original Creem-Detroit-garage era, and written a short-lived column, ‘Attic Cuts,’ during one of its revivals in the late 80s. Book authors and mag founders signed my copy and everyone was given an Iggy Live in Detroit DVD. Sadly, it seemed as if the designer had never seen an early edition of Creem, as it made it look more like Hit Parader. At least the drinks flowed freely and food was plentiful. I guess Harper Collins likes its authors.

Among the flotsam was some genuine jetsam; Phillip Seymour Hoffman (lost some weight) was there and I nearly touched Paris Hilton (gained a little) while reaching for the multicolored Jello shots covered in Boy Howdy whipped Creem. Now, if only Lester Bangs had showed up to trash the place…

TGIF when no one in NY goes out.

b.ARC

Old Dirty.

On this date in 2004, the world lost Ol’ Dirty Bastard, a.k.a. O.D.B., a.k.a. Dirt McGirt.

I had a brush with O.D.B. once. It was an afternoon in the late 1990s and I was sitting in front of the Knitting Factory on Leonard Street waiting for my friend Jordan, when out of nowhere O.D.B. walked by. I was the only one on the street, and he was clearly looking for something. He stopped and asked me if I knew where some club was. Unfortunately, I did not and he went on his way. It lasted all of five seconds. He didn’t identify himself, but I’d come to know his voice and his grill through the video for his early opus Brooklyn Zoo when it was a feature on The Box video channel. There was no mistaking who the man who I couldn’t help was.

So, as you enjoy whatever beverage you will enjoy this afternoon or evening, take a moment to have Ol’ Dirty in your thoughts. Wu Tang Forever.

dtn

Record Hound of Barcelona

As you all know that Spanish visionary, A. Gaudi, loved his music. Some insists he was a serious trance + techno fan, sneaking off to rave the Balerics between concrete pours.

But I’m convinced it was the fandango that fueled his modernist visions. Regardless, images of records, LPs mostly, began to shade his architectural landscape. Here are examples from around the 1900s at the Casa Mila, Casa Batllo and the Park Guell in Barcelona.

Years ago we had asked Gaudi to help us out and try his hand at an ARC logo. Pretty good, but we had to pass. Like Charles Dickens; a great mind, but his spelling was not quite up to snuff.

B. = Barcelona

Doing The Good Day

B. came back from Europe yesterday with all sorts of exciting stories and a stack of great records. One record that caught my eye was this 45 with an instructional picture sleeve about how to do a dance called the “Casatschok”:

As you might imagine by the name, the dance and music has a kind of Cossack vibe to it, but the photos made me think of all the instructional dance-craze records here at ARC, some of which we’ve blogged about before. (BTW, if you were wondering you absolutely CAN see the Casatschok on YouTube! If you click here, you can see some old footage of Los Tontos doing a highly choreographed version of it; clicking here will get you a modern, far less choreographed clip of it “in the wild.”) So, with Casatschoking fresh in my head, it was cool to look up in the subway this morning and find instructions for a new dance – a morning dance – called the “Good Day”:

The Good Day is a dance advertising Fox 5 News NY’s morning show featuring Jodi Applegate, Mike Woods and Ron Corning (they’re in that order on the poster, BTW). If you want to see the Good Day in action, you can click here to see all sorts of clips of it. Nice, right? However, there’s a problem with the poster! It only shows three moves and according to the Fox 5’s own instructional videos, the Good Day can have up to FOUR. So, if there’s anyone out there with the skills of an artist, would you make and print out a few “spin” moves that match the subway instructional, get out there and tape them up so that straphangers will actually know how to DO the dance? I go home on the 7 train, and it’d be great to see some on my way home tonight, so get to work!

To recap: The Good Day. It’s not the Dutty Wine. It’s not even the Soldier Boy (Who’s Soldier Boy? And what in the heck is that dance?). But if we all work together, we can take this Good Day dance worldwide. Who’s with me?

– dtn

Graffiti Artists

This is from Barcelona, where I’m not exactly sure they are referencing the band, but, hey, maybe…

So lets see some other graffiti from bands around the world!

We would love to publish your photos on our webthing, or, just see if there are any more out there!

B. = Barcelona