Quick UpDate on Sale + ARC News

ARC Sale is doing swell.  We are pleased that the economic downturn has not affected the turntable, and there’s still plenty of hot vinyl for a cold  winter’s day…   So come on down!

We’re still at 54 White St and here from now until Sunday, Dec 20, everyday, 11am – 6pm.

Some classy doings recently, somewhat out of character, somewhat wonderful.  Last Sunday our pal Greg Mosher (Columbia Arts Initiative)  hosted talk with Liv Ullmann @ MOMA, and it was swell.  The event was a premier of a documentary (The Sealed Orders of Liv Ullmann by Simon & Goodman) about here master class with aspiring actors in a program sponsored by Young Arts.  It was very moving and will be on Public TV soon.  Ms. Ullmann is directing Streetcar Named Desire with Cate Blanchett as, obviously, Blanch, to rave reviews.  I must have said something she liked, cuz I got a hug and a kiss.   Starsearch: saw Edward Albee (thought he was dead) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (bigger than life).

Tuesday went to see/hear Michael Feinstein and David Hyde Pierce, at, wherelse, Feinsteins.  We have started working with Michael on a few things and we hope to have him on our Board (MANY new Board members to be announced in Jan).  Well cabaret @ Feinstein’s is a long way from Avenue A, but just as other worldly.  Songs were great, his piano playing greater, his knowledge of the American Songbook the greatest, and Pierce specialized is a few story songs that required a keen memory, including Jerry Herman’s delightful, twisty, “Penny in My Pocket.”  Michael’s best line: “Frank Loesser once described his first wife as, ‘the evil of two Loessers.'”  Lamenting the lack of Jews at Camelot, taken from his stint in Spamalot, David sang, “There’s a very small percentile/who enjoy a dancing Gentile.”  The Times said…

Speaking of dynamic duos, ARC supporter Dean Taucher sent down two signed recordings for the collection, one by Jerry Lewis and one by Ice-T.  Dean has an interesting range of interests if you ask me.

Other near family news of a  musical Mother nature :  son of a friend is doing A-OK as lead singer in the Antlers, with a nice review in the Times.  The other animal skin in the game is second cousin Aaron’s band the  Giraffes, who sources a common roots heritage with the group, Roumanian Buck.   All three bands are worth a look.

300 LPs make a great stocking stuffer!

The ARChive Holiday Record + CD Sale is a success so far with plenty of folks shoppin’ n’ boppin.’

Still plenty of tasty vinyl and CDs left.  300 LPs make a great stocking stuffer!  So come on down and tell your friends.  Join the fun.  Support the ARC.  Everyday, 11-6, from now until Sunday Dec 20.  Thanks to all who have already visited or donated materials for the sale.    B.

ARChive of Contemporary Music
54 White Street  New York City, 10013
3 blocks South of Canal between Church + Broadway
Take the #1 train to Franklin St, or any train to Canal
tel : 212-226-6967          e : arcmusic@inch.com
http://www.arcmusic.org              blog: https://arcmusic.wordpress.com

Sale Almost Here!

Holiday Record + CD Sale

We hope you can all vist the ARC and drop by for our
Holiday Record + CD Sale

THIS YEAR we feature 92.6% new stock (sold off everything left over last year to Lebanon!)

So there will be :  tons of JAZZ (so many large collections came in this year)  – our regular overstock of punk + new wave discs – Great world music CDs – many 7″ sinles (rare A-squared singles included) –  60s Gary Grimshaw ROCK posters – copies of the B.George discography VOLUME –  much new Classical (including 78s) – plus the always wonderful yard sale items of vintage housewares and clothes!

All in all over 15,000 items
– CDs, LPs, cassettes, books, posters, laserdiscs, DVDs + videos

You can get a whole CD for the price of downloading a song!

ARChive of Contemporary Music / 54 White St, NYC,10013
(212) 226-6967 / arcmusic@inch.com / http://www.arcmusic.org

SAT DEC 6 – SUN DEC 14  EVERYDAY : 11am-6pm
3 blocks south of Canal, between Church and Broadway
Subway : 1 to Franklin Street – or ANY train to Canal.

You can join the ARC and attend our pre-sale party on Thursday Dec. 4,
beginning @ 6pm.  We offer drinks and food and first dibbs on all the recordings!

Reflecting on the Sale…

The sale’s over. Next sale Begins Saturday, Dec 13. Just thought we’d toss out a few images before we get back to cataloging and caring for the world’s largest popular music collection.

What can you do with those antique round sound thingies? Hey, they’re shinny and work really well as reflectors on the streets on New York.  Ask Lester.

More importantly, who shops at the ARC sale?  Well for one, sophisticated ladies in tropical skirts – here’s a shot from our opening night party…

Don’t forget to donate new, used and unwanted recordings in any format to the library. We compare all donations to the existing collection (2 million recordings) and only sell things when they are THIRD copies.

So see you in December. We’ll still be under the spell of those worthless Bush dollars, so Euroshoppers come on down!

the NICE

One of the nicest things about the ARC is the nice people who pop up over the Holidays, the nicest time of the year. So Here’s to jolly, saintly, James Doran, who gave us the nicest gift of all to round out the season, 308 jazz books!

Jim is a long-time ARC supporter, who’s passion is piano jazz. He has authored Herman Chittison : A Bio-Discography, (International Association of Jazz Record Collectors, monograph No. 2, 1993), and made a major donation of his work, as well as that of Erroll Garner, in the past.

This years donation are mostly out-of-print books, with rarities among the rows, and we needed nearly all of them. ARCster Brian, who is Jazz-knowledgeable, had a look at the cache and pointed out a few nice items…

Inside Be-Bop
Leonard Feather, J.J. Robbins & Sons, 1949, paper,103 pp
“Written by America’s No. 1 Authority on Be-Bop” this book looks beyond the eccentric personality angles of the bop cult — the goatees, berets, and other superficial manifestations — and instead focuses on more serious aspects of the music. Includes a technical explanation with musical illustrations, biographies, photos, and a list of albums suitable for a general introduction to bebop.

Hot Discography
Charles Delauney, Commodore Record Co., 1943 edition (Revised and corrected reproduction of the original 1938 French edition), cloth, 416 pp
Hot Discography was the first attempt to systematically list all “hot” jazz records along with the personnel for each performance.

Duke Ellington on Compact Disc
Jerry Valbourn, Marlor Productions, 1993, paper, 253 pp
Evidence that jazz discographies can succeed when focusing on something other than original pressings of the material. According to the author the compact disc has done more to perpetuate Duke Ellington’s legacy than any other retrieval format. Includes documentation of over 1,000 Duke Ellington related compact disc releases.

The collection contained plenty of other distinguished discographies, including many from Greenwood Publishing focusing on, among others, the Prestige, Savoy and King labels, 25 volumes of The Jazz Discography by Tom Lord, and a whole shelfload of titles on women in jazz; I Had the Craziest Dream by Helen Forrest, American Women in Jazz by Sally Placksin, and Jazz Women at the Keyboard by Mary Unterbrink. You can see the complete list of everything donated on our webthing.

Jim also donated 176 LPs and as clever as we think we are, we had to be told that the one person common to every disc was pianist Tommy Flanagan.

Stealth themed donations are encouraged.

You should all give it a try!

b.ARC