Stephen Mejias

Hi! Don't you sometimes wish you could just walk up to someone on the street and be like, "Hi! Let's hug. C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon and touch me, babe." (?)

The ARChive of Contemporary Music is holding a Record & CD Sale! The sale begins on Saturday, June 7th, and will continue through Sunday, June 15th. Sale hours are from 11am to 6pm each day. Over 20,000 CDs, LPs, cassettes, books, and videos will be available. I can smell it now. ARC members get to shop early during tomorrow's pre-sale party. The ARChive of Contemporary Music is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of all the world's popular music recorded from 1950 to the present. From the ARC's site:

The ARChive was established because for decades the record industry has done little to preserve its own heritage, and over the years many irreplaceable recordings and artifacts have been misplaced or destroyed. Even as the new medium of CDs has placed many out of print recordings back in circulation, many re-issues have different or truncated material, and many CDs themselves are already out of print.

American libraries and sound archives, including the Library of Congress, have also been slow or resistant to preserving emerging popular music. Most consider popular music "commercial" and therefore less worthy of saving—or more able to survive on its own. The ARChive is America's only non-affiliated (University or Federal) broad based music archive. We believe that all forms of popular music—jazz, be-bop, bluegrass, country, rock, rap, blues, enka, reggae, calypso, zydeco, zouk, and countless others—are important culturally. Not only do they entertain, they reveal to the world a great deal about a people and their values.

For more information on the Record Sale, or to become a member of the ARChive, visit the friendly and colorful website. I especially recommend a stroll through their colossal collection of musical genres which runs from a teore and abgaya to zwiefachers and zydeco.

Anyone in the mood for some ishikawela jo?

Go hug some records like your name was George Reisch.