What should become of John Peel's record collection now?

Well, this is all quite neat to look at, but the actual content seems to be a bit like a card file version of discogs.com but with a lot less detail.

Ha, they have AMT listed as Acid Mothers Today

Maybe there is some mystical aspect at being able to view this stuff that I'm failing to grasp.

So, you have to watch the video to find out what, exactly, they are going to do with it.

I do appreciate the spotify link to Mike Absalom who I always meant to check out but kept forgetting about.

"This is one of the greatest libraries ever. PS the books are all encased in glass."

eh -- "this is one of the greatest libraries ever but we haven't digitized all the books so the website is just a catalogue, what were you expecting" -- the curatorial issues don't really work the same way. i wonder what percentage of the 25,000 LPs + 40,000 singles is actually not available in digital form already somewhere.

Among the first artists are Abba, ABC, AC/DC and Adam & The Ants.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-17894985

BBC getting a great handle on his role as champion of the obscure and unsung.

huge copyright problems with just digitising these albums and putting them online, am surprised anyone thought that they would. (actually, i'm not, kids today...)

Yeah seriously wtf?

actually, there must be records in there that are out of copyright, most of Pig's Big 78s for instance. and those British Hit Parade 1961 compilations on amazon suggest that anything before 1961 is fair game... (although i think the rules have just changed again, thanks Cliff)

a lot of people are gonna be disappointed to find out it mostly contains grindcore. not me.

Does 20,000 albums seem, um, not that many? Or am I massively underestimating how 'many' that is?

it means of all the albums he heard every year from his fifteenth birthday from his death, he found 400 that he thought were worth keeping

until his death, even

Kept Scoundrel Days, binned Hunting High & Low

so, ten a week then.

I can only imagine the volume he 'rejected' then, how do you get rid of those sorts of quantities of stuff?

leave them in a box at maida vale for people to take? i dunno, it doesn't seem that tough

anyway, what this demonstrates is that john peel's average critical nous over a lifetime should be ranked at .4 peak weingartens

I guess, mainly because I'm imagining these all being sent to "Peel Acres" as was.. (xposT)

i see there are spotify links provided for most records so its not as useless as people are saying - there was no possible way they'd ever have the cash and time to clear every one of those records.

so am i missing the part where you can look at front and back covers and info on records? the record spine thing is annoying.

Does 20,000 albums seem, um, not that many? Or am I massively underestimating how 'many' that is?

16,573 of them are Fall records.

so am i missing the part where you can look at front and back covers and info on records?

You have to click on them!

i did. i'll try a different browser.

i guess if yer gonna own just one roy acuff record, that's the one.

NERD RAGE - is this in the order he left them in, or is it meant to be alphabetical? Because I've just clicked through Acceleradeck-Abyssinians-Accrington Stanley, and now I'm cross.

ah, okay, works with firefox. pictures are too small though. and taking pictures of the inner sleeves is kinda crazy. nice closeups of the labels would have been urgent and key as people like to say.

> how do you get rid of those sorts of quantities of stuff?

he used to give them away in competitions, several feet at a time. the play / blog / radio show 'john peel's shed' was written by one of the winners (and is great btw)

Does 20,000 albums seem, um, not that many? Or am I massively underestimating how 'many' that is?

It's a lot less than I would have expected. As for singles, I believe that before he had to sell them all off due to his contretemps with the Inland Revenue, Mike Read's collection went into six figures.

I think the thing with showing the inner sleeves is that he's written on the track playing times on them.

right, i kinda got that, but its a missed opportunity to have nice pictures of record labels that have never been photographed...

> ah, okay, works with firefox.

not here. ok in chrome though. odd.

That website is useless, I keep navigating around it and I never find anything. Suspect it's a browser issue and it bugs me how website developers can't make sure their sites work across browsers.

Thing is, nine times out of ten I want to hear something I don't go rifling through my collection but find it online. I guess that's the "future" of record collecting in a nutshell.

Yeah, and eight years ago too.. Downloading tracks cuz you can't be bothered to look for in your own collection Blues...

eh -- "this is one of the greatest libraries ever but we haven't digitized all the books so the website is just a catalogue, what were you expecting" -- the curatorial issues don't really work the same way. i wonder what percentage of the 25,000 LPs + 40,000 singles is actually not available in digital form already somewhere.

and yeah, you're right. even without the audio it's a worthwhile project. but as a music lover, I'm just reflexively bitter that copyright law will prevent it from being the resource it could be in my lifetime. sure, you can get most of it online right now... but not all of it, and it certainly isn't curated.

So basically it's not a resource.

I don't think pop music was ever meant to be a "resource" or be "curated."

Pop music, no.

Then again, Pop music has currency whereas not all music does.

e.g. the number of people who complained about RedNex' "Cotton Eye Joe" being 'turned into' a dumb ol' dance number from the 'historic' early americana of the original. Forgetting that back then it was a dumb ol' dance number even then!

Neither was pop music ever meant to be a Bureau de Change.

I don't think anything you see in museums was originally "meant" to be a "resource" or be "curated".

we are all curators now.

In truth, museums are wrong.

burn all the museums down. that's my motto.

record stores ARE museums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nN-KME0Tqw

I wouldn't go so far as to burn them down, but they have gotten above themselves in the last 150 years or so.

"record stores ARE museums."

not mine, man. everything is priced to sell. get it on out of there.

museums are shrines to the rich. you can never have too many of those.

not mine, man. everything is priced to sell. get it on out of there.

the defining characteristics of a museum are not its collection being permanent or priceless. a record store, to me, is exactly what a museum of pop music would look like, not some rock n roll hall of fame sort of thing.