WFMU's Record Library stars in new video

The Antique Phonograph Music Program's host Michael Cumella (Mac) happens to be a talented videographer, and he captured the glory of WFMU's amazing record library in a short video he produced for Goldmine Magazine. Check out "WFMU, Where Records Go To LIVE!" below, and all hail the black crack!

Comments

[max]

awwessssssome, I want to be there

[Johnny Drongo]

Wow, the station is a clean, well-lighted place...
Nice vid, and nice rekkid collection.

[Yair yona]

I'd be happy to be a table/chair/floor/lamp/stylus/dust celaner - whatever, in this station.
that's a super cool video, and this is the best radio station ever.

[K.]

With terabyte drives under 100USD, have you considered ripping the collection? I know, a massive undertaking, but given the uniqueness of the collection, perhaps a good long term portable storage solution. How many records are in the collection?

[James Baldwin]

K., that's a great suggestion! I wonder if folks at WFMU have considered that in the past. But like most nonprofit/noncommercial stations, I'm willing to bet they're spread pretty thin in terms of the finances and capacity necessary to pull something that ambitious off.

If anyone knows Warren Buffett, Bill Gates or Richard Branson, ask them to send in a check.

[avrakotos]

K., Baldwin, I know y'all aren't missing the point about the LP, album art, record player, analog aesthetic.

[K.]

Perhaps I am. While I'm a huge fan of analog instrumentation, I fail to see the value of analog playback equipment. God knows, I lugged enough milk crates of records around in my youth to have gotten fed up with it. When the CD player came out I was thrilled. Finally I could listen to music that sounded like what I heard when I went to live performances at the time. No popping, hissing, warbly noise. I ripped my album collection some years back and processed the results to filter out much of the crap the record player added. Who can ever forget painting records with water to lower noise levels? Or putting the friggin turntable on a slab of granite to keep the microphonics down... Or the ugly fact that each time you played the thing, the vinyl was further degraded.

Now that said, the big advantage to those old albums ( and why I ripped some despite CD's being available ) is that the current crop of record engineers ( much like the current crop of club engineers ) seem to me to be stone cold deaf. So excellent masters are remixed with no dynamic range and no frequencies above about 100hz. Boom, thud, boom. This is often blamed on the technology, but is wholy the fault of the engineers. I'm really shocked when I go to clubs and hear how bad some excellent musicians sound because of this problem. You see a keyboard player, lead guitar and vocalist, but all you hear is the bass player and the drummer.

Ripping the library would preserve the great mastering done on those old albums and protect the collection from destruction by fire or flood. Storage is finally cheap enough for this to be possible. Also, and most importantly, it _can_ be done legally because the station possesses a physical copy of each album being backed up. Cost is not the issue; it's time. The collection may be so big that a modest effort could run into years of work.

[Frankie]

Awesome. I love watching people such as yourselves dedicating themselves to what they believe in. It seems almost outside of capitalistic notions of success.

[joel]

Amazingly beautiful - one day I will head east and volunteer.
Oh and good to see Liz sporting the KDVS shirt!

[Dale]

Unless your backups have backups and THOSE backups have backups, I think vinyl is much more permanent. Especially when the next great solar storm happens or the Iraqis detonate a magnetic pulse bomb over Jersey City. Besides, flipping though album covers and liner notes is part of the discovery process. Can't do that with an archived list.

[Zaph Mann]

Fabulous. I heard you say you are an album addict - I trust you have 'Orgasm addict' by the now re-grouped Buzzcocks, but I wonder if you have their first EP with Howard Devoto still in the band?

I bet you do, and in my dreams I see one of you flying over here on a Focus swan to lend it to me for my show "In Memory Of John Peel" on radio23

I have had 10,000 LPs myslef - but after moving and theft I have about 1000 left - thank you for doing all you do, I am overwhelmed..
Zaph