Archives

Selected Songs

My Archives of collected recordings is large and unruly. I truly believe in my saying “a good artist is a good archivist” but the actual task is “unruly”, meaning that there have been no rules and the archive project is itself a daunting task.

When you look back and try to sort out what is ‘good’ and what is interesting from what is (or was) needed at the time, but now appears dated and naive, you discover a lot of recordings that might be better off deleted. I never or rarely do that however; “delete”…

I should admit that perhaps my not being a “good archivist” I have been a good hoarder. I have indeed kept just about everything, from musical instruments, to all my original
cassette tape’s and four track cassettes, also reel to reel, Adat and vinyl.

In the oddest of ways these objects (recordings, musical instruments and periferal technology) are where I find something that can be experienced as sacred. Musicians will understand.

I mention vinyl not because I go back and listen to my old records with nostalgia but because that collection of music is a source of new music through sampling. I am a sonic predator, unabashed, but in an appreciative way. So I do go back and listen but with an ear for a sound texture, a beat, drum hit or vocal snippet. In fact the archives as a whole is an amazing resource for sampling as in the creation of new music. This is perhaps a better reason to preserve and categorize all these
recordings and from the artist perspective to continue to have a reason and inspiration to create.