Help Preserve & Share 1000s 0f Hours of Rare Music

 

Included  are audios of rare FM radio concert broadcasts, live in-studio performances, special television events like awards shows and benefit concerts, appearances by rock, folk, country, blues, pop, and other musical artists on regular TV shows from morning news shows to nearly every musical guest on nearly every late night talk show for over 25 years, concert showcase series, pay-per-views, and several  events only available in the United States and many other countries via foreign satellite transmissions.

 

Also in the collection:  100s of unusually high quality live concert audios and videos which we personally recorded, featuring a range of rock, folk, country, and blues performers we were privileged to see live, with a special emphasis on performances by Bob Dylan.
             Scroll down to the end of this article to see samples of some of the live videos included in the archive's collection

Jon was an audiophile with superb ears, a great eye, and considerable technical knowledge about audio and video recording, as well as a relentless drive for perfection. So many recordings he captured are superior to other circulating sources. I was nearly as relentless in my efforts to capture high quality live concert videos.

 

Our library, consisting of something over 10,000 recordings, has never yet been catalogued, and most of the material exists on largely obsolete magnetic tape formats, including analog and DAT audio cassettes, Super-Beta and S-VHS tapes, 8mm and Hi-8 video tapes, some DVC-Pro tapes, and PCM audio recorded on Beta and VHS video tapes.

 

To date, I've  barely scratched the surface of digitizing the analog concert video tapes, and capturing analog and DAT audios recordings on longer-lasting digital media such as hard drives. But the amount of work needed to finish sorting, cataloguing, and preserving the bulk of the archive is staggering, and my time is pretty constrained --  in part because I'm only one person, and also because my income is limited. In addition to Social Security, it consists mainly of funds I raise by selling personal items such as books, CDs, posters, and excess household goods on eBay.

 

 

I'm hoping to generate enough funds to:

1) spend more time working on preserving the archive vs. selling belongings on eBay

2) finance the maintenance, restoration, repair, and/or replacement of the many pieces of legacy audio/video equipment needed to play back the old tapes in order to copy them onto more permanent media

3) possibly hire an assistant on a spot basis to help with the sheer volume of labor required

 

Anything you can contribute will go far toward insuring that all of this material is properly catalogued and preserved for posterity.   AND once the entire archive is digitized, our goal is to make it freely accessible to music fans all over the world, as well as possibly provide copies to other archives which may lack some of these sources entirely, or in the same quality.

 

I'm extremely grateful for whatever help anyone can provide.  No donation is too small to make a difference!

Jon devoted the greatest part of his time, energy, and passion throughout his life to collecting as much of the music he loved in the absolute best quality he could manage and afford.

 

I think of this archive as the major part of his life's work, and the best memorial to him there could ever be.

 

Thank you for your consideration!