Sun Ra at Ubu Web

the disturbing trend in all this, though, is how few people actually care about the massive archive that is the internet, care in the sense of protecting it from locks and barriers, or even more sadly, care to even make that click and see what humanity has collected.  Our arts worship 'primative' arts, I've had performers and professionals say to me blankly that anything they cannot grasp in 15 minutes is not worth knowing, and I meet so few kids, even kids in Jazz programs at major colleges, who have even a rudimentary knowledge of where their music has been through the past.  there is a massive urgency to know trivial details of the now through Facebook and Twitter, and yet I will wager a random sample of people will find very very few who know of, let alone will actually use sites like Ubu or even the more mainstream archive.org.

Myself, I've always been curious.  Every book I read, I'd hunt down the references just to find something else to read, every record I'd look out for the producer's other projects, the bands where the leaders of the day were the sidemen, and my reputation such now that neighbours will drive up and unload boxes of crumbling sheet music just because they know I'll cry if I hear they trashed it.  I'm no archivist by any stretch, more just a neurotically compulsive pack-rat. 'Uncluttered' is not in my vocabulary.

I don't remember where I heard it, perhaps this will ring a bell with someone, but years and years ago I remember a radio play and I recall the actor James Earl Jones was the voice of the father, his son having taken him to task for not 'being there for him' he snaps back at the boy that it was his job to make sure the boy knew his culture, knew where he came from, knew the shoulders upon which his life rested, and if he had done only that he would have done more than most fathers.  I vowed then and there I'd do that for my own children, and god willing I hope I have.

one dared not disobay any man who was to go on to become the most feared of the Sith Lords :)

--

the disturbing trend in all this, though, is how few people actually care about the massive archive that is the internet, care in the sense of protecting it from locks and barriers, or even more sadly, care to even make that click and see what humanity has collected.  Our arts worship 'primative' arts, I've had performers and professionals say to me blankly that anything they cannot grasp in 15 minutes is not worth knowing, and I meet so few kids, even kids in Jazz programs at major colleges, who have even a rudimentary knowledge of where their music has been through the past.  there is a massive urgency to know trivial details of the now through Facebook and Twitter, and yet I will wager a random sample of people will find very very few who know of, let alone will actually use sites like Ubu or even the more mainstream archive.org.

Myself, I've always been curious.  Every book I read, I'd hunt down the references just to find something else to read, every record I'd look out for the producer's other projects, the bands where the leaders of the day were the sidemen, and my reputation such now that neighbours will drive up and unload boxes of crumbling sheet music just because they know I'll cry if I hear they trashed it.  I'm no archivist by any stretch, more just a neurotically compulsive pack-rat. 'Uncluttered' is not in my vocabulary.

I don't remember where I heard it, perhaps this will ring a bell with someone, but years and years ago I remember a radio play and I recall the actor James Earl Jones was the voice of the father, his son having taken him to task for not 'being there for him' he snaps back at the boy that it was his job to make sure the boy knew his culture, knew where he came from, knew the shoulders upon which his life rested, and if he had done only that he would have done more than most fathers.  I vowed then and there I'd do that for my own children, and god willing I hope I have.

one dared not disobay any man who was to go on to become the most feared of the Sith Lords :)

--