Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
Overdue at the Library
Curtiss has 30 years of folk tapes due at the Library of Congress.
Lou Curtiss opened Folk Arts Rare Records on Adams Avenue more than 30 years ago. Over the years, he’s promoted folk concerts at SDSU, coffee shops, and, later, the roots festivals staged in the street in front of his shop. Too busy to listen to his shows in real time, Curtiss taped them to enjoy at his leisure. There exist thousands of hours now, going back to the 1960s. And the Library of Congress wants to archive the performances into a digital collection.
“I’m working right now on digitizing the Tenth Annual Folk Festival,” Curtiss says. “Utah Phillips is the one doing the singing.” That was 1976, at SDSU’s Aztec Center. The hardest part about going from analog to digital, he says, is remembering all the names. The Library of Congress people want those details, right down to the backup singers. But Curtiss, Buddha-like at 72, his beard gone white, says he can pick out vocalists by ear, from the no-names all the way up the folk-music food chain to headliners such as Bill Monroe, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Bashful Brother Oswald.
The project began in 2007, when the Grammy Foundation awarded Curtiss a $35,000 “archiving and preservation grant,” after which he and his partner in digitizing, Russ Hamm, began burning CDs. Starting at the beginning, they got through the year 1975 before the grant money ran out. “We’ve got about 2000 tapes left,” Curtiss says, “and that doesn’t include the video.”
Curtiss is not entirely sure whose idea it was to digitize his concert tapes for the library, but now he’s deep into it and needs more money to finish.
He produces a check made in the amount of $750, sent as a donation from a Colorado businessman. “There’s been no corporate interest in this project at all in San Diego.” How much will it cost to complete the digitizing? Curtiss says he doesn’t know. Donations arrive at the shop in dribs and drabs, enough to keep the project alive, but Curtiss says he fears the ticking of an even bigger clock.
“I’m worried,” he says. “I’m not getting any younger.”
Here's something you might be interested in.
Overdue at the Library
Overdue at the Library
Curtiss has 30 years of folk tapes due at the Library of Congress.
Lou Curtiss opened Folk Arts Rare Records on Adams Avenue more than 30 years ago. Over the years, he’s promoted folk concerts at SDSU, coffee shops, and, later, the roots festivals staged in the street in front of his shop. Too busy to listen to his shows in real time, Curtiss taped them to enjoy at his leisure. There exist thousands of hours now, going back to the 1960s. And the Library of Congress wants to archive the performances into a digital collection.
“I’m working right now on digitizing the Tenth Annual Folk Festival,” Curtiss says. “Utah Phillips is the one doing the singing.” That was 1976, at SDSU’s Aztec Center. The hardest part about going from analog to digital, he says, is remembering all the names. The Library of Congress people want those details, right down to the backup singers. But Curtiss, Buddha-like at 72, his beard gone white, says he can pick out vocalists by ear, from the no-names all the way up the folk-music food chain to headliners such as Bill Monroe, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, and Bashful Brother Oswald.
The project began in 2007, when the Grammy Foundation awarded Curtiss a $35,000 “archiving and preservation grant,” after which he and his partner in digitizing, Russ Hamm, began burning CDs. Starting at the beginning, they got through the year 1975 before the grant money ran out. “We’ve got about 2000 tapes left,” Curtiss says, “and that doesn’t include the video.”
Curtiss is not entirely sure whose idea it was to digitize his concert tapes for the library, but now he’s deep into it and needs more money to finish.
He produces a check made in the amount of $750, sent as a donation from a Colorado businessman. “There’s been no corporate interest in this project at all in San Diego.” How much will it cost to complete the digitizing? Curtiss says he doesn’t know. Donations arrive at the shop in dribs and drabs, enough to keep the project alive, but Curtiss says he fears the ticking of an even bigger clock.
“I’m worried,” he says. “I’m not getting any younger.”
Comments