During the past few years, I’ve found a bit of time to digitize a number of live recordings from bands recorded back in the day, in my hometown region of the Twin Cities, in Minnesota. Anyone who has been keeping up with these sporadic blog posts may have already heard some of these, and hopefully enjoying the opportunity to hear some of that music again. I really believe, as I did back then, that it was a stroke of incredibly good fortune, to be surrounded by so much diverse talent, much less to have the opportunity to capture as much as I was able to at the time.
At present, I’ve been able to share about 270 recordings on Live Music Archive, thanks to the generosity of those bands whose music is hosted there. Suffice it to say that there are still many bands who are not being hosted there, and for the most part, that’s because I haven’t been able to connect with quite a few folks in those bands, or I haven’t heard back from some, giving me the permission to post their recordings on LMA to share publicly.
That’s a really important part of this process – getting permission from the artists themselves. I know that in some corners of the internet, some folks will just post recordings of bands that in many cases, the artists themselves had no idea even existed, much less granted permission to be shared publicly. I could do that as well, but I’m going with the honor system that Live Music Archive has in place:
All music in this collection is from trade-friendly artists who have opted in and is strictly non-commercial, both for access here and for any further distribution. Artists’ commercial releases are off-limits.
The tricky part here is that I can’t just go to to LMA admins and tell them a band said it was okay to post my recordings – it has to be an e-mail from the artist or someone with the credibility to speak on their behalf, so the LMA admins can see that the artist is actually on board with this. To that end, I’ve drafted an e-mail which I have sent to some artists, which states that all you have to do is replay with the word “Yes”, and that will be enough to get things rolling. But without that e-mail reply, it’s just not going to happen.
Bands: if you could use a little computer help, and you don’t have a friend or family member who is a qualified computer geek, you can always reach out to me and I should be able to walk you through things pretty easily.
Friends of bands: if you can do anything to help make this happen, your efforts will definitely be appreciated!
A couple of years ago, I posted a run-on list of bands I hoped to re-connect with, in the hopes of adding their music to the growing collection at Live Music Archive – that list can be found here:
Mpls band archives
A quick glance at my collection on LMA should make it apparent which bands I have been in touch with, and which ones I have yet to hear from. To that end, if anyone can help fill in any of those gaps, it would be greatly appreciated – not just by myself, but also the fans who have been checking in and listening to the vast cornucopia of sound that came from the Twin Cities.
Just recently I spent a couple of weeks back in Minneapolis, where I met with a number of bands to discuss the future of these recordings, and also a couple of archival organizations who expressed some interest in hosting some of the physical artifacts from my collection, including Minnesota Underground Music Archive and Diverse Emerging Music Organization.
Things are slowing down a bit on my end, as we’ve got a few other irons in the fire, so to speak, so it may take a little longer for me to get through the rest of the archives, although I think we got off to a pretty good start with what’s been shared on the LMA collection so far. I’ve still got a lot of stories, photos, flyers, etc, to go with these blog posts, but life gets in the way more than I wish it did, so all in good time, I reckon. In the meantime, check out what’s been posted so far, and don’t be afraid to turn it up!
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