But I could not live with myself as a ‘collector’ without at least one person I could share sounds with. I don’t even like the term ‘record collector.’ They’ve been parodied far too many times. In fact, I believe that it is music of THE FUTURE. Jonathan Ward, the man behind the Excavated Shellac blog, talks about crate digging, collecting, and sharing 78 RPM recordings from around the world. This music – old music – never sounds “old” to me, personally.

But part of that feeling is thinking how you’d want to share that with others, to have them feel exactly the same way. The feeling that you’ve never heard anything like this before in your life it transports you to a place where words are irrelevant. Of course, nothing beats that feeling, say, when you alone break open that box from Turkey or Indonesia, place the fragile platter on the turntable, only to feel your hair stand on end when the music begins. “It’s been my philosophy that good music is best when it is shared. graphics from the 78-RPM era, and extensive liner notes by compiler Jonathan Ward, founder and author of the acclaimed Excavated Shellac website. With nearly all of the tracks never before reissued, this collection expands upon and acts as a companion to Jonathan Ward’s Excavated Shellac website, a unique repository of music, history, and data on 78 rpm recordings from around the world, rarely heard and seldom seen. Dozens of startling pieces, often from little-heard-from regions and obscure, little-studied styles, are available at any given time as gifts to the world. Each Sunday night, he posts a side of a disc, digitally restored with much of the format’s inherent noise removed without compromising the sound of the performances, along with substantial discographical and musicological context and thoughts on the performance, which usually take the form of wonder and respect for the magic they contain, all made available as free downloads. Jonathan Ward is the person behind Excavated Shellac, a popular blog that focuses on rare 78rpm recordings of folkloric and vernacular music from around the. My favorite steady source of digital revelations is Jonathan Ward’s “ Excavated Shellac,” a blog of folkloric and vernacular music from around the world taken from Ward’s own dazzling collection of 78 rpm discs.

Excavated Shellac by Jonathan Ward