September 28, 1983
Record Giveawayby Mike Greenstein
WAER's rock'n'roll library, one of the biggest university-owned album collections in the country, is gone.
Don't call the police, however. The records weren't stolen Station Manager David Anderson gave them away.
In late August, Anderson decided WAER wasn't in the "record storage business" any longer. He directed his new student staff leaders, program director Greg Friedman and music director Sam Nelson, to go through the station's 50,000-album music library and remove any one which they decided did not fit into the jazz/ r'n'b format implemented at the station in June.
According to Anderson, about 3,000
classical, folk, blues and rock albums which they "didn't
want to make a quick decision on" are being boxed away in a
Newhouse Communications Center storeroom. Those records, he says,
include "historically significant" albums by prominent
groups like the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Doors. Nelson, a
graduate student in the Maxwell School, and Friedman, a
third-year law student, made the selections.
A week later, the rest of the culled records - roughly 20,000 albums by rock and folk groups Anderson says "had no merit to be saved"- were placed in stacks in the long hallway outside WAER's fourth-floor studio. By word of mouth, the news spread. People carted off hundreds of records by the armful. Within a week, Anderson says, more than 90 percent of the records had disappeared. The rest went to the dumpster.
Anderson, who stresses education and public service as two legs of WAER's "three-legged mission" (the other is being a window into and out of the university), apparently thinks he has served both of those goals with that decision, which he readily admits making without consulting any other administrator. When he refers to the records he disposed of, he repeatedly cautions himself, "l really don't want to call them junk, but...
"Ninety-five percent of them were records by groups that made one or two records and were never heard from again," he continues.' "Some may have slipped through that shouldn't have been given away, but the music that we threw away was not music we would play even if we changed format. We're not an archive. We're not a library. We're a radio station, and we need the space."
An 'Asinine' Decision
A large, open space now exists in the WAER music library where two room-length, three-tiered record shelves once stood. While Anderson calls that an improvement, others within and outside the university don't exactly agree.
It's one of the most asinine things I've ever heard of,"Bill Storm, assistant director of the Syracuse University Audio Archives, says of the WAER action, "especially when we have one of the best audio archives in the world. But we're weak when we get past the 78s (rpm records). I would have loved to have those albums. 1 would have grabbed them in a second."
Over at SU's Bird Library, head music librarian Don Seibert was unaware of Anderson's action until The New Times told him about it. Steve Marcone, director of SU's Music Industry Program, hadn't heard about it either. "It doesn't sound too bright," Seibert said. "We would have been interested in those records-absolutely," added Marcone, whose three-credit "History of Rock" course has been a School of Music staple for nearly 10 years.
Giving Away History
WAER's recently unloaded record cache has local used-record mongers drooling.
"Some of those records were rare and collectors pay $50-$70 for albums like that," said Charlie Robbins of Desert Shore. "l couldn't begin to tell you what kind of stuff they had up there."
"Rare records, collectibles, promotional discs, Sixties Psychedelia, folk music," sighed George Mijac of Modern Records, who recently ran a record collectors' convention at Drumlins. "They gave away a history."
Anderson, acknowledging "some people were very, very upset with it," didn't consult any of these interested parties before disposing of the records. "Based on my previous experience, in situations like this in Memphis and Tulsa, I didn't think a library would have any interest in these kind of records," he explains. "It was a judgment call on my part. If it was wrong, I'm sorry they didn't get them [the records].
Anderson says he considered two options to storing the records: giving them to WJPZ or giving them away to individuals. When SU's student-run Top 40 station turned them down, Anderson launched the biggest record Giveaway in Syracuse radio history. Selling the records, he says, would have been illegal. Giving them away, however, seemed to be all right.
There's some irony in that move, however, Most of those records were themselves originally donated to the station, either as underwriting grants from local record stores or from record companies, which "loan" them for promotional use. Returning them, Anderson says, would have been "unbelievable." So if anybody calls and asks for their hundreds of albums back, he continues, "l would tell the record company they have been disposed of. Realistically, no radio station would give them back. If they changed formats, they'd throw them into the garbage can."
Albums given by record stores, Anderson contends, become radio station property, anyway. In the recent past, Spectrum, Desert Shore, Record Theater and Sound Shack have all underwritten shows on WAER. That entailed letting the station's music directors choose about $25 worth of albums per week. Store managers said the records taken were usually not current releases, but albums selected in all types of music to fill specific gaps in the library where a record had been damaged or stolen.
"They were not giving us records as a gift," Anderson maintains. "They [the stores] received something of value in return: underwriting announcements, goodwill and tax benefits. They have to understand that styles change, that formats change. We have no debt to them."
Indeed, WAER is already soliciting those stores for underwriting again, trying to bolster its remaining library of about 25,000 jazz and r’n'b albums. And, because all of those stores of course sell jazz and r’n'b records and could use WAER's limited exposure, they will probably wind up doing it again-reluctantly and warily this time.
Ultimately, the WAER record giveaway will be no more than a minor embarrassment to Anderson and the university in their drive to turn WAER into a traditional public radio station. Anderson was submitting WAER's application for Corporation for Public Broadcasting qualification and the resulting government funding during the same week Rolling Stone was running a story on the nation's most progressive college radio stations. WAER was not mentioned.
At this stage, it's hard for a longtime listener to care about WAER anymore. The university has totally co-opted it, taken away its character, its independence and most of its music. What's left is the voice the corporation wants to hear when it wants to hear itself.
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Last Modified October 14, 2005 |