Voting is Now Open: Canadian Album Hall of Fame

You nominated your favorites - alot of them - so many that I had to create two separate polls to house them all. What we have already is a nice history lesson in Canadian music but we're moving on from there. The voting is now open. Voting in this round will be open until Saturday, November 7 - after which we will go down to a top 50 and another round of voting. Of that top 50 45 will be automatically included in next years vote and 5 will be our inaugural class in NxEW's Canadian Album Hall of Fame.

Another Archives of Old Cassettes Digitized

There was a period, in the late 80s and early 90s when the best way for indie and DIY bands to get their music out was via cassette. Digital technology wasn't there yet and vinyl was prohibitively expensive. Those days are past us now, vinyl is still expensive but producing CDs is cheap and there are many who wonder if there's even a point in putting anything on CD most of the music, owned by most people is digital.

So whatever became of all those cassettes? Garage sales, thrift store drop offs, broken tape and the trash have taken their toll, so has time. Magnetic tape deteriorates quickly, especially if it is not stored properly (and most of it isn't.)

I've already told you about the Calgary Cassette Preservation Society - who are gathering Calgary's various DIY cassettes and digitizing them so that they are preserved forever.

There is now a group doing the same in Toronto: Bob S. Phillips at the Nix 100 Archive - http://c3r.ca/100nix.php already has a collection of dozens of tapes which you can download for free, along with the album art. The website states

"this website is a free resource for various underground musics released on cassette during the days before writable digital media.
special thanks go out to michael dyer for donating his collection of tapes from his ckln radio days, and to graham stewart in advance for providing hosting service and additional recordings.
if your material is featured in these pages, and you would prefer it not be part of the public domain, please contact us and it will be promptly removed.
conversely, if you posess any materials which you would like to contribute to the archive project, please feel free to get in touch.
thank you,
bob s. phillips
- nix 1oo -"