Library of Congress adds 25 new recordings to its collection, including classics from Captain Beefheart, Steely Dan and George Crumb

Whether it's hip-hop or humpback whales, the Library of Congress certainly knows how to spread the love around when it comes to America’s aural preservation. On Wednesday, the government agency named 25 new additions to the ninth annual National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, ensuring that these cultural, artistic and historic recordings will remain available for all time. Among the chosen were recordings by De La Soul, Al Green and the recently deceased Captain Beefheart. 

“Audio recordings have documented our lives and allowed us to share artistic expressions and entertainment,” Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said in a statement. “The salient question is not whether we should preserve these artifacts , but how best collectively to save this indispensable part of our history.”

Under the terms of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, Billington, with advice from the library’s National Recording Preservation Board, must annually select 25 recordings that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” and are at least 10 years old.

The library has added recordings to the registry since 2002. This year’s batch was whittled down from 900 submissions and brings the total to 325 (fifty recordings were added each year for four years, with 25 added each year since. The recordings now being added are from nominations made in 2010.)

Spanning from 1853-1994, this year’s list seems to include something for everyone-- baseball fans (Edward Meeker’s 1908 anthem “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,”), oceanographers (the 1970 recording of “Songs of a Humpback Whale”), faithful lovers (Tammy Wynette’s 1968 crossover hit, “Stand by Your Man”) and classic rock fans (Steely Dan's 1977 album, "Aja")

Other additions to the registry include recordings from Nat King Cole, Les Paul, Lydia Mendoza, Blind Willie Johnson, the Sons of Pioneers, George Crumb, comedian Mort Sahl and the Almanac Singers.

Nominations were gathered from online submissions from the public and from the National Recording Preservation Board, comprised of leaders in fields of music, recorded sound and preservation. Wondering why your favorite artists got the shaft this year? Submissions for next year’s registry are open to the public on the National Recording Preservation Board's website now, so get clicking.

--Nate Jackson

Video: De La Soul's 1989 album "3 Feet High and Rising" was among the recordings added to National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. Credit: YouTube

Gary Lucas discusses Don Van Vliet's legacy in advance of Thursday's Captain Beefheart Symposium

Longtime Captain Beefheart guitarist-manager Gary Lucas will present a symposium on the life and legacy of the artist otherwise known as Don Van Vliet, who died Dec. 17, at the Echoplex at 8 p.m. Jan. 13. Special guests Kristine McKenna, Bill Mosely, Weba Garretson, Matt Groening, Stan Ridgway and others discuss and perform selections from Beefheart’s body of work.

Lucas shares with Pop & Hiss insight about the life and art of the one and only Captain Beefheart.

Pop & Hiss: You’ve called Don Van Vliet an American maverick visionary genius who single-handedly changed the face of music. How did he do this?

The music that he originated that came up especially on his classic albums such as "Trout Mask Replica," and "Lick My Decals Off, Baby" had a really big influence on early experimental rock, particularly in the area of rhythm and the deconstruction of traditional melodies and harmonies within the songs. Van Vliet brought in polytonality and atonality within the song structure, and he did it in such a way that once you heard it, it was really hard to shake. The influence of the blues is something that roots Beefheart’s sound, but he also had this overlay of free jazz sensibility; at one point he cited people like Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane as influences on his own music.

The music that emanated with all of these different influences was so original that, in the first explosion of what they were calling punk and new wave music, I heard traces of it pretty obviously in quite a few bands, such as XTC, Devo and Talking Heads. Most of the people in those bands did cite Don as an influence and acknowledged him, and certainly Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer both went on record saying he was a tremendous influence on their music and a hero to them.

His music was so strong and striking that its reverberations are still being felt to this day. And when anybody tries to mess with the format of traditional rhythm and harmonies within a pop-song structure, you can trace most of the pioneering work to Don Van Vliet.

Remix alert: Captain Beefheart's 'Safe as Milk' album reworked by Al Lover

The tributes and hat-tips continue to pour forth for Don Van Vliet, a.k.a. Captain Beefheart, who died on Dec. 17. The singer and composer, who spent his formative years in Los Angeles, concocted strange rhythms and sounds and combined them in curious structures to create something resembling free jazz and rock. ("Free rock"?)

In the spirit of Beefheart's innovative work, producer/remixer Al Lover has created a thrilling, weird remix of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band's first album, "Safe as Milk." On it, the San Francisco-based sample maven takes beats, guitar sounds, rhythms and random chaotic sounds and compiles them into instrumental excursions.

Writes Lover of the process: "Created in one week of all-nighters, heavy alcohol consumption, and paranoid reclusiveness the results are both gruesome and beautiful -- drowned with delay, beat to death by distortion, and hung out to dry on a tambourine. A heavy cloud cover of sonic bombardment cut by thunderous crushing drums, the album is a hologram of the original seen through a shattered mirror reflecting into eternity." (via The Daily Swarm)

The reworked full length is called "Safe As Milk Replica," and you can download it in its entirety here. Or if you want to sample it first, here's a taste.

Al Lover - Abba Zaba

-- Randall Roberts