Past Daily’s Spring Fundraiser is starting now!
Hopefully, we won’t have to do this for long – but we need to raise $15,000 to meet all our expenses, in order to keep the site and the archive up and running and to continue giving you the best and rarest in historic recordings we can offer. As you all know, Past Daily is my alter-ego, the one who slaves over this site every day, and who digs out of the library otherwise known as The Gordon Skene Sound Collection.
Some quarter-million recordings going back to the turn of the last century – tapes, cylinders, 78s, large transcription discs made of glass and peeling acetate and lps. Most everything on this site comes from that archive and the preservation project is huge and is on-going.
It’s my plan and my goal to share all of this with you – to give you the same opportunity to have access to all these rare recordings that all the libraries and institutions around the world do. It’s your history and a lot of it you don’t know about, and it’s my job to make it available to you – free of charge, 24 hours a day, in the best sound possible.
History is important – it has to be, because we repeat so much of it over and over. Unfortunately, a lot of us forget that – it’s been my job since 1963 to help make sure we don’t.
I started this archive by accident – home from school, sick the day President Kennedy was assassinated and playing with my parents tape recorder. As history unfolded, my tape recorder took it all down, preserved it and kept it as a record of a life-changing event. As the months and years went by, I acquired other collections – toss-outs from radio stations and libraries. Flea markets, garage sales, companies going out of business – precious recordings and pieces of history no one wanted at the time, destined for the dumpster and land-fill. The people doing the tossing didn’t think any of it was important or of any value, but I did.
As time went by, the collection swelled past my bedroom, past my garage, past one storage room and then two storage rooms and then three storage rooms and then a wing of storage rooms. The warehouse space keeps shrinking and the collection keeps growing. All the while, radio stations keep tossing out, libraries keep divesting and collectors keep pruning – and I keep getting calls.
Thankfully with the Internet, the idea of all this history sitting in some dark room, gathering dust and headaches is no longer an option – I can share all of this with everyone who is interested and who wants to find out anywhere in the world.
But it’s a huge effort and it takes time and energy and money – time to preserve and money to pay for equipment, storage; the endless hours of energy posting, listening, preserving – it could be, if sleep weren’t a factor, a 24 hour a day proposition.
And that’s why I need your help and that’s why I do these periodic fundraisers – to help keep the project alive and to continue giving you the very best I can.
Look; I know money is tight and your contributions are precious, and you often think long and hard about it before you hit the “donate” button. That’s why I’ve become affiliated with Fractured Atlas, the organization that acts as a non-Profit umbrella for projects like mine – so you get the extra added bonus of a tax-deduction, while I get the benefit of a much-needed contribution. I think of it as a win-win situation for both you and me – you get to see your tax dollars at work and I get to preserve and offer more rare pieces of history to you and millions of others.
So all you have to do is click on the link below and it will take you to the Indiegogo Fundraiser site and they will do the rest. It’s simple, painless and a lifesaver.
Here’s the link – click on Teddy’s face and they’ll do the rest:
Give what you can, how much or how little depends on you – no pressure. Tell your friends. And if enough of you get together and chip in, we can hit our goal in a few days and we’ll live happily ever after, or at least until the Fall.
I can’t do this without you and I am grateful beyond for all those of you who have contributed so far.
Till next time,
Gordon
