FEATURED RECORD COLLECTOR OF THE MONTH

Found a very interest read, 45 rpm records are still in the news and sought after.


FEATURED RECORD COLLECTOR OF THE MONTH

People like Harold Ott are indispensable to a community's culture—to a community's legacy. What's a community? That's us! Through his music work, Harold Ott provides reminders of who "we" were and thus, of course, who we are—not an irrelevant consideration. Harold's weapon of choice is Arkansas garage & psychedelic rock circa the 1960s/early 1970s. There are clues to our current identity in this music. Also: this music reminds us that anything is possible; "art" is not a genre; it's a door. You might think the study of Arkansas garage & psych rock is constraining but the fun-filled truth is that it's not. Arkansas garage & psych rock is a worthy puzzle: how can something so "small" be so big? Harold Ott grew up in Jacksonville, Arkansas, becoming a garage music fan around the age of sixteen. After a stint in the band Lollygadget and finishing school at the University of Arkansas in 1998, Ott began collecting records. His Psych of the South website project was founded in 2007 (visit: www.psychofthesouth.com). Since then, Ott has been an avid collector and historian of Arkansas garage rock, duly transforming into a dedicated crate-digger and audiophile. He is roundly considered the state's resident expert concerning the garage scene of the 1960s.

THE OA: You've now released two LOST SOULS compilations, both of which present garage and psychedelic rock music from Arkansas from the mid-'60s to early '70s. Why should other people care about this music?

HAROLD OTT: For me, the '60s and early '70s were the greatest time for rock. I'm just casting a light on the happenings in my own backyard, forty years ago. In spite of the obscurity of most of the recordings presented here, Arkansas produced garage and psychedelic rock on par with any other part of the country. This is the recorded legacy of Arkansas and I care about preserving it for the future. Many of the stories, pictures, and music I present are on the utter edge of extinction. Once the guys who have the material are gone, that's pretty much it. I'm making it my mission to discover local music and present the very best of what I find. I hope people can relate to the quest and the thrill of discovering something forty years old that can be appreciated by people around the world now.

Read the rest of this interesting interview here:

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/interviews/2009/dec/07/featured-record-collector-month/