Live recordings from the Crocodile are going to be archived in the University of Washington Library. In 2001, Croc engineer Jim Anderson began recording bands as they played. Now, in conjunction with the UW Ethnomusicology Department and the head of the UW media department John Vallier, some 3000 hours of shows from the Crocodile are set to be preserved forever. There will be something like a dedicated Mac Mini sealed with a mouse and a pair of headphones. People will be able to go Odegaard Undergrad Library, search up a band or a date, and listen to the show. People won’t be able to download or burn the shows for themselves though. They are working on how to protect and index it all now.

The archive is resting in six cardboard boxes, two hard drives, and 300 data DVD’s. Just short two terabytes of data, it’s roughly 3000 hours worth of recordings. If you listened for eight hours a day, it would take about a year to get all the way through.

In the beginning, Anderson was only recording the headliners, then he began recording entire shows. It was a feed directly into the board. Evolving the recordings, he set up a pair of Octava MK219 room mics. After the smoking ban, he switched to a pair of Audio Technica AT3030’s, which are medium to large diaphragm condenser mics.

Anderson said:

Basically it’s most of the shows for the last five or six years of the club’s run. The whole show, not just the headliner. I’m excited about it. The archive is a snapshot of the time, a window into pop music and what was going then. All the talking in between songs is recorded. Someone a hundred years from now will be able to get a clearer sociological perspective of our time.

What makes this collection unique is that in archival recordings from other clubs, there’s not a whole lot of the between song banter. I did blanket recordings, and was able to capture everything. Even now, four or five years later, it’s interesting to look back and see what the concerns of the day were. Bands and people talk about politics, sports, events, the environment, equipment issues, technology, and so on. There’s a lot of stuff that gives you the flavor of what people were thinking and talking about at that point in time.

Recording the shows also became a great stage management tool for me. I could look at how the recording was going and see what time the band went on and how long they’d played. It really helped the shows stay on track.

Chances are, if you played at the Croc from 2002 on, you’re in there.

A reception to kick off the archive will happen once everything is set. Stay tuned for details.