B. George
Encyclopedia
B.George is the co-founder and Executive Director of the ARChive of Contemporary Music
in New York City
. With over two million sound recordings, the ARC is the largest popular music collection in America
. The initial donation of 47,000 discs that began ARC’s collection came from B. Himself, who accumulated them in the interval between moving to New York and publishing the International Discography, noted below.
George went to New York City in 1974 as a visual arts
student at the Whitney Museum Studio Program. From 1975 to 1979, he co-directed performance artist Laurie Anderson
’s stage show. In 1977, he formed One Ten Records and released the first commercial compilation of audio work by visual artists—a two record set entitled Airwaves, that included the initial recordings of Laurie Anderson and unreleased work by Meredith Monk
. In 1980, he received a National Endowment for the Arts
grant to produce recordings by visual artists, and in 1981 released Laurie Anderson’s first single “O Superman
”. This single went to number two on the UK charts
and reached the top 20 in 16 countries. It was eventually released by WEA
and has sold close to a million copies worldwide.
In 1981, George published the first comprehensive discographical reference work on Punk
and New Wave music
, titled Volume, the International Discography of the New Wave. By its second edition in 1982, the book had grown to over 700 pages and was co-published and distributed internationally by Omnibus Press. Volume continues to be the definitive reference guide to this material, cited in The Readers Catalog, England's Dreaming, and many other publications.
As a consultant, Mr. George selected soundworks for the Paris Bienalle in 1981 and 1983, and for New Music America in 1984. From 1982 to 1985, he produced an occasional survey of new American pop and experimental music for the BBC
that was broadcast as part of “The John Peel
Show” in the UK. From the mid-to late 1990s, he helped program Arts & Events at NYC’s World Financial Center
.
George also co-produced singles by Orchestra Jazira
(Ghana
/UK) and Sonny Okuson (Nigeria
). He has written about music for The Village Voice
, Playboy
, Creem
, ELLE
, Spin
and Billboard
. Mr. George was the music editor for Benetton’s Colors Magazine and has done occasional writing about "music & food" for Saveur Magazine
. He contributed to the planning of and provided research material for Goodtime Kings by Billy Bergman (Planet Rock/Quarto Books, 1985), the first American book on contemporary African Pop. He has consulted on many film projects including Martin Scorsese
’s The Last Temptation of Christ and Goodfellas
, Tom Hanks
' That Thing You Do, and Jonathan Demme
’s Something Wild, Beloved and The Manchurian Candidate
. From 1993-1999 Mr. George sat on the Blue Ribbon Awards
Committee for ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections
) choosing the best music books published, and in '99-00 was a member of the Yahoo Academy, voting on the Internet Life Awards for outstanding websites.
After coming to Ann Arbor in the late 1960s, B. attended the U. of Michigan College of Art and Design. He was a member of the Art School Steering Committee, and worked under George Manupelli on the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the largest independent/experimental film festival of its kind. In or about 1972, B. became the manager of the Art Department of the University Cellar, the student-owned and student-run bookstore servicing the University community. It was for many years the only alternative to the predatory companies Follett's and Ulrich's, for generations the only places Michigan students could buy or sell their overpriced textbooks. One of his ideas during this time was to create "The Whole Art Catalog". No one ever accused him of thinking small. It was never realized, mostly because of the lack of work by people who said they would help with research(this writer raises his guilty hand, here). It was a great idea, and would have encompassed a materials and equipment catalog on the creation of art, whether it be painted miniatures, or massive earthworks.
In early 2009 the ARChive partnered with Columbia University to create innovative academic initiatives and online content to help with the study, understanding and enjoyment of popular music from around the world.
ARChive of Contemporary Music
The ARChive of Contemporary Music is a non-profit music library and archive based in New York City. It contains over 5 million items.-People:The ARC was founded in 1985 by current Director, B. George and David Wheeler in Lower Manhattan...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. With over two million sound recordings, the ARC is the largest popular music collection in America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The initial donation of 47,000 discs that began ARC’s collection came from B. Himself, who accumulated them in the interval between moving to New York and publishing the International Discography, noted below.
George went to New York City in 1974 as a visual arts
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...
student at the Whitney Museum Studio Program. From 1975 to 1979, he co-directed performance artist Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
’s stage show. In 1977, he formed One Ten Records and released the first commercial compilation of audio work by visual artists—a two record set entitled Airwaves, that included the initial recordings of Laurie Anderson and unreleased work by Meredith Monk
Meredith Monk
Meredith Jane Monk is an American composer, performer, director, vocalist, filmmaker, and choreographer. Since the 1960s, Monk has created multi-disciplinary works which combine music, theatre, and dance, recording extensively for ECM Records.-Life and work:Meredith Monk is primarily known for her...
. In 1980, he received a National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
grant to produce recordings by visual artists, and in 1981 released Laurie Anderson’s first single “O Superman
O Superman
"O Superman " is a 1981 song by experimental performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson. Part of the larger work United States, "O Superman", a half-sung, half-spoken, almost minimalist piece unexpectedly rose to #2 on the UK Singles Charts in 1981. Prior to the success of this song, Anderson...
”. This single went to number two on the UK charts
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
and reached the top 20 in 16 countries. It was eventually released by WEA
Warner Music Group
Warner Music Group is the third largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry, making it one of the big four record companies...
and has sold close to a million copies worldwide.
In 1981, George published the first comprehensive discographical reference work on Punk
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
and New Wave music
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
, titled Volume, the International Discography of the New Wave. By its second edition in 1982, the book had grown to over 700 pages and was co-published and distributed internationally by Omnibus Press. Volume continues to be the definitive reference guide to this material, cited in The Readers Catalog, England's Dreaming, and many other publications.
As a consultant, Mr. George selected soundworks for the Paris Bienalle in 1981 and 1983, and for New Music America in 1984. From 1982 to 1985, he produced an occasional survey of new American pop and experimental music for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
that was broadcast as part of “The John Peel
John Peel
John Robert Parker Ravenscroft, OBE , known professionally as John Peel, was an English disc jockey, radio presenter, record producer and journalist. He was the longest-serving of the original BBC Radio 1 DJs, broadcasting regularly from 1967 until his death in 2004...
Show” in the UK. From the mid-to late 1990s, he helped program Arts & Events at NYC’s World Financial Center
World Financial Center
The World Financial Center is a complex of buildings across West Street from the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan in New York City, overlooking the Hudson River. This complex is home to offices of companies including Merrill Lynch, RBC Capital Markets, Nomura Group, the Wall Street...
.
George also co-produced singles by Orchestra Jazira
Orchestra Jazira
Orchestra Jazira was an Anglo-Ghanaian band. The band consisted of Jane Shorter playing tenor sax, Sofi Hellborg playing alto, Nigel Watson, Kwadwo Oteng playing keyboards, Opata Azu playing bass and Colin Bass. They broke up in 1987....
(Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
/UK) and Sonny Okuson (Nigeria
Nigeria
Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...
). He has written about music for The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
, Creem
Creem
Creem , "America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine," was a monthly rock 'n' roll publication first published in March 1969 by Barry Kramer and founding editor Tony Reay. It suspended production in 1989 but received a short-lived renaissance in the early 1990s as a glossy tabloid...
, ELLE
Elle
Elle may refer to:*Elle, Central African Republic*Elle , a fashion publication*Ellé, a river in France*Elle , a female given name*Elle , a Sri Lankan game similar to baseball*Ælle of Sussex, a Saxon king...
, Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
and Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
. Mr. George was the music editor for Benetton’s Colors Magazine and has done occasional writing about "music & food" for Saveur Magazine
Saveur
Saveur is a gourmet, food, wine, and travel magazine that specializes in essays about various world cuisines. The publication was co-founded by Dorothy Kalins, Michael Grossman, Christopher Hirsheimer, and Colman Andrews, who was also the editor-in-chief from 1996 to 2001...
. He contributed to the planning of and provided research material for Goodtime Kings by Billy Bergman (Planet Rock/Quarto Books, 1985), the first American book on contemporary African Pop. He has consulted on many film projects including Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
’s The Last Temptation of Christ and Goodfellas
Goodfellas
Goodfellas is a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese...
, Tom Hanks
Tom Hanks
Thomas Jeffrey "Tom" Hanks is an American actor, producer, writer, and director. Hanks worked in television and family-friendly comedies, gaining wide notice in 1988's Big, before achieving success as a dramatic actor in several notable roles, including Andrew Beckett in Philadelphia, the title...
' That Thing You Do, and Jonathan Demme
Jonathan Demme
Robert Jonathan Demme is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. Best known for directing The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, he has also directed the acclaimed movies Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married, the Talking Heads concert movie Stop...
’s Something Wild, Beloved and The Manchurian Candidate
The Manchurian Candidate
The Manchurian Candidate , by Richard Condon, is a political thriller novel about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist Party....
. From 1993-1999 Mr. George sat on the Blue Ribbon Awards
Blue Ribbon Awards
The are film-specific prizes awarded solely by movie critics and writers in Tokyo, Japan.The awards were established in 1950 by which is composed of film correspondents from seven Tokyo-based sports newspapers...
Committee for ARSC (Association for Recorded Sound Collections
Association for Recorded Sound Collections
The Association for Recorded Sound Collections as stated on their website, was "founded in 1966 [and] is a non-profit organization dedicated to research, study, publication, and information exchange surrounding all aspects of recordings and recorded sound."...
) choosing the best music books published, and in '99-00 was a member of the Yahoo Academy, voting on the Internet Life Awards for outstanding websites.
After coming to Ann Arbor in the late 1960s, B. attended the U. of Michigan College of Art and Design. He was a member of the Art School Steering Committee, and worked under George Manupelli on the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the largest independent/experimental film festival of its kind. In or about 1972, B. became the manager of the Art Department of the University Cellar, the student-owned and student-run bookstore servicing the University community. It was for many years the only alternative to the predatory companies Follett's and Ulrich's, for generations the only places Michigan students could buy or sell their overpriced textbooks. One of his ideas during this time was to create "The Whole Art Catalog". No one ever accused him of thinking small. It was never realized, mostly because of the lack of work by people who said they would help with research(this writer raises his guilty hand, here). It was a great idea, and would have encompassed a materials and equipment catalog on the creation of art, whether it be painted miniatures, or massive earthworks.
In early 2009 the ARChive partnered with Columbia University to create innovative academic initiatives and online content to help with the study, understanding and enjoyment of popular music from around the world.