Bad news for music lovers: Fantasy Studios, building closed. Get your OJC CD's now!!

I just heard through the grapevine that Concord in their cost cutting wisdom has let go Stuart, the Fantasy vault guy who knew where every tape was and are shoveling all of the tapes to the infamous IRON MOUNTAIN storage facility. The saying is: "Once in Iron Mountain, never out of Iron Mountain".

Remember when all of the Columbia Byrds and Simon & Garfunkel masters were misplaced there for 20 years?

So, the vault archivist Stuart is out of a job as is the entire Fantasy Recording and Mastering Studio engineers, technicians and all related personal. In other words, anyone who knows anything about the history of Fantasy, Prestige, Riverside, Contemporary, Specialty and the other labels now controlled by Concord are gone with the wind.

This is truly a shame. The story is that while the Fantasy Studio staff was being told of their impending removal, the Iron Mountain people were in the parking lot padlocking the doors of the building so they could start removing everything. Getting rid of the people who know what they are doing to save a few dollars is really stupid. It's happened before (Bill Inglot) and it will happen again but still.....Stupid.

 

Oh man, this is bad.

 

The destruction of musical history is going on and on and on...

 

Oh man....this is the worst news I've heard in a long time.

 

Im just getting into jazz.This makes me sick to my stomach.

What is their purpose for locking everything up whre no one can get to it?

Dont they expect that some day they will reissue again?

What else if famous for being in this place called "Iron Mountain"


Please excuse me now while I go throw up.

 

I'm at a loss for words.

 

Just follow Steve's advice and get as many OJCs as you can, they may not last much longer...

 

bad stuff.

 

wow, they're not gonna destroy them are they ???

 

Oh man this is really bad news. Jeeze, what in **** do we have to do, buy these labels ourselves?

 

The selfish side of me is relieved that I have acquired all the OJC titles I wanted (which were numerous) in sealed condition during the past couple of years, after "discovering" jazz.

The caring side makes me feel sorry for those who don't have the resources to buy everything they want NOW before the titles disappear altogether (many are already OOP) or become the "new DCCs" of eBay, as well as those who don't care for classic jazz now but will one day.

My favorite period of jazz is mid-fifties to early sixties (roughly post-bop/pre-fusion). Try finding most of those classic albums on a CD imprint other than OJC.

 

That's true about Iron Mountain. I work in banking and every once in a while I'll need an old file that happened to have been sent off to "storage." When I first started at my current place, I was told that we could get the files out of storage, but it'd be easier to just ask the client for the needed info a second time.

Anyhoo, sad news. Like I've mentioned several times in other threads, I've been stocking up on OJC CDs over the last year and a half.

 

The mind boggles at the amount of musical history that could potentially be flushed down the toilet. I will not hestiate to purchase OJCs of interest to me from now on whenever I see them. Man, what a serious DRAG!!!

 

Well, I had waited on getting those OJC thinking Concorde was going to do the right thing and come up with a fabulous release program...

Getting those OJC back to my wish list...

 

I used to be file man at company that had nothing to do with music. Iron Mountain and the other storage companies we dealt with were awful. You would tear your hair out and say "we're paying for THIS?". Seeing how they treated paper files (I got to spend time inside some of these places), I would not think of them as leading candidates for something really valuable or unique. Computers and scanning will ultimately solve a lot of paper storage problems, but I guess music isn't quite so simple.

 

Steve, I am guessing its a good idea to pick up the cheap vinyl of the OJC's as well since this has happened?

So what else is in famously locked up in this "Iron Mountain"? never heard of it before.

 

I'm speechless

 

Yes, the digital dowload revolution will finally destroy recorded music history. Recorded music first becomes a subgenre/special interest in the computer technology universe. Then it disappears into a black hole. Swallowed and gone forever. The LPs and CDs us "dinosaurs" and "freaks" collect will eventually be the best reference masters available for most music of the past.

Welcome to Capitalism my friends. If it doesn't make a profit anymore, flush it or burn it, or plow it into a landfill.

 

Well, I've been buying up all the OJC's I can find and will continue do to so.

Very bad news indeed but it's not like we weren't warned this would happen. Steve commented on this when Concord first took over the Fantasy catalog.

 

Gawdawful!!!