About 3000 Vinyl Records Were Soaked…..

….what happens when your record collection goes under in a flood.

It’s every record collector’s worst nightmare. Along with the terror of a house fire, the proverbial torment of which has spawned perhaps one of the most axiomatic record collector conundrums of all time, there’s something particularly gruelling about watching your records get swept away by unfeeling torrents of water, sticking covers to liner notes to records, and rendering the whole lot a gluey, pulpy mess.

Sadly, it’s a fate that befell US community radio station WMPG last week, when the volunteer-run outfit discovered a burst pipe had drenched over 3,000 records from their vast music library, and gutted the core of their blues collection. Desperate to save the rare LPs and irreplaceable field recordings, the station put out a call for help and volunteers flocked to their aid, as they did whenNorton Records warehouse was wiped out by Hurricane Sandy.

With the clean up (and dry out) well and truly under way, we contacted the station and asked them to talk us through the disaster, and how they plan to rescue what’s remaining. Dale Robin Goodman picks up the story.

So let’s start at the top – could you describe the WMPG collection to those who don’t know it?
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WMPG, broadcasting since 1973, is a Community Radio station, affiliated with the University of Southern Maine, but operated independently within the university community. ​Run by volunteers and students, with a team of three professional managers to keep the operations running smoothly.

Our music library is a collection of over 140,000 entries, catalogued on a database, organized by genres – Rock; Jazz; Global/World; Folk/Bluegrass; Blues and others. The music library is catalogued and curated by students and volunteers. All of WMPG’s on-air programmers are volunteers.

These days, most of the library is made up of CDs, but the vinyl section of the library is still a vital part of the station, and is well used by some of the DJs.

You can read the rest of this story on the Vinyl Factory Website