The New York Public Library is issuing 6,000 limited-edition library cards to celebrate the opening of the Lou Reed Archive. Credit Jonathan Blanc/The New York Public Library
By Sara Aridi March 15, 2019
After
two years of cataloging and preparing, the Lou Reed Archive at the New
York Public Library’s performing arts branch at Lincoln Center opens to
the public on Friday. And to celebrate, the library is issuing 6,000
limited-edition library cards featuring an image of Reed taken by Mick Rock in 1972.
The library acquired the archive — a large collection of notes, photographs, and more than 600 hours of recordings — after the rocker’s wife, Laurie Anderson, decided to share it with an institution that could preserve and showcase it.
Before Reed died in 2013, he had never discussed what to do with his belongings, Anderson said in a phone interview.
Since 1977, Bay Area punk institution Maximum Rocknroll has been producing a radio show, publishing a monthly magazine, releasing records, organizing shows, and supporting worldwide punk projects. As MRR enters its 40th year, we are undertaking our most ambitious project ever: creating a comprehensive online database of our record collection and music reviews. The project will also see out-of-print issues of the magazine fully digitized. We’re asking for your help to make it possible.
Our collection is the largest assemblage of punk material history on earth. In addition to records, the archive is home to countless rare and unheard demo tapes, zines, photographs, one-of-a-kind record covers designed by the magazine’s founder Tim Yohannan, and flyers dating back to the genre’s inception, many of which will be digitized for the first time. MRR has been instrumental in punk history and historiography, and the archive and database will be an essential resource for record collectors, historians, and anyone interested in punk, hardcore, and garage rock.
