Saturday, May 20, 2006

Sheldon Brown and Wolfgang's Vault

If you are at all interested in bicycles, the odds are that you already know about Sheldon Brown. For many years he's been the go to guy on the internet in terms of bike info. He's created hundreds of great web pages, written thousands of intelligent email responses to queries and he's really a genuine living treasure. Almost any Google query on any bicycle question will probably lead you to one of Sheldon's pages.

Sheldon's interests extend beyond bikes and an interesting launch point into Sheldon's world is at:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/hb.html

This is Sheldon's Homebase page and it's been around since February 14th, 2000. Sheldon states:

" This document is primarily for my own personal use, but I have made it available to anybody who may find it useful."

That page is pretty darn useful and interesting. While it's fun to check out the various bicycle links, some of the other stuff is also fascinating and useful. A while back, via Sheldon's page, I followed a link to Wolfgang's Vault.

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/


Wolfgang's Vault is a terrific audio resource. Here's the description of Vault Radio from the site:

Bill Graham and his concert promotion company, Bill Graham Presents, produced more than 35,000 concerts all over the world. His first venue, the legendary Fillmore Auditorium, was home to many of rock's greatest performers - Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Led Zeppelin, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Prince - and the list goes on and on.

Graham taped thousands of live performances and stored the tapes in the basement of the BGP headquarters. These tapes and the concerts they captured lay dormant until the Bill Graham archive was acquired by Wolfgang's Vault (Bill Graham's given first name was Wolfgang) in 2003.

Vault Radio is now playing selected tracks from these concerts in an FM-quality, 128K digital radio stream.

Does Wolfgang's Vault have anything to do with bicycles? Maybe not. But when I'm not on my bike ( I don't do the iPod or Mp3 thing when I ride) the odds are pretty good that I've got Dylan or the Dead or Jimi or somebody else reaching out across the years, out of the depths of Wolfgang's Vault and playing out the tiny speakers of my laptop.

3 comments:

Gino Zahnd said...

That pic has to be one of the most recognizable in the bicycling corner of the internet. Cracks me up every time I see it.

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, for posting up wolfgangsvault radio. I listen to it every day at work and imagine riding my bike thru long open fields.

Unknown said...

wow - I was recently turned on to wolfgang's vault and can't stop listening. I listen all day as I write (doing it write now). Here is the bizarre thing: I am also an avid bike commuter and often refer to Sheldon Brown's site for technical information. I never knew that the two sites were linked