MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — The world’s largest collection of punk records has officially arrived at Middle Tennessee State University, marking the beginning of a major archival project at the university’s Center for Popular Music that will take quite some time to organize before becoming available to researchers or the general public.
The Maximum Rocknroll archive, long associated with the influential underground punk magazine of the same name, has been relocated from California to Murfreesboro and is now housed inside the Center for Popular Music within MTSU’s Scott Borchetta College of Media and Entertainment. The massive archive includes more than 50,000 vinyl records along with business papers and other ephemera documenting punk’s evolution.
“The Maximum Rocknroll collection represents a cultural force as beloved as it is controversial,” said archival assistant Harlow Crandall, who helped organize the materials after they arrived in early February. “It provided underground bands with unprecedented access to a national stage while also acting as a kind of gatekeeper for the movement.”…