6-14-10
Music Videos
As will be no surprise to some of my friends, I have a massive collection of music videos, dating from roughly ‘82/’83 to ’97 or so. 15 years of nearly constant air-checking. We got out C-Band satellite dish about ’85 or so, so that opened up MuchMusic in
Trouble is, it’s 2010 and I have a garage full of beta, VHS, 8mm, laser disc, ¾” U-Matic tapes etc.! And, somewhat obviously, I don’t want to keep “everything”. My music list approaches 25,000 – but my music video collection already went way past 25,000 – way back in 1997 (when I stopped keeping the list current).
So, I’m bringing cartons of videos in from the garage and dubbing them to the DVD hard drive. This way, I can look through a 3 hour air-check in only a few minutes. I find a few jewels (or not), then OUT the tape goes! I know where the Salvation Army pick-up center is!
“Volume 1” is pretty interesting – Robert Fripp, Toyah, The Damned (on Top Of The Pops), World Party (on SNL, 1990), Pete Townshend, Les Negresses Vertes, Dr. & The Medics, Robert Palmer and more. I am going to keep each ‘volume’ to 60 min (or under) to keep the DVD-R quality as high as possible. If I have a high quality BI(S) master of something, I might even keep the slate! And everything stereo, when possible.
To be honest, even if I originated only 1 volume per week (60 minutes of ‘keepers’) – it will still take me years to get through everything! Right now, I have the time (and interest) for a project of this nature. So, from time to time, expect me to post the details of a new ‘volume’…
Please feel free to contact me and let me know if there’s any music videos you’re on the look-out for. Maybe it’s something that has only occurred to you recently, or perhaps it’s a title (or two) that I sent you at some point over the years. You never know what I might turn up!
I don’t have as many music videos as You Tube, but…almost everything I have is in MUCH BETTER QUALITY than anything on You Tube. I can burn a DVD-R from a BI(S) or ¾” U-Matic master, sometime. I just hope my slhf-2100 Sony SuperBeta holds up under the prolonged use! And I MUST have a working ¾” U-Matic around here somewhere!? (I hope I don’t have to heft it from the garage to the living room, my achin’ back can’t take that!)
Music videos used to be a good way to hear new music. I got turned on to all sorts of stuff from MuchMusic, MusiquePlus, Music Box, Rage, MTV. VH-1, Goodnight L.A. etc. And, of course, I bought tons of music videos on beta, 8mm, VHS and laser disc.
1 comment:
Oops. I posted this on the wrong story. it makes more sense here.
After I gave up on radio (1980-81?) music video was the way to discover new music for me. But by 1987 MTV was all but unwatchable, except for the 120 Minutes "ghetto" of "college radio" programming. When I stopped watching any television in 1993, I stopped having the capability of hearing new, intriguing things. (except for brief injections of college radio while in my car) But by that time, the horrifying grunge era, the chance of any new music I actually liked was rapidly diminishing, so I figured it was no loss, really. Any new music I came to like in the last 20 years was usually due to it being connected in some way with music I already knew to like.
True, there were some glaring omissions. For example, I just saw Camera Obscura live and loved them. They are a Scottish band that have been making music for 14 years now and I would have liked to have known about them a darn sight sooner than two months ago when I was perusing the Orange Peel (local club) RSS feed of upcoming shows. Thank goodness their Scottish heritage was mentioned, so I checked their video out and knew it was a done deal.
20 years ago, I would have seen them on 120 Minutes when their first single got out. I would have had all of their albums up through now. That's a bit sad.
On the upside there's this. My wife bought home a recent Rolling Stone from the library featuring the best music of the last decade. Whoever is editing RS currently is doing a pretty good job. The recent, puny magazine format of the hoary rag is surprisingly readable. A far cry from the hippie coke rag of the 70s that I hated, or the pseudo-porn POS that my wife cancelled her subscription to in the 90s. In recent months I have glanced at the new RS and found it okay to read for the first time in my life.
But to my point, I scanned through that "best of the noughts" issue and there was not a single thing mentioned that I had ever heard! Better still, a good 20% of the acts I had never even heard of in print!
I must be doing something right!
Post a Comment