Entertainment For Lively Minds
How video distills the radio stars...
Okay, crap thread title - sorry about that! And, indeed, another rather ponderous topic...It's this: how far does the existence or ready availability (on youtube, for example) of moving-images of musical acts of yore alter our [population as a whole, not just Word readers] perception of musical history and the relative worth of those represented or not?
What am I talking about? Well, it strikes me that especially now, in a age when 'everything' is supposedly available at the click of a mouse, the apparent LACK of something serves to dilute its importance or even, perhaps, push it so far into the footnotes that it might as well not have existed. In other words, if you were once in a band but you're not on youtube did you ever exist, or if you did you must have been very obscure/unsuccessful. Which is of course not necessarily so.
I'm thinking about this having exchanged emails recently with Andy Roberts (ex Liverpool Scene - 1968-70 band, played IOW festival and Albert Hall, released 3 or 4 LPs, toured US, etc) on the subject of the first legitimate Liverpool Scene CD release, due in May (and mentioned in a post elsewhere). We found it amusing that wolfgangsvault.com were selling replica Liverpool Scene 'Bobby & The Helmets' alter-ego t-shirts purely on the basis that there are famous pics of Robert Plant c1969 wearing them - the blurb on the site made it pretty clear that no-one there had ever heard the Liverpool Scene and but for the shirts-by-association they might never have existed. I pointed out to Andy that if you're not on youtube these days - where all and sundry can click a mouse, glance at an old clip for 2 mins and satisfy themselves that (a) you existed and (b) that's what you sounded/looked like - you may as well NOT have existed for today's music lovers. Luckily, there IS footage of the Liverpool Scene in existence, and I suggested that Andy might upload a few clips sometime soon to rectify matters.
BUT... what if there are great, important acts who were NEVER filmed or whose filmed performances are now totally lost? There are, for instance, no surviving TV clips of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates - which is a cruel distortion as they apparently appeared many times on TV. Likewise, I don't believe there are any extant 50s/60s clips of Duffy Power (bar the interview bit with Larry Parnes used in the Beatles 'Anthology' series), no performances from Anne Briggs (bar speaking cameos in two documentaries made about other people during the 60s), nothing at all by folk-rock pioneers Sweeney's Men, and seemingly nothing vintage from Link Wray bar one dreadful piece of light-entertainment hokum from 1960, nothing solo by Bert Jansch prior to 1974... And yet all the above DID make now-lost TV performances. There's also nothing extant by Northern Irish prog-rockers Fruupp, despite two concerts/docs filmed by the local BBC and local ITV in the mid 70s - but I don't think I'd put them in the same league of honour as the rest!
Some acts - like Nick Drake or Mellow Candle - were of course never filmed, but their legend has managed to live on regardless through the power of print mostly.
Who else do Word regulars feel have 'suffered', reputation-wise or in terms of neglect, largely because of a dearth of moving images? It strikes me that the relative paucity of vintage King Crimson film is wildly out of kilter with their status, for example... And who might be more venerated now if only they existed on film...?
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It's a chicken and egg situation
isn't it - at least for acts in the "TV era"? Take Arthur Russell: is the lack of filmed interviews merely a symptom of the general awkwardness and diffidence that stopped him achieving the fame that his talent maybe warranted, or is it THE key to his relatively low profile?
Undoubtedly to my shame, Joe...
...I've no idea who Arthur Russell is - which maybe underlines your point...
I happy with the breadth and constant nature of the coverage
I'd rather that people liked Nick Drake because they had been exposed to his music, rather than because he was some perennial mystery.
The good thing about some of the broadcast streams you mentioned, YouTube in particular, is that those of us who already know a good amount about such acts can leave the content well alone, and get back to our bubble. You have to remember that a lot of teenagers may only get to hear more obscure artists through these mediums. Good on them, I say.
Liverpool Scene CD
...apart from an interesting thread - I'm really excited about the CD release - I did have a vinyl album but I've been hankering to hear Christ's Entry Into Liverpool again.
Liverpool Scene CD
Yep, Tony - 'The Entry of Christ Into Liverpool' is indeed on the anthology! Full tracklist on Andy Roberts' website under 'news'...
Take me back to Gotham City,
Batman.
Take me where the girls are pretty,
Batman.
et dodgy cetera.
I'm always wryly amused to hear the rather vile Batpill ditty, given that this lot saw themselves as enlightened and politically aware. That song alone casts a grubby shadow over the rest of the Adventures.
'Obscure artists through these mediums...'
Yes, I think that's my real point Jonah - that younger people might, not unreasonably perhaps (being brought up in a wall to wall TV channel age), believe that EVERYONE who ever made a record or ever mattered in music will sort of just be there at the click of a mouse. Remember, people of a certain age find it incomprehensible to think of a time when DVD/videos/hard drive recorders didn't exist, when there were only 3 or 4 channels, when TV just stopped at midnight or whenever... (I have a school friend whose 13 year old daughter finds it hard to imagine a time when everyone in a classroom didn't have a mobile telephone.)
The point is, that if artist X or Y isn't represented in living celluloid, they're in danger of being forgotten or marginalised. To an extent, it skews even well-intentioned music documentary makers - though any directer worth their salt will still use photo montages, interviews, vintage audio over stock footage, etc, to the max rather than be scuppered by the lack of a handy archive clip to use, if its editorially valid to include someone otherwise lost to the visual record.
That said, you're right Jonah, younger people can indeed discover lots of interesting acts via vintage film on youtube or DVDs etc. Another school pal's 11 year-old really wanted to come with us (he was too young for the venue) to see Thijs Van Leer's recently regurgitated line-up of Focus (personally, I was delighted Pierre van der Linden had been coaxed back on drums - hey, the encore was a drum solo!) - having got into them through old OGWT clips on DVDs. Happily, he just accepted the clips as being of funny looking people playing music he found really exciting and odd and interesting. It would never have occurred to him to say, 'Gosh, how lucky that all those old TV appearances survived the ravages of tape-wiping policies in the 70s' - they were just THERE and why shouldn't they be? So that, indeed, is the other side of the coin...
You gain more than you lose
Everything does get on Youtube though (that's what's so remarkable about it), since there are clips that just show the record playing on the turntable, or a picture of the sleeve. That can be enough to stimulate interest and lead to further investigation. And sometimes it can be quite refereshing that all that exists is that record going round and round without all the baggage. Such lack of visual evidence can add mystery and intrigue as well.
In fact, you could say that the mind blowing, ever expanding resource of web brings allsorts of oddities to our attention more than ever before, resulting in the unearthing of strange obscurities from the past, that we might have forgotten, or that even those of us around at the time were unaware of. Personally I'm discovering more and more that is old, but new to me - and it's a wonderful thing. You name it and it's there on a website somewhere. There's so much more opportunity to find stuff from any period than there used to be - for everyone. Also don't forget Spotify and other sources. If it missed Youtube it'll be somewhere else and get heard, like a seed that's been planted.
And yet, have we lost something along the way, some romance in the music listening experience? Or is just nostalgia for a past that wasn't really as we like to remember it? Has time re-written every line? Misty, water-coloured memories...Time to call a halt to this rambling, I've got hoovering to do.
You could be right...
...even about the hoovering...
Joy Division
There's probably a grand total of about 45 minutes of existing footage of JD performing, way out of wack with their "status."
The bigger question about whether the lack of YouTube material lessens the presence of an artist, is really just a variation on the shift that being a music fan has taken over the past 10 years. Back in the day, if you wanted to find a rare track by an artist you'd have to haunt endless record fairs and trade dodgy third-generation tapes, and video footage was even harder to find. Nowadays, virtually everything seems to be available at the click of a mouse (legally or otherwise), but to me it's sucked the "specialness" out of music, whether that manifested itself as owning a rare record or just spending many happy days "crate-digging." Yes, it's great to be able to catch up on all that hard-to-find music, but I have to say I miss "the thrill of the chase", and I'm far from convinced that the music biz in general is better for it, but I'll be interested to see whether there will now evolve even greater levels of obscurity, where the truly hipper-than-thou crowd will actively search out those artists ill-served by YouTube and the download sites...
A moot point Michael...
I was at secondary school in the 80s and I can recall it being exciting trying to find music from the 60s/70s (I HATED almost everything about the 80s at the time and still do) at record fairs and through following up potentially interesting music encyclopedia entries. My musical tastes to this day are defined by a period of active, thrilling music 'chasing' in the mid 80s. I imagine any such chases last about two minutes these days - wikipedia, youtube, itunes, whatever and 'right, fine, heard what that's like' on to the next thing. I suppose it's inevitable that someone on the thread - and it might as well be me - starts talking about the thrill of poring over an LP sleeve on the bus back from town on a Saturday afternoon....
Incidentally, on the matter of Liverpool Scene...
...I believe some Scene footage has now been posted by Andy Roberts, keeper of the flame, on youtube if anyone's interested...