I have had a huge number of perks from my eighteen year career as a professional in the music industry; many expired in a moment, many were dependent upon me fulfilling some past obligation, many we just free with no expectation of any return.
A few days ago, I received one of those totally free ones.
An old "friend" who used to work for the Associated Press, supporting the Rolling Stone Magazine, Billboard Magazine (edit: I forgot about his work with DOWNbeat) and couple of others, trying to remain published as a journalist has sent me a treasure from his past.
I am going tomorrow to buy a couple of 2T hard drives to have the space for all the tapes he has gifted me. They are in a pro video format S-VHS, mostly, which most machines can play. However there are eleven reel tapes that are in a one inch or a two inch format, used for remote recording, reel to reel video format (multiple cameras go to a mixing board and are recorded in usually a truck mounted static console recorder). I will have to find an old machine to even play them.
Most of these that I have reviewed today are just sets of the Chicago jazz club scene. He recorded three or four hours of video at a show and the AP used three seconds, FFS!!
He has gifted me these aged leftovers. I will have a winter-long project at hand, just digitizing these tapes and most of the editing and burning onto DVD (my surprise back to him in the following summer) will be well into next spring.
From what I have seen just skipping around these tapes for two days, there is a lot worth saving.
SO ...
I am listening to patches of Chicago club jazz and blues as I rip these old tapes.
