Emergency – Archives are Deteriorating
Digital8 Tapes Deteriorating
After over 20 years we face the ultimate destruction of vast historical archives containing: interviews, shows, musical concerts and more. Recordings from 1996 to 2003 made in New York, Cannes, Paris, Amsterdam and London. There are over 5000 concert recordings from New York City night clubs and venues as well as London and surrounding venues.
Just about every concert was recorded with Sony digital 8 equipment, which at the time, was at the leading edge of prosumer equipment. About 1000 DVC tapes recorded with 3ccd Sony cameras also exist. We all thought this great historical record was safe and sound as digital data, just 1’s and 0’s. Problem is it is recorded on regular metallic tapes. These tapes degrade after 10 years and our archives are now 20 years old more or less. Even the equipment to play them is extinct and soon these will just become garbage.
What brought this all to light are the recent requests from bands for their archives. For years we have offered them at the cost of hours to encode into a computer and mailing costs. Many bands have actually reached out and found the offerings we have here. They have all been thrilled to find these recordings still exist. I am too!
Artists love to see back when
But as the years roll on the requests are getting more frequent as these artists want to remember their gigs. So we find more gems in the archives than ever thought. But there are now problems. The tapes are deteriorating. All these concerts could be lost. All the great specials like Dick Clark and the American Bandstand crew at their 40th reunion, Donald Trump and Lou Reed cavorting, Chubby Checker doing the twist with then head of Homeland Security, there are tons of things like this. Howard Stern putting down Internet video, Charles Henri Ford in his first interview in decades doing Haiku and art, Larry Rivers blowing a saxophone, NY cities best poets and writers doing poetry slams, 2 years history of Hip Hop in NYC including the Bronx gangs and L.E.S rappers.
So many famous recordings lost to time
Some of the most famous recordings we have are first ever recordings like Imelda May, The Libertines, Keane, Cracker, LP (Laura Pergolizzi), and so much more we have no idea are in the collection.
This was the reason I put Lost Concerts web site up. To bring bands back to their roots and let them find their lost concerts. I did the best I could to apply top search engine optimizations as well as implementing google search here on the site to allow people to find every page a band appears on. Pages are arranged by venue, then they are broken down to year and then month. We could not just list the events by venue or the pages would be so long no one could find anything.
How to remind the people?
The next biggest issue is how to find the people in any band? Bands change. They change names, change people, they come and they go. But many musicians keep growing into new branches and forget about their original roots. We find more of these people, as they hit 40 to 60 years old, want to remember their roots. We have to keep pushing the search engines to keep us on top for those searches.
Historical Archives are worth saving
The breath of content from years of recordings has to be saved. The 12 Bar Club was the longest lasting live music venue in what was once Tin Pan Alley in London. The 12 Bar Club no longer exists! Tin Pan Alley no longer exists! The same for the New York City venues Spiral Lounge, Acme Underground, CBGB’s, Fez, all gone. The legend of these places really have no better representation than in the archives of the OnlineTV broadcasts and recordings.
Somehow we have to get funding to save these tapes by converting them to digital data in a computer.
About Tape Deterioration:
The following are the top most significant factors affecting Media Tapes deterioration:
1) Age of Media Tapes – magnetic particles erosion starting from ribbon edges are the first to go (much like the end to end tip of a shoe lace). On Beta/VHS Linear audio & tracking residing in these area are affected from weaken to complete loss resulting to video mute or blue/black TV screen.
2) Wear and stretching of tape ribbons – every playback wears and stretches the media tapes as it passes thru the video heads with some degree of friction (tapes are suppose to travel thru these path in silky smooth fashion and keep friction at the minimum but this may not be the case on non-maintained devices). These gets worse until the device reel tension is adjusted & tape path cleaned thru proper maintenance. Unfortunately most independent servicers dont do this due to lack of proper tools.
3) Recording devices as they age also develops issues in #1) electronics, #2) wearing mechanism which translates into overall poor recordings. For example – a mechanical wear skew the overall angle of recording stripes along the tape ribbon. It is common that the recordings made will playback with no to little issue with the same recording device since recording stripes matches but most likely way off already from industry standard tolerance. This type of wear tolerance has been accounted for from the very beginning in the design of the technology with the inclusion of manual tracking control so can be adjusted at some degree of tolerance to compensate for variance of different recording devices and if beyond correction is a clear indication the device must be serviced and adjusted.
4) Contamination’s – resulting into snowy to no video & mech jam (Dust, loose magnetite particles from erosion, grease, soda splash & worse mold). We professionally clean every devices internally. However, nothing can stop it from getting contaminated again when a bad tape is loaded and made contact to the device’s internals. Contamination is instantaneous. Wet alcohol-base cleaning tape may help all depends on severity (soda/sugar base are very bad news)