The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #170354 Message #4119743
Posted By: Tony Rees
12-Sep-21 - 04:16 PM
Thread Name: Live recordings - Tony Rees archive
Subject: Live recordings - Tony Rees archive
Hi all, readers of another thread entitled "Making folk club recordings available" (/mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=166031) may have seen some of this stuff before, but because the list has grown a bit since first introduced in that thread, I thought it deserved its own identity - as well as being easier to find gathered in one place rather than scattered through that thread, which is also getting a bit towards its terminal stage I would say...
Just to recap, since around 1973 in the UK, and 1986 in Australia, I have on occasion brought recording equipment along to folk club, concert and festival performances that I have attended - probably less than 1% though - evolving through time from a small mono machine (portable radio cassette, battery dependent, life of batteries and cost of tapes a limiting factor) through better quality cassette, then a small video 8 camera, a Beta hifi for recording better quality audio + video, a CDR machine, more recently a small digital video camera, and possibly others I have forgotten. Result - an archive (if you can call it that) of selected performances over the years by a wide range of artists - mostly folk with a sprinkling of jazz and country, that I am gradually making available via Youtube.
Now Youtube has its limitations as a distribution/archiving medium, not least being its copyright policy (discussed further in the previous thread mentioned), possible slight degradation of audio to (similar to) mp3 quality, and video-only format that is not intended for download, but these can be lived with (sometimes with workarounds) in exchange for the ease with which interested persons can discover and view/listen to the content with great ease, also on any device. Also the long term future of content posted to Youtube is not obvious: will it be there in 10, 20 or 50 years? Who knows, but, certainly for the last number, neither will I... so possibly others can take this on board as curators of cultural material for posterity.
So, my thought is to list here the recordings that I have put up to date for your enjoyment and for preservation of material from my archive which might otherwise never be seen, or shared, or would one day go to the tip on my demise, and to add to it as I get around to uploading more. I hope readers will agree with me that it is a resource well worth hearing and (in later cases) viewing plus of course, huge thanks to the multitude of talented performers whose work is presented here, who have contributed so much to our cultural life and pleasure through the years.
Here we go with the list to date. Audio and/or video quality may be a bit shaky at times, but hey, them's the breaks... BTW I am still approaching such performers as I have contact details for, for their permission to put up more more material. Enjoy!