Thursday, July 24, 2008

YouTube as Jukebox



I have a real soft spot for minimalist approaches; single-color Rubik's Cubes, Andy Warhol's early films, and the like. So I was delighted to come across the YouTuber who goes by the moniker "thunderbird1958." Instead of fancy video productions for each song, he (and I am pretty sure it is a he) shows the 45 as it is being played, complete with the sound of the needle hitting the groove at the beginning. Brilliant stuff! So far, he has uploaded almost 1,500 tunes. Here's one of the more Pop Void choices: Martian Hop by The Randalls.

3 comments:

Jim Morton said...

Sadly, this YouTuber has been banned. The RIAA, no doubt; always shooting themselves in the foot.

terri said...

yup i was bored today and went to pop void thinking some fun....thought about watching trains and then saw utuber and blam it was blocked but they did put a bunch of clips you can pick and so if you pick one which i did lady gaga then they offer you more based on your preference you can get all the lady gaga clips you wantso i find myself staying on pop void and watching wasting till next year

mindwrecker said...

And the videos of records playing keep coming anyway.
Reading this reminded me of a show on public access TV in San Francisco that was on around 1997-98 which I happened to catch only a time or two, but charmed me immensely as they filled their hal-hour slot with just a stack of singles playing on a changer. I never discovered who did the show, even after I joined the gang at the station and began to do my own show in 1999, after which I HAD to eventually rip off their concept and do some episodes of MY show with the same conceit: Show starts, a record drops and plays, ends, and then another and another until the show is done. I had a ball selecting the weird pile of singles that I would put onto the automatic changer (retro enough just by itself). My addition to the concept (I wanted to vary it slightly, in respect for the other unknown VJ) was to add closeups of the waving vinyl going around and around, and vary the photography slightly as the show wore on, rather than just having one camera angle shooting straight on for a half-hour, although I also did shows with monotonous visuals like that as well. Anyhoo - it's great to see so many videos like that online nowadays.