In 2008 I got a cheap deal from my older brother on a Panasonic HDD DVD player/recorder. It was one of those ‘off the back of the truck’ deals, you understand. It’s probably no exaggeration to state that, in some ways, it changed my life. Or at least it changed my life for the next few years. I became obsessed with that thing. The main point of my obsession was in recording the music video program Rage that we (still) have here in Australia and which runs overnight on Fridays (new music) and Saturdays (old music, usually curated by a guest presenter) on Channel 2. It’s basically MTV but without much of the hype. Every week I’d check the Rage playlist on the ABC’s online Rage site, which would clue me into what they would be playing on the weekend, and I’d set the machine accordingly. Then I’d spend Saturday and Sunday mornings or afternoons going over the recordings and deciding what I was going to keep.
How many hours and days did I spend going through those recordings, formatting them, editing them, then burning them onto DVD discs? I hate to say! But they were happy hours, no doubt about it. Let’s just say I got pretty good at wielding that controller. In the end I amassed an amazing collection of music videos. As the months and years ticked past I managed to get almost every favourite old video I’d ever seen, plus a whole bunch of new ones that blew my mind. And it wasn’t just about the videos, it was about the music. I discovered so much good music, so many interesting new artists watching those Friday night sessions. The years from 2007 to about 2010 are particularly memorable for me. I discovered Fleet Foxes, Last Shadow Puppets, Cloud Control (and bought their albums) and a host of others that way.
From there it wasn’t long before I was sorting this cacophony of clips into various genres either from on my hard drive or by re-burning them from dvds. Thus I made discs called 60s, 70s, 80s and so on, Vol 1, Vol 2, etc. There were a bunch of Heavy Metal discs and Ozrock discs and Dance discs and Countdown discs (they would play a bunch of those episodes in the Summer holidays). And discs themed around the Saturday night guest artists, whose own music videos would also be highlighted. Thus, there were whole discs dedicated to Kate Bush, Gary Numan, Creedence, Neneh Cherry, Josh Pyke, Sarah Blasko, Goldfrapp, Skyhooks and everyone in between.
At some point (maybe around 2015) I became dissatisfied with my clunky DVDs which, although sorted into various genres, were still not very access friendly. I wanted to be able to access any particular music video in my collection easily. What I wanted was something like a video jukebox. So I bought some video editing software and began the large task of re-coding each and every individual music video I had into separate mp4 files. And I did just that. It’s crazy, I know, but I did it. And I put all those files onto an external hard drive (with back up) and I play them through a thing called a Media Centre onto my large screen TV. I now have my video jukebox, which I still maintain and add to from time to time.
Yes, I know these days good old Youtube seems to have everything I’ve ever collected, so why bother? Well, for one, it certainly doesn’t have everything. I still have a lot of obscurities in my collection that have never seen the light of day on Youtube – especially Australian stuff. Then secondly, and most importantly, I’m a Hard Media guy. I want the physical thing, not some streamed, corporate-owned thing that I can only access with an internet connection and maybe some money. I’m that guy. And I still have my original DVDs that I lovingly burned all those music videos onto. Who knows: maybe everything digital will go down the shithole some day. We’ll need backup. Just in case.
You know I still check the Rage playlist online every week to see what’s on, but I’m much more relaxed about recording the show. Most times I don’t record anything. That’s partly because I figure I’ve got almost every music video I want, but it’s also because, apart from Kpop, I’m not that interested in most modern music. I guess the phase has faded, been replaced by more adult concerns and lack of time. But it was good while it lasted. Here’s a page of some of my favourite music videos.