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Re: [ARSCLIST] A "modest proposal" based on the Elvis master tapes
on a related note, my father worked for walt disney in the 60s. He tells stories of people going into the store room and rumaging through original animation cells from snow white and other classic movies. He said it was popular to cut them up and make holiday cards with something like "sneezy" on the card. My father had the prescience to keep many cells before they went into the scrapper.
Of course the difference is that back then no one expected these to have any value, and we all know elvis has value today.
I wonder, maybe the people selling this know that the tape itself has a very limited life as a storage medium. Maybe they have already made superior archival copies onto a more suitable medium (cd or something) and have no further use of the tape itself. Dont get me wrong, the whole thing sounds pretty low to me.
"Watsky, Lance" <lwatsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Historically, there are many examples of motion picture film being chopped up and sold or given away. This was the first time however, that I have ever heard of anyone cutting up audio.
A colleague pointed out: "at 15 ips, two inches would be approx. 00.13 seconds of recorded audio".
Lance Watsky
Preservation & Media Specialist
The Georgia Archives
5800 Jonesboro Road
Morrow, GA 30260
678-364-3764 (phone)
678-364-3860 (fax)
lwatsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.GeorgiaArchives.org
-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Aaron Luis Levinson
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 12:49 PM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] A "modest proposal" based on the Elvis master
tapes
1.Just to be clear a 2" master was not
available in the fifties. These
are
I think 2" segments of 1/4 or 1/2 inch two track recordings. The 2"
format
was only introduced in the 70's with the advent of 16 and ultimately 24
track machines.
2. This is no way lessens the idiocy and greed which animates the
entire enterprise. It is perhaps the most crass example of monetizing
what should permanently remain a cultural treasure.
3. The thought of doing this same "service" to Glenn Gould or The
Beatles cannot be far away...
Maybe we could simply chop up the entire handwritten manuscript of
Finnegan's Wake
or maybe the Dead Sea Scrolls, no wait how about the Declaration of
Independence?
Why stop with Elvis?
aa
On Wednesday, January 28, 2004, at 11:58 AM, Watsky, Lance wrote:
> Thought everyone should know that there is a company that is selling
> "clippings" of Elvis 2" master tapes. They are cutting the tapes into
> little chunk!
s and
selling them with a numbered certificate!
>
> According to the website, the folks at Mastertape believe that what
> they are doing is audio preservation. They actually stated in their ad
> that "Tapes from that era are fragile and are ultimately vulnerable to
> deterioration regardless of efforts taken to protect them".
>
> Unbelievable!!
>
>
>
>
> Lance Watsky
> Preservation & Media Specialist
> The Georgia Archives
> 5800 Jonesboro Road
> Morrow, GA 30260
> 678-364-3764 (phone)
> 678-364-3860 (fax)
> lwatsky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> www.GeorgiaArchives.org
>
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