YouTube Rockabilly

Friday, 15 December 2006

I know people who spend more money on one single cable for their stereo-equipment than i spend for my whole set. For me sound quality is secondary. It is important, but i rather hear a great song in No-Fi a crap-tune in sensurround stereo.
Much great music came into my life on Xth generation tapes, scratchy 45´s or AM radio-recordings. Even today, with the possibility of digital copying, the soundquality of many recordings that I love to listen to are Low-Fi or beyond.
Today I finished the 4th compilation of rockabilly- and psychobilly-songs that I recorded from YouTube. Compared to the video-quality, the sound quality of most of the YouTube material is not all that bad, but I noticed that my three earlier YouTube Rockabilly soundtracks did not generated a wave of enthusiasm among the handful of friends that heard them. And they can’t miss them, because when I am at home (and the rest of the family is out) I play this stuff a lot.
In the 80´s and 90´s I was a dedicated follower of the scene. Restless, The UK Meteors, The Stray Cats, Batmobile, The Sharks, I have visited hundreds of concerts. Many bands that I have seen, were playing for a handful of people, in places that you could not even find with a navigation-system. And I remember some of them as legendary. Like every music-scene, the rockabilly- and psychobilly-scene is a complex mixture of all kinds of everything. I liked the music, not the scene, but for many people and bands the scene was their life. For example: playing 50´s rockabilly with an electric bass was considered blasphemy and I have witnessed people walking away in rage when bands showed up on stage with an electric bass player.
And sometimes they missed great gigs.
Thanks to YouTube I have picked up watching rockabilly bands again. I can now see bands of all times and places at any moment that I want it. I have seen amazing videos from Czechoslowakia, Poland, Tailand and many other places that I could never visit in physical form. And there are several studio-clips on YouTube too that made my day. But I am not very visual oriented, I am more into sound. So I record whatever I like and put these songs on CD´s, that I can play while writing about the music that I like to listen to while I write totally uninteresting information like what you are reading right now. You’d better listen to YouTube!