Here is one from Chris Eng’s collection of tapes. This one had some lighting issues- I tried to brighten it up and fix contrast as much as I could. The funny thing is that Jeff Ott’s new band (Dollar Store) is playing People’s Park in Berkeley right about now, unless they got tear gassed/rubber bulleted out of there. It was a surprise announcement- wish I could have made it there but I am 2 hours away… I had already planned to post this video today, the surprise show announcement was pure coincedence.
Recorded by: Chris Eng Transfer by: Shayne Stacy Equipment used: Panasonic AG-1980 — Datavideo TBC1000 – Tevion USB Adapter — Virtualdub Enhanced in Adobe Premiere Elements/Neat Video (brightness/contrast/exposure/denoise)
Another late post day. For those of us who traded tapes back in the 80s, we were excited and super appreciative to see Chris Eng’s videos of bands like Operation Ivy, Crimpshrine, and many others including these guys. I have always felt that Isocracy had probably the best song on the first bunch of Lookout 7″ released with Rodeo. My favorite releases were Op Ivy and Corrupted Morals, but that one song was so great. This Dave’s Garage 5/16/87 show did not have the same quality as the earlier shows, but it is legendary in its own right- here’s Chris with an explanation: “Worst possible recording setup. Dave’s shitty camera that plugged into my shitty VHS VCR.”… but it exists at least. I did everything I could to brighten this up and fix exposure and contrast. This probably the earliest Isocracy video recorded. Thanks Chris!
Recorded by: Chris Eng Transfer by: Shayne Stacy Equipment used: Panasonic AG-1980 — Datavideo TBC1000 – Tevion USB Adapter — Virtualdub Enhanced in Adobe Premiere Elements/Neat Video (brightness/denoise)
Here is another special one from Chris Eng’s collection- Vagrants from Dave’s Garage. Vagrants were: Brian Jay, Craig Miller, Dave Henwood, and Nicolai Gancheff. They had a couple of self-released cassettes and 1 7″ release on Lookout. They morphed into Pot Valiant and released a full-length and a couple of singles.. then got the reissue treatment from Numero Group recently.
Recorded by: Chris Eng Transfer by: Shayne Stacy Equipment used: Panasonic AG-1980 — Datavideo TBC1000 – Tevion USB Adapter — Virtualdub Enhanced in Adobe Premiere Elements/Neat Video (brightness/contrast/exposure/denoise)
Let’s make it an all-Chris Eng weekend. He filmed the 3 shows I posted over a 5 week stretch in 1987. Crazy to think about how active the punk scene was back then. This show has been posted to Youtube before, but this one is right off Chris’ master tape and I did what I could with the lighting effects to make the band a bit more visible. Can’t do much with that audio, however. Still enjoyable to anyone who is a fan of the band. I also kept the clip of Dave hosting the show in there- the music starts at about 1min.
Recorded by: Chris Eng Transfer by: Shayne Stacy Equipment used: Panasonic AG-1980 — Datavideo TBC1000 – Tevion USB Adapter — Virtualdub
Distorted Truth were an East Bay punk band consisting of Pat Mello, Dave Mello, Paul Bae, and an unknown (to me) 4th member. They released 1 song on Aaron Cometbus’ “Lest We Forget” comp and that was about it. It’s pretty cool that Chris Eng was able to capture a full set of theirs from Dave (Mello)’s garage. We get some good crowd shots from Chris’ vantage point as well- they are playing a 1-car garage! It’s amazing they can fit anyone in there beyond the band and the equipment.
Recorded by: Chris Eng Transfer by: Shayne Stacy Equipment used: Panasonic AG-1980 — Datavideo TBC1000 – Tevion USB Adapter — Virtualdub Enhanced in Adobe Premiere Elements/Neat Video (brightness/denoise)
If you are following along with the VHS tape image on the facebook posts, you can probably figure out what is coming for today. Soup is probably best known as being the first band to ever play 924 Gilman- they opened the first show ever on 12/31/87. I actually have an audio tape of that one. Richie Bucher played bass in the band. He designed the 924 Gilman logo and the Dookie album cover. The band consisted of Chris Giese, Richie Bucher, Sergie Loobkoff, and Tom Hamma. Lots of east bay punk lineage there- Samiam, Slambodians and more. This looks to be the only Soup video on the internets.
Recorded by: Chris Eng Transfer by: Shayne Stacy Equipment used: Panasonic AG-1980 — Datavideo TBC1000 – Tevion USB Adapter — Virtualdub Enhanced in Adobe Premiere Elements/Neat Video (brightness/denoise)
When I take in a new collection to digitize, I like to post something that is somewhat of a “big splash” to announce what’s up… well, I got so excited that I just started digitizing stuff that was important to me and not the most popular. So, with that in mind: Last Monday I braved the big storm and drove to Maraga to meet up with Chris Eng and go through his collection of tapes. Chris was the guy who filmed a LOT of the early east bay punk stuff at Gilman in 1986-87 time frame- he had a nice camera for the time that picked up low light way better than most cameras of the era. I left with 5 boxes of tapes- 2 boxes of video and 3 of audio, so expect those to dominate short-term weekend video posts. Thanks to Chris for having the foresight to film the bands, and for trusting me with the collection. So, here is the first one. Tim Armstrong (Lint)’s band before Operation Ivy/Rancid was called Basic Radio. Actually, the discogs description is really good: “Basic Radio was Ska band, formed in 1985 in Berkeley, CA mainly from members of Urban Noise, and played shows in the San Francisco Bay Area with other East Bay bands such as The Uptones, Freaky Executives and Primus. Members of Basic Radio went on to form Operation Ivy, Rancid, Critical Mass , Elephant Men and Tilt.
Members Include; Michael Valladares – vocals, saxophone, accordion Tim Armstrong “Lint” – guitar Jeff Kamalian – guitar Matt Freeman – bass Vincent Camacho – drums John Healy – percussion, b/u vocals Cliff Smith – keyboards”
I posted a version of this from a VHS copy a few years back, but this one looks MUCH better- this is straight off of Chris’ master tape, captured with the lossless setup here. Nice!
Recorded by: Chris Eng Transfer by: Shayne Stacy Equipment used: Panasonic AG-1980 — Datavideo TBC1000 – Tevion USB Adapter — Virtualdub Enhanced in Adobe Premiere Elements/Neat Video (brightness/denoise)
Chris Eng filmed a bunch of east bay bands, some of which became very popular… while others played a few shows, maybe released a demo, and that was it. Vomitorium is a band that falls in that latter category- but a couple of their members went on to do some other things. Vocalist Rumpkin Bignose Scaribreakfast(real name Christof Certik) and guitarist Zanzibar Buck Buck McFate(real name Gideon Zaretsky) went on to play in the psych-pop band Benjamin Kitestring. The duo also played with/engineered a diverse number of bands such as Mother Hips, Buck-o-Nine, and Vicious Rumours. Who woulda thought.
Recorded by: Chris Eng Transfer by: Shayne Stacy Equipment used: Panasonic AG-1980 — Datavideo TBC1000 – Tevion USB Adapter — Virtualdub Enhanced in Adobe Premiere Elements/Neat Video (denoise)
If you were following along on the Chris Eng video posts, you probably figured out that this one was next….Oh man, it’s really great. Great camera location and it sounds pretty good for a 1987 stock camcorder microphone thing. Massive thanks to Chris Eng for filming this and making these available now.
Recorded by: Chris Eng Transfer by: Shayne Stacy Equipment used: Panasonic AG-1980 — Datavideo TBC1000 – Tevion USB Adapter — Virtualdub Enhanced in Adobe Premiere Elements/Neat Video (brightness/denoise)
Collections post first today, from Chris Eng’s collection…. and what a nice surprise- I had digitizied this tape 5 months ago and didn’t listen to it closely. It not only sounded decent with no distortion, it was clean enough for an EQ and rebalance job.
I’m not sure if Chris taped this one as well as videotaping. I’ll update the description if I find that it is his master tape.
I’ll get around to synching this audio with the video as soon as I can. The video soundtrack is heavily ditorted so this will be a huge improvement.
Recorded by: Chris Eng? Transfer by: Shayne Stacy Equipment used: Nakamichi Dragon and M-Audio Audiophile 2496 card EQ in Sony Soundforge 10 Rebalance in Izotope Rx8 (Vocal and guitar boost)
