In Praise of YouTube, Yesterday's Hits, and Showing My Age

[Broomstick]

I was wandering YouTube tonight and stumbled across The Beatles.

Now, as a bit of background - I own several Beatles albums. On the Apple Label. Which I bought with my allowance, back when they were recent releases. Yep, I'm old enough to remember some of the 60's and because I was too young to do drugs I actually do remember some of the 60's.

Unfortunately, my most recent turntable died some years ago. I still have the vinyl, but I've been unable to listen to it. (I'm hoping to get a new turntable one day - I've got Smithsonian recordings never released to CD, much less MP3)

I don't know why it never occurred to me to look on YouTube. It's all there. Including the oddball stuff that never got to the radio, or the ones banned from the radio (I remember when Obla-Di, Obla-Da was never heard on radio, just on the family turntable and those of friends. It's the reference to cross-dressing toward the end that caused the problem.)

So I've got the Beatles back, and a piece of my childhood. In fact, I've got better than that - I've been finding recordings by the Quarrymen that were either never released in the US, or were so rare over here I had no access to them.

[RazorOutlaw]

That reminds me of the website "Retrojunk" that catalogs various advertisements, TV show openings, etc. from the 70's, 80's, and 90's. Although I can't watch any shows from any of those decades on the website, a lot of the commercials are hosted through Youtube. I was able to see advertisements for "Trolls", "Battletech", "VR Troopers", or that board game "Crossfire" that I hadn't seen in years. Seriously, who cares to keep that stuff on a videotape somewhere? But I think I understand getting the surge of nostalgia you're talking about here.

I too found a lot of songs from the 70's on Youtube (just something about that funk music) so I'm also kind of like "Well, duh, of course Youtube has decades old songs. It's YOUTUBE," but there was a point in time when I thought putting songs up on a video website was stupid. It was only when I found songs I couldn't find anywhere else that I bothered doing what you basically just did.

[TheFeniX]

"VR Troopers"

Oh wow. I'm real bad about about random music popping into my head which is usually pretty cool, but sometimes it drives me insane, like when this songs pops in (sans words, just the beat and "Virtual Reality." I never realized it ended with "Troopers. I also never watched that show.) and I have no fucking clue what it is. Kudos kind sir, as you've filled in another gap in my fucked up brain.

I use youtube primarily to bookmark songs like This. But you can find all kind of crazy shit from everything you can imagine. On the vinyl front, there's numerous ways to convert your vinyl to digital, but as said: you already need another player and many people have already done the work for you.