Photo Courtesy of The Light in the Darkness
Music Vault gave the world an incredible present today. The remastered audio company owned by memorabilia giant Wofgang’s Vault unveiled over 13,000 concert recordings from the past five decades. It took over two years of editing and uploading, but the legendary concerts of old are now available to the public without the need of a small fortune or a time machine.
13,000 videos sounds great, but who has time to listen to all of that!? Fortunately, Music Vault has categorized the music in energetic playlists including “Leading Ladies of Rock” “Legendary Drummers” and the comforting “Face-Melting Guitar Solos”. This will make concert browsing and future procrastination all the better.
James Brown, Aretha Franklin, The Grateful Dead, and Bob Dylan are just a few of the icons to have never before seen live performances featured on the YouTube channel. In addition, complete live performances such as Bruce Springsteen’s 1978 On the Darkness Tour, The Who’s 1970 Tanglewood Tour, and the career making 1970 At Fillmore East of The Allman Brothers. This is more than a collection of music. This is a new source of history.
Music Vault content editor Bill Antonucci released a statement today with the 13,000 videos proudly announcing “After two years restoring, transferring, mixing and mastering thousands of tapes from our enormous archive, we’re thrilled and extremely proud to share this massive treasure with the YouTube music community… We believe this content deserves to be seen by the largest audience possible, and our partnership with YouTube allows us to do just that. Younger music fans will now be able to experience what it was like to see these classic bands at the peak of their powers while their parents relive the thrill of seeing shows they actually attended.”
Until today, most of what we had were old recordings of Live at Folsom Prison, and a handful of (admittedly awesome) concert documentaries like Woodstock, The Last Waltz, and Shine a Light. This is a development so big it can’t be appreciated all at once. Music Vault’s contribution will take years and years, hours and hours of viewing before one is able to realize just how incredible a step forward this is.
And it’s just the first step. We saw at this year’s Billboard Music Awards how just a single clip of Michael Jackson could be transformed into a walking, breathing, moonwalking hologram. What if the same treatment could be done from a video for a concert to recreate iconic performances of old? How wonderful would it be to see music history come alive once more? That may sound like a crazy dream, but thanks to Music Vault the dream sounds a bit more plausible.
Might as well start now. So what are you waiting for? Get to watching!