80s videos
Los 80s: a gigantic list of 80s videos on YouTube. I didn't even know there were videos for some of these (and some I'm still trying to forget...) Oh, the irony of watching a grainy, postage-stamp-sized video about videos that begins with footage of someone top-loading a beta cassette that would have been a zillion times higher quality than what I'm seeing now... Is this the future yet? (Hey look, it's the Montgomery BART station and it's not THX-1138.)
Scene missing! Some videos in this post have disappeared. If you know of an accessible version of this video or this video or this video or this video or this video or this video or this video, please mail me so that I can update this post.
Tags: firstperson, mpegs, music, scene missing
Current Music: Trans-X -- Living on Video ♬
54 Responses:
You have to admit that the nostalgia factor is ridiculously heavy. Checking out a video of Olle and John of the specimen, explaining themselves re:founding of the Batcave club...well, it has to at least bring a smile to your face, considering what you do.
At the same time, I don't really need to have this interview in pristine DTV compatible format, and this is even more so with the Disco lessons in Finland, or the mixed group shower sing alongs by the pre-pubescent dutch (even though both cracked me up...).
If it must be videos that are digitised and encoded to 1991 amateur quality standards, so be it, but I want more of the missing documents. Where is USA Network SNUB television and New Wave theater broadcasts? Where is all tha Tackhead?
posting links to the videos I mentioned for <lj user=jwz> seemed almost like posting a multiplication table for Einjstein (or something) but for everyone else...
specimen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzlo-yXjjwk
finland disco lesson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwakjoSs754
the video wrong on so many levels, you'll run out of fingers counting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS7fhrim2WY
New Model Army made a video? Wowzers.
sell-outs
I can't believe you didn't point out this video!
Ah yes, Bill Paxton's biggest claim to fame. Second only to Martini Ranch. :)
Yazoo actually had videos! Who knew?!
Come on, I'd say that video is standard NTSC resolution and the quality on par with Betamax. Bear in mind it was probably digitized from a VHS cassette - what do you want, everything remastered in THX?
The future part is you can sit at home and watch all these videos on demand.
No way is it beta or even VHS quality -- it's VHS, after several tape generations, after being recorded off of broadcast TV, and then dropped down to 10fps.
I don't remember the exact dimensions, but it's below NTSC. Bandwidth bandwidth bandwidth... That's the dirty secret of digital video, you take the analog, you do a lossy conversion and charge people more for the New Technology!!1
Well, you can blame the horrendous Flash plugin for (anything but Windows) for the 10FPS part of it. It's fine under Windows.
I think Google Video keeps the original, high quality version around for download... If only people posted videos there instead.
I looked at one of the videos (you can grab them out of mozilla's cache... they're in flv format... just 'ls -tr' while it's playing and hardlink the most recent file somewhere useful) and it's 320x240. NTSC was 648x486. So, about 1/4 the size.
But yeah, I'm with you, the shit is free and on demand and I think youtube is fucking sweet. No complaints from me.
the future part is I can sit at *work and watch these videos on demand. Productivity in this part of the 'verse has stopped for the duration, barring interruptions from da management.
I'm living in Brazil.
What could be more quintessentially 80's than Tarzan Boy?
I am going to have that Aldo Nova song stuck in my head for at least a week.
Same with me and Living On Video. The synth melody part had taken up residence in my brain decades ago, but only now do I know the name of the song.
I love the internet.
Just how big are your postage stamps?
perhaps the better question is... 'what's your default desktop resolution?'
20"
Or, to answer the actual question, 100 dpi. :-)
~leaves wet spot on seat~
I am bookmarking this site.
Actually, I don't need to--I don't think I am ever leaving this site AGAIN.
IT WILL BECOME MY NEW HOME.
The funny part being, of course, that the first two you were trying to forget...live in my "cheesy earworms" folder, and are songs I have actually listened to in the last WEEK.
But still.
This is the best bit of content ever.
You are my new favorite person.
Me, too.
::dies from nostalgic ecstasy::
And to think, here I was merely tormenting others with the lyrics to cheese...
I sense all productivity grinding to a halt at work tomorrow.
OH.
MY.
GOD.
This seems like something you will enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpsjzwdzyQU&search=vanity
OH YES VANITY 6!
This is actually on my miz CD of goodcheese.
I expected nastier dancin', though.
Lingerie Bands > Boy Bands, definitely
APPOLONIA!!!!!!!!!
Girl you know it's true, you got what I need - I'm hot for teacher but my parents just don't understand with every little step, we're not gonna take it but I think we're alone now
also, doctrin the tardis
let us not forget the fat boys
kid n play
Compare Frida with Quiet Riot
Wow, I remember when that Quiet Riot track debuted on MTV. It was amusing even then! :)
Hurrah Torpedo need to cover that Nu Shooz song.
Well, I recall having heard all three of those songs JWZ was "trying to forget" on XM 80's on 8, and fairly recently, too.
(I like the way 80's on 8 tries to sound like a radio station of the period, with a healthy dose of VH-1 I Love The 80's mixed in...I'm often on that channel or on Big Tracks, which has a similar playlist, though my XM music listening can run the gamut from Watercolors up to XM Liquid Metal...)
That's Rockridge, or somewhere in the east bay. Isn't Montgomery BART under ground?
The really long white tunnel at the beginning looks like Montgomery to me.
Oh. Yeah it does. It also looks a little like the bridge part at Rockridge.
Ah, 70s design.
that's Rockridge later on in the video.
Apollonia still can't dance.
Well, I live just a couple blocks from Rockridge station, and I can confirm that every shot in that video is Rockridge except for the tunnel shot at the very end. I've never bothered learning to drive a car, so I use that station for every single trip to the city I've made since moving out to Oakland.
its the tar baby
weee... that's taken from the all-famous german 80th-video-show "fromel eins" hosted by
peter illmann...
when I think "gigantic", I think more than one song from each artist. This strikes me more as a greatest filtered hits of the 80s than anything even trying to be inclusive.
dos centavos.
-transiit
why does all that remind me of dieter from snl - saying stuff like "naext video fromm se baend schreibmachine se song kuechenhilfe"?
germaine stewart looks like a Castro version of Snoop Dog.
I am *so* gonna learn the dance sequence at the beginning of THAT baby and do it all the time to annoy jwz.
Wow, that Chrome video reminded me of this one.
That's my old friend Johnny Strike on guitar. He released an album a couple of years ago.
Well, there goes the afternoon's productivity...
A little surprised you didn't know about the Sevs video. There are actually something like 5 versions of the Dead Eyes Opened video - I think he remakes it every few years or something. Pretty much everything Severed Heads did had a video attached to it, at least in a live context - for a long time the band was an audio guy and a video guy. I've got like 2 VHS's and 2 DVD's full of Sevs videos. In fact, you can get the Sevs videos here, or if you can't manage going anywhere without having Sevs videos on you at all times, you can get some for your portables here.
Indeed, Stephen Jones is credited on several Severed Heads albums for "videotape" and "videosynthesisers".
On this topic, saw this today (Uncle = Tom Ellard i.e. Severed Heads). I guess that explains why the link above's not working any more (at least, on my system).
VH1 Classic airs a lot of these on a regular basis. "We Are The '80s", "Pop Show", "All Star Jams", "All Request Hour", "The Alternative" are all good shows to find this sort of stuff. I filled 4 DVDs (DirectTV -> DVD recorder) with classic videos from there :-)
Shame VH1 Classic is so overcompressed on DirecTV though.
I like YouTube. There's a lot of crazy stuff on there.
Like, it's nice to know that there are at least two Toni Basil covers of Devo songs, with corresponding videos which seem to have been shot the same day, in the same studio, on the same set, as "Hey Mickey," but somehow don't (totally) suck.
Ouch. the link that claims to be for a Residents video goes to White Lion's "When the Children Cry"
That's no fun.
Seriously. I think you have a potential tort action there.
Doesn't the new Red Hot Chili Peppers video "Dani California" cover all the music videos ever made, including Anthony Keidis dressing up as Glen Danzig???