An offer you might can refuse and random comments

[BeatleG]

I had a terrific hobby in the late 90’s, 2000s and 2010s+, as many of you likely did. I’m talking about using newsgroups, bit-torrent, other sources, and trading to gather Beatles DVD CD-Rs or to use what they found digitally to make their own CD-Rs, including the basic artwork. I still have the hobby of collecting (Thank you wonderful people for sharing!), but not physical media now for a fairly long time. For me, now it’s my trying to keep up with storage space and joining in or just enjoying discussions (Thank you again for the discussions which are often very interesting on this group!) and trying to avoid too much redundancy. But somehow there’s always more, and I’m glad for it. It’s amazing how much there is to not only collect but to really enjoy from a 10 year or so band history (Here’s looking at you LR and others!), and of course there’s also much to enjoy from the solo Beatles efforts, hit and miss as inevitably it has been. (Here’s looking at you Yoko! I used to pretend I didn’t mind her, to each his own, etc., and she was pretty cool in various ways. And I guess I wouldn’t have missed the whole “Give peace a chance” era For The World. But one can only wonder what John’s music output might have been like if he had never met her.)

I got old, smoked too many cigs, and ate too many pizzas. It would take too much out of me to even really look through my physical media anymore. Alternatively, I love digital media within reach on my drives. The searchablity alone is fabulous. I still do not disdain my mp3 collection. Sounds ok to my ears, though I don’t want mp3s any longer unless it’s all I can get of something I want. When I am triggered by a song title or mention of an artist to want to learn something, or see if I have it to hear it from my own collection or can access it from YouTube or Wikipedia or Discogs and other resources (like this group!) and even lyrics, it’s a thrill. (You Whitburn collection people know what I’m talking about. It's not all about the quality.)

So, here’s the offer you might can refuse. I don’t want my boot Beatles related physical media for the most part anymore. (There are exceptions of commercial stuff, like I keep those 3” Beatles CDs which are too cute to give away. I sold almost all my commercial stuff in the 80s when I needed rent money anyway. I still had my mix tapes, analog and even DAT. Though of course when I see how much some that vinyl sells for it pains me a bit.And i wonder how much my old "Flip Your Wig game wold sell for now?)

I can’t seem to get to the offer. Sorry. OK, here it is. If you live in the Central Florida USA vicinity and want to come over, and you’re willing to do the lifting, you can have my collection of DVD-Rs. They are mostly in thin DVD cases. I just did a rough count and I guess it’s about 450 or so. I don’t know how they’re aging, but when I have pulled out one now and then, they have played ok in my computer. Of course, there are many tedious discs like newsreel footage, redundancy, poor quality VCR stuff and copies of copies of copies, etc. I think many, and maybe even the majority is PAL format I always made sure my DVD players played multiple formats.) And anything of real importance has gotten upgraded many times over the years. But I loved them and the excitement of watching/listening for the first time, the searching and finding and turning them in to the DVDs, making the artwork, etc. And I’ve made some good trading friends who turned into also being just good friends.

I’m thinking the person who might want these is newer to collecting Beatles, never seen much of it, and can enjoy some of them and maybe use them to help them decide what they might want to go after regarding upgrades, better presentations, and better sound and video quality. (I am a bit concerned what is getting ready to happen regarding AI. I at least hope when it’s used that people will clearly always say how it was used, that it really even was the Beatles or not, and if there were audio (and video) additions or any alterations of the actual music (or video) in the catalog.)

My close circle of friends are not Beatles crazy like I am. Putting the DVDs in my will would likely result in them being stacked up in a closet at best. So I thought, who do I know who really cares about the Beatles? Then I remembered, know thousands. If I don’t get responses to this offer, that’s alright, too. But if there are multiple people who would want them and live close enough to pick them up? I guess it should be first come, first serve in some fashion. OK, I’ve decided. If there are multiple people interested, I’ll put them in a hat and pull one out which sounds serious and doesn’t live too far away. I mean I don’t want someone from Maine or California or even Georgia who would likely be disappointed in some fashion with what they get, to some extent, a plebeian (considering how common much of this stuff is these days) of a collection anyway, or someone who sounds like just want to sell them on e-bay or such.

I know this post was long. (Raise your hand if you made it through.) I indulged myself with comments because hey, I’m giving away a fun freebee and maybe something I said will spark one of those good discussions I was talking about.

To the band: Thank you Beatles for making life a bit sweeter and more interesting and leading me to a good hobby!

PM me if interested. I’ll wait a few days so that more people might see this post. I’ll also do a follow-up post for those who might be interested in what kind of a response I got.

George

[BTL1210]

Very interesting read - unfortunately I don't live close enough to take you up on your AMAZING "offer" but still - would be lovely to read an update ....

[Lord Reith]

Well I'm glad you're making the offer to people. Too many just throw their stuff away (I'm not just talking Beatles stuff) without any thought to the fact that there is probably someone out there who would like to take it on. And it's nice to think that all the stuff you've collected will have a new life and not just go on a skip.

There's videos on youtube where people (usually young guys) have taken on strangers' old vhs collections and the delight they get from this stuff is heartwarming. It may be an old obsolete format but the "coolness factor" of ancient formats often appeals to the kids. I know a guy who's right into cassettes and vhs, even though the last players went off the assembly line before he was even born.

[WilliamPowell]

Very nice gesture. You reminded me of the old days when collecting was fun. Those were definitely the golden days of collecting. I hope the best for you! J

[ksantus]

I'm in Venice Beach, FL for the winter (don't hate on me. yes I'm a snowbird).
But I keep everything digitally and like yourself, several years ago I boxed up every homemade CD I had made over the years and gave them away. I had made several hundered with art and notes, and then I sold the store bought stuff.

I have re-collected a ton of LP's (mostly Beatles) and have a blast searching them out. I would love to take you up on your offer, but the same thing would happen here, they would sit in a box and never be enjoyed. Hopefully someone will be able to benefit from your years of labor and fun and the kind offer you are making.

Peace and Love,
Kevin

[BeatleG]

Thank you to those who have posted the kind replies. I wanted to respond to Lord Reith’s comment about the "coolness factor" of ancient formats. It reminded me of my first collecting experience, long forgotten until now. Maybe I was nine or ten but really don’t remember. My next door neighbor kid’s father liked to drive out to the dump (a beer sitting near him which he sipped on!) down the back roads to look for whatever and radio tubes. He asked me if I wanted to go along one Saturday or Sunday afternoon. We wandered around independently (The dump was a cool place!) and I picked up a big brown album which contained 78rpm records in it. There were slots for maybe 8 or 10 records. It fascinated me and I bought it, for a quarter, I think. My little record player played 78’s. Even though the song selection was not that great, later I came to like a lot of the music of the time, especially female jazz singers and some of the crooners. There was something about the feel of those old records that made me think I was glad to have rescued them, heavy scratches and all. Later, when I really did start collecting records at flea markets, I picked up a bunch of those old albums of 78’s, even symphonies with multiple records needed for one complete performance.

LR’s post also reminded me of downloading some of those playdiscs (I think that is what they were called) of Beatles albums that were posted here (or there) a few months ago. I listened to a couple of them all the way through. Reminded me of having my transistor radio playing in the 60s.

I also wanted to post something to push my original post up front one more time. Don’t worry; I’m not going to keep doing that. Just thought it was worth doing once when I saw how fast the thread got buried with so many others posting today. Again, thanks for the thoughtful responses.

George

[BeatleG]

Hello again everybody who read my original thread! I promised an update about my offer of the DVD-Rs and here it is. I got one PM inquiry about how far away he or she was from me and I responded after consulting my personal assistant, Alexa. That person did not reply back, I guess thinking it was too far.

I'll hold on to the collection, and if I don't do anything else with them, I'll let them pass on to whichever friend I willed my media to. Did I waste my time spending so much time collecting and compiling them in the first place. NO! Like I had said earlier, it was a great hobby, increased my organization and other computer skills, expanded my creativity (got pretty good with PhotoShop for example), made friends, and had it as one of my main pastimes. Hobbies are an important part of a person's life in my opinion (Lousy day at work? Get your mind off it when you get home or whenever and wherever you spend you free time. Another great pastime for me was the game of Pinball. There was a bowling alley a mile and a half from my house and they always not only had about five modern pinball tables which they rotated in and out, but the distributor kept them up, too (Nothing worse than a dead flipper.) They even had prototypes sometimes. I mention pinball here because imagine my excitement (and financial outlay) when I bought several years ago a brand new "The Beatles - Beatles Mania" pinball machine. It, as you would suspect, has a selection of Beatles songs playing through a darn good speaker system. It sits adjacent to my living room (No wife to tell me no. ) Ed Sullivan introduces the band on the video screen at the head of the game with each new start of a game.

And of course I watched the DVDs when I got them, sometimes more than once, I presume. Maybe I'll go through them a bit to see if I really should rip a few of them to hard drive storage and to watch or scan through them again. (There's a MACCA in Red Square somewhere I thought i should watch again, for example. My memory tells me the sync on it was a hair off at times. But that might have been because the computer I had at the time wasn't strong enough or such.)

One thing I think I learned from the Beatles and watching videos of them (and of course all the audio commercial and CD-Rs, and files that I've not discussed here) of how hard the guys worked. They were a committed band to their craft and almost perfectionists. (I still think they could/should have released on the White Album one of all those many "Not Guilty" takes.) All those press conferences, photo shoots, concerts, and travel in addition to being workhorses in the studio. I hope some of it rubbed off on me for my own work and play. I even have a very armature album album and a track from it posted on YouTube which I made in the mid 90's after fooling around with MIDI commuter music despite knowing nothing about music theory or playing instruments. The album really was bad as most people would see it, and I wouldn't even link it here. However, I got so much satisfaction from creating it (and then a decade later using Google Images to depict the lyrics), and it was the only real creative period of my life. I can only imagine what the Beatles must have felt as they created and enjoyed the fruits of their creativity and their labor.

George