what was the san francisco sound?

[jimmie ray]

Anyone seen the TAMI concerts, from the early 60's? Great mix of motown and British / American rock groups. Decent quality footage, if you see it on sale. No SF groups on there (Beach Boys and Jan and Dean, though), but relavent to the last couple of interesting postings. The James Brown and Smokey Robinson performances are a delight!

[Susan Butcher]

There would have been fans with 8mm cameras at most large outdoor concerts, I expect. (Indoors would have been harder to film.)

[okeedoe]

Susie,you're like a breath of fresh air.

[Susan Butcher]

Yea, verily, fear not, fans! Hardly anyone uses film now, so rolls of home movies that end up in junk shops usually get checked out for interesting stuff. Ditto rolls of reel to reel recording tape. (I grab this kind of thing if it's free or not too expensive.)

[Egg Crisis]

There would have been fans with 8mm cameras at most large outdoor concerts, I expect. (Indoors would have been harder to film.)

I know Bill Graham had many bands at the Fillmore & Winterland filmed in the 70's for his own private collection. I think he only started doing this in the early 70's so you've got stuff like this and this of Jefferson Starship from Winterland 8 Nov'75. He'd probably have been using one of the early Sony videocameras (or several, since it's a multi-cam shot) that were first available in around 1970. They recorded in black & white to a 1/2 inch open reel tape.

As for 8mm, almost all of the concert clips I've seen have been without sound although in this modern age people are able to dub sound on, sometimes they're able to use audio of the same concert if it's available and very cleverly sync up all the different bits - I've seen this done with Pink Floyd & Beatles videos and the sync is often very good. There's also a bunch of Jimi clips as well although the one's I've seen haven't been properly synced up, they've just had some audio slapped on. The only JA 8mm I've seen is this one from Woodstock that's had some sound dubbed on afterwards, so they may be performing a different song, not the one you hear in the clip