How backward compatible are you?

Myself about 5 with Box Brownie

My dad filming birds with 8mm movie camera.

I find it an amazing thing to share my thoughts with the world via the media of this blog.
Through this I share photography,sermons, recordings and movies and whatever I deem appropriate.
Some of the things I post were created on technology that is fast becoming history.
Multi media when I was a young boy was fairly simple and not always readily accessible or used by the average person.
To read about people's experiences we had paper.
Magazines,books,newspapers,journals in particular.
Magazines became extremely popular with some featuring the top photography of the day.
Time magazine,National Geographic, the Bulletin and Punch became the in thing.
People wrote each other letters and post cards and did not have any idea there would one day be emails, texting, messaging, what's app,facetime, etc.
Some kept daily journals or diaries to enrich their lives.In a book or notebook.
If people wanted to enjoy music together it was more than likely sing songs around the family piano.
Recordings of popular music became available on 78rpm records made out of acetate.
These were first played on wind up gramophones and later valve operated radiograms.
Photography began in both stills and movies and started to be enjoyed by the average person thanks to Mr. Kodak.
My dad bought a second hand standard 8mm clockwork movie camera in about 1959.
From then on we had many wonderful movie nights watching colour movies of our school sports,family holidays, boats and birds and all of Dad's hobbies.
A special highlight was running the movies backwards.

Slide projectors were king for a while

Polaroid came and is still around sort of

Medium Format on the cheap.

We had no sound of course but experiments were made to play a record or tape recording simultaneously with the movie.
Each movie went about 3 minutes and dad would splice some together so we had a 20min uninterrupted screening.
Magnetic Tape recorders were appearing so recordings could be done in the home.
Reel to reel then cassette recorders.
Vinyl records both singles and LP's had a great leap forward from 1950 to about 1980.
We started receiving television transmissions in Australia in the 1950's and that brought the world into our loungerooms.
Amazingly I can revisit just about every episode of programmes I watched as a teenager on youtube today.
Radio was a common denominator through all these goings on and technology shifts and is still a major player, particularly for the older generation.
Now we can record any sounds on our iphones and broadcast them ourselves if we know how.
Mobile phones when they started were only for the rich now everyone can afford them.
As a teenager in the 1950's the greatest technology advance I could think of for the future was being able to ride my bike and listen to the radio.
That one came quickly with the invention of the transistor radio.
 Now we have as I write,the Internet,Pod casting,youtube,iview, usb sticks, mulitmedia software and the PC and Macs and live steaming at our fingertips.
WIFI and broadband.
If I wanted to I could actually stream my grandson's saturday morning soccer match to the world.
Digital cameras, tweeting,facebook,instagram,blogging,on line businesses and advertising that invades all .of our privacy.
So when I want to write for this blog and get something out of my archives to blog about, how long will I be able to extract sight and sound from my old media and translate it to a viewable medium here?
I still have most of the media I have talked about including, cassette tapes,cassette recorders, reel to reel recorders and tapes, 8mm and super 8mm films,movie projectors, gramophones, 78 records,45 and 33.3rpm vinyl records,film negatives, transparencies mini dv movie tapes to name a few.
I am gradually running out of space to keep it all and the trouble is that each software
and technology upgrade makes it harder and harder  to digitise and present and archive.
So should I bother?
I guess I'll keep trying.
How about you?

My Grandson enjoying 45rpm records. These machines are now great for digitising records,cassettes and cd's direct to USB

Cilla

Part of Vynil collection

books,cd's, note movie screen on left

Cassette tapes

The Go Show Gold-2012

Last night Lesley and I went to see the Go Show reunion concert mark 2.
A calvacade of 1960's and 70's Australian Pop stars.
See link below.

http://www.mariomaiolo.com.au/the-go-show-gold

The Adelaide festival Theatre was packed with our generation, the Baby Boomers.

The concert was amazing with most performers looking as old as most of us in the 60's (Dinah Lee the exception) but none the less all consumate performers and entertainers.
The show was compered by Johnny Young and Ronnie Burns.
A highlight was a reuniting of Adelaide's own Master's  Apprentices led by amazing vocalist Jim Keays.
 See them in their heyday below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apX_ikzc5CE&feature=related


Standout acts in our opinions were the Masters, Marcie Jones,MPD Limited and of course Normie Rowe but they were all excellent.
There were tribute spots for past Australian performers who are no longer with us including Ian Turpie who recently died and was going to be in this concert. 
Mostly they performed original songs but also a good selection of covers of the era.
Marcie Jones was the surprise packet for us with a very bubbly personality and a great rendition of Dusty Springfield's "I just don't know what to do with myself."
See link to Marcie's homepage.

http://www.marciejones.com/fr_home.cfm

They intend to to do the concert in Go Show 3 next year so if you get a chance to see this show or next years don't miss out if you like this musical era.
Darryl Cotton and Jim Keays will be back in Adelaide about  september this year with their Cotton ,Keays and Morris line up which I have posted about before on this blog.

Most of the artists stayed behind obligingly to sign autographs and posed for photos with fans.
I bought a copy of Jim Keays autobiography,"His Master's Voice", in which the early days are like describing my teen and pre teen memories of Adelaide where he also grew up.

You can find many links to these artists performing in their early days by the usual googling.

One of the Bands, I think MPD Limited did a cover of "My Generation" which was what it was all about, a trip down memory lane, and the Adelaide Audience loved every minute of it.

Talkin' about My Generation part 2

Talkin about My Generation. Part 2

Below is link to part 1

http://geoffthompsonsblog.blogspot.com.au/search/label/baby%20boomers

I'll start with music: Born in the mid 1940's I grew up listening to music on the radio in the days before television.
My recollections start in the 1950's.

The first music I remember are probably in the novelty genre.

"How much is that doggy in the window?" by Patti Page, "Bimbo" by Jim Reeves, although I saw the Le garde Twins sing this at a local circus.
"The Whistler and his dog" was a favourite instrumental with a dog barking at the end.
The various versions of the "Laughing Record".
We would sit around the radiogram or gramophone laughing our heads off.
Also Stan Freberg's :St George and the Dragonet" and "Little Blue Riding Hood" were great sides on the one 78.
My grandparents had an old gramophone( I still have it) and I used to listen to old 78's on it when I visited. "Swedish Rhapsody" and "the Song from Moulin Rouge" were favourites.
Singers like Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney,Smoky Dawson.
Then as the fifties gave way to the sixties there was the explosion of pop music and rock and roll.
My first "45" vinyl record I bought was "I've been every where" by Lucky Starr.

The second "Sherry" by the 4 seasons.
Then the "Guitar Man" by Duane Eddy.
Then "If I didn't have a dime" by Gene Pitney.
Who can forget "The Man who shot Liberty Valance"
I loved Ray Stevens novelty records such as "Harry The Hairy Ape" and "Ahab the Arab" and "Freddy Feelgood's Funky Little 5 piece band."
I became a lifelong Gene Pitney fan and saw him once in the sixties in Adelaide at the height of his fame and then twice in the 90's before his untimely death.
Then Elvis,  the numerous Johnnies and Bobbies, Gene McDaniels, John Leyton(Lonely City is an iconic sixties pop song in my opinion)
See John Leyton clip from the film "It's Trad Dad" which stared Helen Shapiro and other 60's stars made cameo appearances.It was my favourite 60's film. Very little story but great music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFo79873I7g

,Helen Shapiro,Cliff Richard and the Shadows,Dusty Springfield( she was on the same bill with GenePitney in the same sixties concert.)
I loved the music of Ral Donner the first Elvis sound a like who died an untimely young death.
As did so many.
I had always wondered what had happenned to "Joe and Eddie"(There is a meetin' here tonight!) and only recently googled to find one had died in a car crash.
See Joe and Eddie on Shindig.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XV0W7ueYgY

As the 60's gave way to the 70's my wife and I had become Chjristians so our  music likes swapped over to mainly Gospel then with many of the 60's stars becoming Christians in the Jesus Movemennt of the 70's ("One way!")
eg. Barry Mcguire,Paul Stookey and of course Keith Green.
See Keith Green clip. "To Obey is better than sacrifice."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzWyZxlwGKI

Helen Shapiro ,Dion, Cliif Richard were some who declared their faith in Jesus.
I still have a vast collection of vynil  12 and 7 inch and 78's.
And I love the music of Bert Kaempfert,Henry Mancini,Arthur Lyman,James Last and many more in the Easy Listening genre.
And the Beatles of course dominated the 60's and I was lucky enough to see them in Adelaide without Ringo Starr who was ill.
We had to queue in the streets for about 3 days to get tickets and I always remember how a young man in a suit was walking up and down the queue trying to talk to people  about Jesus. we just ignored him but looking back it was one of those moments when God was trying to get through to me.

Every New Year's Eve we get together with our neighbours for a party and enjoy the 60's music all over again. Sadly each year we note that some more of these entertainers have passed on.

Next recollection SPORT.

Talkin' about My Generation Part 1

 "My Generation" was a song made famous by "The Who" in 1968.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mt4TRrVu_tQ

That was my generation.
The young people now called "baby boomers" who grew up with the pop music explosion,the Vietnam War as a constant, and for people my age, the risk of the Draft to go to Vietnam.
My marble did not come up(It was chosen like a lottery).
 I doubt I would have coped as so many didn't and some sadly lost their lives.
We also had been born after the second world war and heard from our parents the stories of that conflict.
My Dad was a Catalina Pilot in the RAAF.

http://catalinaflying.org.au/catalina.htm

It was also an age where drug taking was beginning in Australia having already been in America some ten or more years before.
It was the era of the Beatles,so called "Free Love" and also the start of the Protest Movement that is still ongoing in the world today.
The collective human nature of mankind never changes.
(Individuals can have a life changing , change of disposition ie. exchanging their dispostion for the disposition of Jesus Christ.)
I intend to share some of my experiences since that time,probably 60's to seventies to begin with,over these pages in coming months but also giving respect to the privacy of others.
I will talk about Music, Sport,Social Change, The Church,Religion,Politics,Employment,Entertainment and probably much more.
I invite you to follow (and for younger people it might be of interest what world their grandparents and parents lived in and to those of us who are this generation some nostalgia) and  feel free to comment and share your experiences.