Remember those old VHS video tapes that everybody had back in the eighties? Well, now some of those old VHS video tapes might be worth a bunch of money! That’s right! Some VHS tapes have now become valuable and collectable antiques selling for several thousand dollars!
What’s the Bad News?
The Bad News is that you or your mom or wife, or dumb boyfriend, dumped boxes of them into the garbage years ago… And you said, “OK!”
Arrrrrgggghhhhh!
Now, antique and collectable professionals and experts say that those VHS tapes are joining the ranks of vinyl records as valuable and rare collectibles and some of them have been getting sold for over ¥1,230,000! (That’s over $10,000 (USD)).
Arrrrrrgggghhhh! Again!
As the years went by and DVD’s became popular, VHS tapes have disappeared from the average household. Add to that the big retail chains going bankrupt and you have a massive amount of VHS tapes being dumped and ruined in land fills.
But VHS cassettes and boxes that are still in good shape can demand high prices. They have been gone and out of our existence for just long enough to inspire nostalgia.
David Jinks, a famous international collector of goods and antiques, said: ‘It’s time to learn the lesson of vinyl. Many old LPs and singles are now worth huge amounts of money.”
I once saw David Bowie’s “Man Who Sold the World” (The Orange Jacket) selling for over ¥4 million yen (That’s about $40,000 (USD)) at a store in Shinjuku! Today, some VHS video tapes are considered just as collectable as original records.
Even now, sometimes you can see piles of old VHS tapes being thrown out. There are probably few items more unwanted at the moment than old VHS video tapes. Many people probably have a boxful in the basement and they, of course, don’t have a working VHS machine (who does?)
Did you know that charity stores like Goodwill or Salvation Army and other second hand stores won’t even take the VHS tapes and machines for free? because nobody wants them!
But it is because they are being thrown out in the trash that they have become valuable.
Uh, you wouldn’t, by any chance have any old Betamax tapes or a Betamax player, would you?
They definitely will become expensive collectables in the future too… The question is, “Where we going to store all this stuff?”
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At Robot55 (ロボット・ゴー・ゴー) we make video productions for businesses and services and products, but we also pride ourselves on making videos for art and music. Our starting price is ¥70,000 and we are sure we can work out something that fits your budget. Oh, and we love making band videos too! Contact us! contact@robot55.jp
Kaijū is a Japanese word that literally translates to “monster,” and is used to refer to a genre of tokusatsu entertainment. Kaiju films usually showcase monsters of any form, usually attacking a major Japanese city or engaging another (or multiple) monster(s) in battle. Related terms include kaijū eiga, a film featuring giant monsters or a single monster; kaijin (referring to roughly humanoid monsters); and daikaiju (giant kaiju), specifically meaning the larger variety of monsters. Godzilla is an example of a daikaiju; others include Gamera, Mothra, Rodan, King Ghidorah, Mechagodzilla and Daimajin. The term ultra-kaiju is longhand for kaiju in the Ultra Series. Toho has produced a variety of Kaiju films over the years (many that featured Godzilla and Mothra) but other Japanese studios contributed to expanding the genre in Japan by producing Kaiju films and shows of their own.
Now you know the history, here’s a few of my early favorites.
Finally, today’s throw-away film. This is the missing link between the 1933 King Kong film and the 1954 Godzillafilm. Sorry I don’t have a trailer for this. This is the only remaining bits from that film.
At Robot55 we make video productions for businesses and services and products, but we also pride ourselves on making videos for art and music. Our starting price is ¥70,000 and we are sure we can work out something that fits your budget. Oh, and we love making band videos too! Contact us! contact@robot55.jp
There’s been so very many Japanese Concept Cars through the years that have never made it into production. I think they are the coolest designs. Here are a few selcted videos from the fabulous and crazy, Science Fiction universe of Japanese concept cars. Since the 1950s, all Japanese car manufacturers have been testing and designing cars that, if you saw them on the road, you’d think that it was something out of a Hollywood movie! Some of these designs are out of this world and full of imagination!
I’ve searched the internet and found some short videos of a few of my favorites. So if you like Science Fiction, and you like cars! Then this is a short trip for you!
If you want to see more, I’ll try to find more next week and present them for you. If you just want to see still photos (not as fun as some of these videos, I think) then check out: Japanese Concept Cars (www.japanese-concept-cars.com/category/lexus-concept-cars/).
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At Robot55 we make video productions for businesses and services and products, but we also pride ourselves on making videos for art and music. Our starting price is ¥70,000 and we are sure we can work out something that fits your budget. Oh, and we love making band videos too! Contact us! contact@robot55.jp
“I’ve always said, I thought the Sex Pistols was more Music Hall than anything else – because I think that really, more truths are said in humour than any other form.” – John Lydon (lead vocalist of the Sex Pistols)
“The Sex Pistols was a part of my life. Just a small part.” – Steve Jones (guitarist of the Sex Pistols)
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This is a story (mostly my very stretched imagination) about how a band named the Sex Pistols really affected my life, and still does, to this day.
It was mid-1977. I was a college student. I had very long hair. Just like all the other guys did.
The FM radio was filled with lame rock bands like the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Foreigner and Journey or disco music. Real rock and roll was long gone; Kiss and Aerosmith started doing ballads. I thought it should be against the law for heavy metal bands to do ballads. It sucked.
In my car, I had a dozen cassette tapes. Ten of them were David Bowie and the other two were T-Rex. I couldn’t really stand listening to anything else. Except a few radio shows I really liked. (I wrote about some of those shows here: The White Stripes Jack White and Me (A True Story) (robot55.jp/blog/jack-white-and-me-a-true-story/)
One day, bored (and stoned) as usual, I came home from college. And turned on the TV. There I saw a news report about a sick new rock and roll craze that was sweeping England; it was the punk rock craze.
It was freaky: kids with short spiky orange colored hair and girls and guys holding dog leashes and collars on their boyfriends and girlfriends – who dressed in similar black leather attire with a tinge of fashionable Nazi regalia.
I thought it was way cool.
As the announcer kept telling the viewers that this was a “sick and twisted trend” in UK music, I watched and thought, “This is great!”
Later I would go to the local record shop and ask for “Punk Rock.” The clerk, with a confused face, scowled and looked at me and said, “What’s that?” I told him it was a new kind of music that was popular in England and he pointed me to the import section. I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly; I only knew these people had short and messy hair. I filed through the imports and then came upon the Damned’s first album (the one where pumpkin pie is smeared all over their faces.) I turned the album over and look at the back and saw some of the guys I had seen on TV: One was dressed as Dracula, another was wearing a waitresses uniform.
This is it! I bought the record and took it home. From the first listen, I was hooked!
On November 1st, 1977, I went to Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood and bought the first Sex Pistols album. November 1st is my birthday! What a great birthday present! I liked the Sex Pistols even more than the Damned!
I became a hard core punk rock fan. From then on, that’s all I listened to. I would go on to be a member in a one-hit wonder punk band and that was a turning point in my life.
To make a long story short, Punk Rock had changed my life and it set me up (for good or bad) as a person who wants to have fun doing what I like and to generally reject mass-consumerism and Pop-Music.
Fast forward many years later and, in 1996, the Sex Pistols who had broken up in 1977, had reunited and came to Japan. I had a chance (invitation) to go see them and perhaps interview them, but I didn’t. Just like my band, the punk movement of 1977 ~ 1980 was a great memory. I wanted to keep it that way. I wasn’t interested in seeing my past heroes as middle-aged fat punks.
I guess I should have gone, though.
A few years ago, Glen Matlock, the original bass guitarist for the Sex Pistols would come and tour Japan. He came to my radio station. I did go meet him then. I took my photo with him. See?
Glen Matlock and Mike Rogers in Tokyo. Feb. 4, 2014
I asked Glen Matlock that same day if he would allow us to make a promo video for his song, “Yeah Right.” He said, “OK!” So, with no planning and no pre-shooting planning meeting at the show, we shot this video. It was made taking video at his rehearsal and then shots of the live performance:
It was great fun and I’m glad I got to finally meet one of my heroes, Glen Matlock. Making his video was a dream come true.
Several months after that, famous photographer Sheila Rock came to Japan. Sheila Rock was the wife of famous music photographer, Chris Rock, and Sheila spent her youth taking photos of early UK punk greats like Generation X, the Clash and the Sex Pistols. Even though Johnny Rotten didn’t attend her event, I did, and I sat and talked with her and she even took my photo for me! I wrote about that in Sex Pistols, Clash, Gen X, Sheila Rock and Why We Sometimes Make Videos for Free! (robot55.jp/blog/sex-pistols-clash-gen-x-sheila-rock-and-why-we-sometimes-make-videos-for-free/) I think there’s a photo of me taken by the famous Sheila rock at that link, so please check it out.
Like I said, the Sex Pistols have greatly influenced my life even to this very day!
They taught me that it’s OK to be an individual and to not follow the crowds. They also taught me that in life, sometimes hype is bigger than reality.
I’ve used that idea and concept all my life since then. It has helped me greatly all my life.
Steve Jones said (quote at the top of this page): “The Sex Pistols was a part of my life. Just a small part.”
But, for me, the Sex Pistols were, and still are, a big part of my life.
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Actually, if you want to read a really true story of how I made successful ventures into the music business in Japan, by using ideas – hype and marketing techniques I learned from the Sex Pistols, please refer to: My Very Own Rock & Roll Swindle! How I Scammed the Music Business in Japan! (modernmarketingjapan.blogspot.jp/2012/04/my-very-own-rock-roll-swindle-how-i.html)
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At Robot55 we make video productions for businesses and services and products, but we also pride ourselves on making videos for art and music. Our starting price is ¥70,000 and we are sure we can work out something that fits your budget. Oh, and we love making band videos too! Contact us! contact@robot55.jp
I really have worked as a Stand Up Comedian in Hollywood and around in small venues in Southern California when I was a teenager… I was very popular and got paid… OK. That’s not exactly true. I wasn’t a teenager, I was about 21 or 22 years old when I was a stand-up comedian; and it’s probably a bit of a “stretch” to say that I was “popular.” I did get paid a couple of bucks each time too (which was often more than I got from being in the punk band!)
Months before I became a Stand-Up Comedian, I was playing in a punk band and, from that, I got to see how the stage set-up was done for concerts. I saw an opportunity to be able to go on stage, tell off-color jokes and actually get paid a little bit (plus it was a great way to meet girls!) I figured that, in between the bands – while the Roadies were changing equipment on the stage – I could go up on stage and entertain the troops. (I wrote about my punk band in: The White Stripes Jack White and Me (A True Story) (robot55.jp/blog/jack-white-and-me-a-true-story/)
I actually went to clubs and owners to sell myself and my routine. For a while there, I got jobs; a lady from the department store I worked at actually got me lots of jobs too. She got me jobs at some sort of social events! She could have been a good manager! At that time, I was telling jokes in front of crowds of 50 ~ 200 people one or two weekends a month for a short while!
Sometimes I did so well, and the crowd liked my jokes so much, that the fans were crowding the stage and throwing coins at my feet. This time I am not exaggerating!
Other times, with the very same act and original jokes I wrote, even the next night in front of a different crowd, it was like I was giving a speech at a fricking funeral; it was dead. I definitely am not exaggerating about that either.
I was always confused as to why I was such a hit one night, then the next night, it was terrible! Like night and day!
The first time people threw money at me, I was mad because I thought they were throwing stuff at me to get me off the stage. That was until a friend told me, “Wow! You were great! People were even throwing money at your feet!”
Getting up on stage, by yourself, is much more difficult than people can imagine; you are completely alone. If you are in a band, that’s scary enough, but, in a band, you have your band members and instruments to hide behind. Being a stand up comedian is just you, naked (figuratively speaking), on the stage with a few dozen or, even hundreds of people just staring at you. Their eyes pierce you and their expectations are quite high (or incredibly low – which can be a problem too!) Their eyes and faces are saying, “Entertain me! make me laugh or get off the stage.”
Being a Stand-Up Comedian is a very rough job.
I did this gig, off and on, from 1979 until early 1981 or so.
My very last stand up routine was at my university at a talent show. People were roaring with laughter. I couldn’t figure it out. They were laughing in all the wrong places! I later asked a girl why people were laughing so much and she said, “Your facial expressions were hilarious!” I couldn’t figure that out. If anything my facial expression were of confusion because I couldn’t figure out why people were laughing at my jokes in weird places! It was then and there that I decided that I wasn’t good enough and didn’t have what it takes to be a Stand-Up Comedian.
But I’m very glad I tried my luck as a Stand Up Comedian. Being a Stand-Up Comedian is a great way to become a great public speaker. It is also a good way to overcome inhibitions and to learn how to control a crowd’s behavior.
How and why did I ever first become a Stand-Up Comedian? Let me explain further…
In about mid 1979, a few months after Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols died, my punk band broke up. I was quite disillusioned with the entire “Punk Thing” by then anyway. Sid dying (he was my hero) was the last straw for me.
But, I had loved being on the stage as a Punk band vocalist and wanted to stay and hang out in Hollywood. So I decided try try my hand as a Stand-Up Comedian. It made sense to me at the time.
Being the front of a punk band was powerful. It was also a lesson in crowd control. When my band ended, at first, I wanted to start another punk band but everything I tried just didn’t work out to my liking. Also, I had learned a lesson from playing in a band with other people who weren’t so dedicated; having to depend on other people sucks!
Being a Stand-Up Comedian is really just you against the world, it seems. It’s a great experience and, no matter your age, I think everyone can benefit from having to stand up in front of a bunch of strangers and give a speech.
After all, giving a speech and doing stand up comedy are first cousins in the public speaking world.
In Japan, you can sometimes see young people standing at a busy train station and giving speeches. I hear it is a kind of initiation at some companies to make their new young employees overcome their inhibitions and become better representatives and salesmen. I think it is good.
I will always fondly look back to my 20 or 30 times as a Stand Up Comedian. Sometimes I was the funniest guy! King of the hill! Other times I was a pathetic little loser standing butt-stark-naked in front of a crowd of people without a friend in the world!….
Both are great learning experiences.
Everyone can benefit from public speaking exposure like that.
Like they say, “Don’t dream it. Be it.”
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At Robot55 we make video productions for businesses and services and products, but we also pride ourselves on making videos for art and music. Our starting price is ¥70,000 and we are sure we can work out something that fits your budget. Oh, and we love making band videos too! Contact us! contact@robot55.jp
Hey welcome back for some more great animations.I hope you folks enjoy this series of animations. As for me, I find that watching these things inspires me and gives me ideas for when I make my own video productions for Robot55. It is amazing that, in many cases, so many wonderful videos remain of productions that were made on shoe string budgets.
I love that sort of thinking. It is the ultimate in creativity. I hope that some of these videos give you ideas for your creative productions whether those are video productions, art, writing a book, or even making a cake! Whatever we do, let’s have fun!
The first animation up today is one of the earliest animators. His name is Willis O’Brien. Most of you might recognize his work as he was the guy who made the giant gorilla in the classic 1933 film, “King Kong.” I remember watching that film in cinema class at university and just being simply amazed that they could have this animation so many years ago…. (I was studying animation too at the time!)
Willis Harold O’Brien was born in Oakland, California in 1886. He is a pioneer in motion picture special effects and stop-motion animations. He is well known and his reputation was (and still is) that he, “was responsible for some of the best-known images in cinema history.” O’Brien is best remembered for his work on The Lost World (1925), King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949). He won the 1950 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. He wrote the story for King Kong vs. Frankenstein which was changed and was developed into Ishirō Honda’s King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962).
Here is Willis H. O’Brien from 1915 – “The dinosaur and the missing link”
(If link about doesn’t play, copy and past this link into your browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RClif87GM1A)
Next up is some stop animation work that, when I was a kid, I didn’t like at all. For some reason, these images disturb me. I can’t put my finger on it… But I guess they made me fear that my toys were alive while I was sleeping. You might recognize some of these images and this style too. This is work by George Pal.
George Pal was born in 1908 in Hungary and moved to the USA in 1940. He was an animator and film producer, mostly doing science fiction (maybe that’s where the scary part came in for me as a kid). He was nominated for Academy Awards in the category Best Short Cartoons for seven years in a row between 1942 – 1948! Wow! Pal is the the second most nominated Hungarian exile after Miklós Rózsa.
George Pal has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1722 Vine St.
Rocky Horror Picture Show fans will be interested in the trivia that, in the opening theme to that show, of both the stage musical, “Science Fiction/Double Feature,” George Pal is among the many references to classic science fiction and horror films in the opening theme.
Here’s George Pal with “Philips Broadcast” from 1938:
(If link about doesn’t play, copy and past this link into your browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQmiqymo7Og).
OK. I said the last animation scared me as a kid. Next up is a very bizarre and twisted animation that is sure to cause the kids have nightmares. I cannot find any information about this Japanese animator nor this animation. But I think it speaks for itself.
Hitoshi Suenaga Distrust of Romantica:
(If link about doesn’t play, copy and past this link into your browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2mJIpvgUC0)
Well that’s it for this week. Hope you enjoyed this short trip into the past and the minds of some very “out of the box” creators. See you next week, same place and same time!
At Robot55 we make video productions for businesses and services and products, but we also pride ourselves on making videos for art and music. Our starting price is ¥70,000 and we are sure we can work out something that fits your budget. Contact us! contact@robot55.jp
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