Aug 29: Sailor Moon, Grateful Dead cassettes, salvaged negatives and more
Beijing Silvermine
Thomas Sauvin has been salvaging negatives from a Beijing recycling plant for the last 11 years. The archive, called Beijing Silvermine, is an impressive 850,000+ negatives spanning from 1985 to 2005. The accompanying documentary shows footage from the salvaging process and many of the found images. (The IG account is also worth a follow!)
Grateful Dead
True Deadheads are dedicated to making, collecting and trading DIY live recordings of Grateful Dead shows, often on cassettes, to carefully monitor how certain songs have changed throughout the years. If you’re ready to get your feet wet in an intimidatingly deep pool, Pitchfork has a compilation of essential live songs to get you started.
The Polavision snafu
Polavision was a system of "instant moving pictures" that came with a video recording device and self contained projector that nearly bankrupted the Polaroid Corporation. While somewhat revolutionary, a few important technical shortcomings and its release — just before the development of videotape camcorders — rendered the system basically useless.
A very special record
[Links may be NSFW due to 🌿 references] We've seen our fair share of custom vinyl presses, but this new release from the stoner rock band Sleep has actual cannabis leaves pressed into a reissue of their 1999 album Dopesmoker. Would love to be a fly on the wall in the quality control department at Third Man Records.
Who is Sabon Moon?
YouTuber Ray Mona has unearthed the previously lost pilot episode of the never-aired American version of Sailor Moon called Sabon Moon (watch in full here). The entire search for the footage is documented in two part series and is absolutely worth the watch for the amazing story of hunting down the lost footage (part 1 | part 2).
