Taped Over

can help support the show. Subscribe, write a review with stars, tell someone they might like it even if they won't, and drop us a line at ephemeral show music. This episode from Nathaniel Kraus k r a U s E here more at Nathaniel Krause dot bandcamp dot com. A femeral is a protection of my heart Radio Roly. There may be one in your family. The ethnographer, the documentarian, the person whose self imposed mission it is to take the picture, start the recording, point the camera in your

face and hit the little red button. Maybe it's you. These are some of the family documentarians I've been fortunate enough to meet. First, our producer Matt Frederick getting ready to move to sell the house. This is an old tan tape cassette that my mother found and cleaning on a closet. We found the cardboard box ahead some old dick to belt and it I know him as Papa. His name is James Phillips. He was recording this after

he found some old tapes dick to belt. They had been creased and badly neglected that he wanted to find a way to transfer over onto cassette tape. And I've tried to rig up the machine to the cassette recorder to see if we could pick up some of it. As near as your mother and I can tell, his first bit was probably recorded in nineteen fifty one. I had brought the machine home. I remember to try to record joyce first words. Here are the facts. My mother

was born Christmas nineteen. Every year Papa and Granny would call to the minute that my mother was born and wish her a happy birthday. I have a three year old son, and I know early on when he was beginning to vocalize, my wife and I had our phones out all the time, attempting to capture this magical moment. The first word, and that's exactly what my grandfather was

attempting to do. Just with this older technology, so he can't just sit there and roll tape for hours and hours or days or days the way we can with

our digital technology now. He had to very purposefully go to attempt to get those first words out of her, almost like this interrogation, and it doesn't go well, No, it does not go well, Oh, go ahead, daddy, you you know, kind of baby talk and tricks to get her too do something, and resulted only in making her take the following first recording protest that was about all the crying from Joy as a little tiny baby that we could talk, all right, So the frustration that he

has and thinking about it, in the disbelief that anyone ever would be interested in listening to this. We are cutting over that part. Even now, forty years, forty one years later, I can't understand why I recorded so much of it. That is a baby sound. As a father, I know exactly how old of a child that is. I mean, it really is between zero and six seven months, so it must be in nights in fifty one when you're moving. Think about how hectic that situation is, trying

to get all of your worldly possessions. It's boxes, I guarantee you that while they were planning to move. My grandfather stumbled upon this, and then late one night, he got out of his cassette player, he got out some old hardware that he haddling around somewhere and just began listening. And as soon as he stumbled upon it, he felt

like he needed to have it. We have advanced forward on the tape and we could hear efforts to play on a little music box Brahms lullaby, and Mama was able to get her to concentrate on that, and later she and her mother started quite a conversation. I think maybe that would be worth saving. So let's see how it sounds. The sounds you are hearing now are the ones set we're precious stand and are still precious now. I went over to my grandparents in search of a

cassette tape. That's Michael, a specific cassette tape that was recorded of my great grandparents along with my grandparents eating dinner and my mother and my uncle singing songs when they were kids. It's an odd tape. It's odd they would record themselves eating dinner. My guess is that my mom and my uncle got ahold of the tape. Recorder and they were just running around with it. At some point, maybe they set it down to eat their dinner and

caught everybody on tape. I had never met my great grandmother, who was recorded in the audio talking right. I'm pretty sure I did not digitize the whole tape. They're just a section of it, so who knows what else is on there. At some point my grandmother wanted it back, so I gave it back to her and I got lost in a big pile of stuff. I went over there looking for it and I asked them about it, and they have no idea where it is. And my grandfather said, oh, I can get you more tapes, and

he's he's hard of hearing. I don't think he understood. I was looking for cassette tapes and specific and he came back with two v Jess tapes. When as eight millimeter home recordings Bob and Sherry in Avondale, you can hear the projector running, okay, we've got t ball here back in nineteen Bob playned t ball that we're going to go to some kind of party that must do a districute party, and some scenes of our home there in in and Dale n so he's recording from eight

millimeter to VHS tape. These are about five different tapes and are twice together here different occasions. I think it's got bob seventh birthday and I wanted also that's the introduction and it's pretty much quiet, no narration, nothing. At some point he coughs, which I like. I don't know if he actually shows the whole film or or I mean, at some point this VHS tape got recorded over thank

you from all Eastern employees in Atlanta. So my guess is my grandfather recorded over the tape to record a football game. The Bears have lost a leader on the field. I'm not sure if he started his recording at the end of the eight millimeter tape, or if he just cut off the in portion of it or didn't realize what the tape was, or if he just didn't give a I just didn't care. Papa is notorious for taping over things. He would always go out on the back

porch to rehearse his Kingdom Hall talks. And he used one particular cassette tape and go to heaven after death where everything is perfect. That Pickwick, that black pickwicked in many different ways. He would record himself rehearsing in and he would go and listen to it in the living room. If he thought something needed to be changed, he would go and record himself over the old recording where everything

is perfect. And pretty much every time he gave a talk, he would use the same tape, just record over what was previously recorded and be onto the regions of Idris space with their stellar bodies. That's how he practiced for his Sunday school talks. How many times do you think you recorded over that? It's hard to say. He's given a lot of talks, like years of recording over the same tape. Yeah, I mean, I remember when I was

a kid he was using that tape. The other one was two thousand two trip to Colorado, so I had to have been thirteen. Can I go, pet Hey? I was usually the trip videographer. We used to have an old VHS cam quarter at first, but I took that into a hot tub when we were in Florida and it never worked after that. So did it? Was it submerged? Oh? Yeah, so this one was documented on a VHSC tape that

was actually later transferred to VHS. I'm pretty sure I did that, and I thought it'd be easier for them to watch on VHS to figure that out versus putting the tape in the little VHS converter tape device at the Alamo. Momem it's me doing a lot of recording in the car on our way to Colorado. Kristen was there, Jeremy was there, and take Jeremy always set in the front seat. Kristen was in the back with me and Granny. Okay. She would periodically point out the wind at different things

that she wanted me to point the camera at. I was always kind of reluctant to do it. For some reason. I was more interested in recording the family in the car. I didn't really care about the surroundings in Arizona, the beautiful desert and everything. I just wanted to record the family, tourist accordination, they the tastes, not just riding in the car across all these states. I also you know, record some when we stop it the different resorts or motels

or wherever we stayed at. To progress the film, you have the you have the car ride, you have the place we're staying at, you're walking into it. One For me, how do we meet. We met in film school, we met in experimental media with Nick Volmer. What was the project that you were working on? The final project to that semester? That class. Goodness, it's been almost a decade since I watched it. That's not it's been eight years since we've been had nine years since we've been out

of college. Oh my god, Yeah, we're old now getting there. This is my wife, Victoria. So it's experimental media, and a lot of the films that we had watched up until that point had obvious visual signs of decay. Works like Ken Jacob's Perfect Film and Arianna Gerstein's lay At, in which the noise and degradation of the film stock is foregrounded in the aesthetic. That inspired me to look at my home movies that my grandfather shot and just see what I had to play with to work with.

Actually noticed it's some of the video tapes already had some signs of decay. The images were jumping, the sound got worked, the color went from color and then black and white. With the actual visual skips and jumps of the film, I realized it was actually already a little bit experimental. It sounds like he's gonna get a heavy on the music. Grandpa was born September nineteenth, nineteen. I think he was born in Ohio. I know he's buried in Lebanon, but I can't remember where he was born.

I can't believe you just knew his birthday off the top. Yeah, Grandpa Bob was born in September nineteenth. Grandma Betty was born February eight and she was three years younger than him, So he was born in twenty five. She was born in I think he died June one, So he just it's just been some wow, eighteen years since he's passed. It's a long time. Do you guys would here? Let's see Ky Belasia, Jonathan up Bid, Jarna Bay. He went to Texas A and M, and he graduated in three years,

comes back to Ohio and he's working in television. He's a broadcast engineer. Grandpa Bob worked at w c M a c MHTV Columbus, Ohio, an NBC affiliate that is still Channel four in Columbus from the days of Dumont to the days that were twenty four hour news. You're watching news. Watched four Columbus h television for as long as he was alive, and he was working. He was

in television. He must have really loved it because he worked and was around cameras all day at work and then came home and then had a camera in his hand to record his children and then eventually his grandchildren, and he would just record anything. I didn't realize how special it was, but he recorded one us all the time outside, you know, playing hop scotch, or playing with her dolls, or picking raspberries from the bushes that mimial

Betty grew. Nothing eventful happening, but he always had the camera on, always shooting the video. Ok folks, And he did that with his children too. We're now back in nineteen sixty seven summer folk Stone Road and day nor have because there's tons and tons of video and snapshots of my mom and her brothers tookaren do. My dad was in the military. My mom was a nurse, and so we moved like seven times when we were growing up. More on washing the footage of Becky as a baby.

My grandfather definitely shot because my parents didn't have or couldn't afford a video camera. Then like us over to Berkeley. Okay, okay, where are you going? But when Grandpa did get us a video camera, my mother, you swing in, would film everything for him. If it was Easter, or if it's like a random Tuesday in April, hey put she Mima And people used to send us goodie boxes all the time, just randomly because they found something that we might like at Meyers. So it could be May when there's no

massive celebration and we'd get a goodie box. My mother would record this and then send it back to Grandma and Grandpa. When we were cleaning out their house after Grandpa was gone and after Grandma was moved into it and living, we had the videos that my parents shipped back to them, and then we had Grandpa Baba's version of my mother's version. We grew up having a camera

in our face. We thought it was really normal. Oh it wasn't until I got older, and I think when I met you that I realized that not every child had a treasure trove of her movies. I suppose I didn't know anyone had this much family history documented on tape. There's just one video of Andrea sleeping on the kitchen table.

She's really little, she's like two or three, and so she's on the very edge of the chair and her little head is on top of the table and she wakes up, looks at them and just starts bawling, bawling out of nowhere. I guess that's that's a sleepy, tired, cranky baby. There's a video of me standing in front of a Christmas tree as little two year old with a raspy voice. Yea my only ation. Yeah you make magen yeah singing you are My Sunshine. That was my song,

still my jam magain, Yes, thank me. Yes. Becky, my oldest sister is behind me and trying to sing it too, and I get so irate. I'm push sure, I think, and I said, oh, seeing it because as a way made it okay, Candy that way with me, You're gone. There's one music park. I wanted hot chocolate, and I don't think that anyone really cared. No, what are you

seen there? They're still filming the sights and the rides around me, And then there's me, a little graded seven year old, jumping up into the lens of the camera, popping up. I want to chocolate. I want to talk it. I don't think you understand me. I want to chocolate her Victoria and he loved his cats. Bore you're okay? Or another one over there? Asha? Where are you? Hasha? Okay, Sasha, my Dasha, Gosha, look in here. We have so much of Grandpa's gear. We have a Yeshika, a fin Tas,

a nineteen Coda autographic, a Brownie Hawkeye. We have a Super eight handheld stick camera. We had this gigantic Crosby box that I think came from the studio that he was working out, and eventually they retired it. I think we still have the tube. I don't think we have this big VHS camera. I don't know what happened to that video, okay. And we have a treasure trove of HS tapes and we only have like a fraction of them. There's more at my parents house, hundreds upon hundreds of tapes.

My dad started digitizing them many many years ago, and I think he took a little break. Kind of made him sad to see his little babies all grown up in real life and his little babies there and film. So you've undertaken the mammoth task of digitizing them. I've sort of only done it in so far that I've said that I'm doing it you've done m hmm, We've probably done like ten twenty tapes' two slow task. My

dad once told me I was the family documentarian. And while I have rolled a lot of tape, it's mostly people doing bits, playing characters. Best are of Hotel A very little could be considered nonfiction. And I can't help but feel guilty like I haven't been a good steward of William's history. Turns out, the feeling runs in the family. See. I feel like I didn't do a good job of that, and it makes me cringe a little bit even to talk about it, because it's not like I have a

great historical record of sound of our family. My parents had eight millimeter, not super eight, eight millimeter movie camera and it had no sound. Everything is a silent movie. A lot of that footage that we have was recorded by Grahama Williams. She would spend hours shooting eight millimeter out the car window as they were driving around with

their airstream. There's stretches of farm land and countryside that you have no idea where it really is, and then all of a sudd there's relatives appearing in a yard running around. It's like, where are we and who are these people. One of the reasons that we never bought a camp orders is just expensive. Spending the money on it would have been hard. Instead, got the VCR and time shifted all your shows, which seems so salient now

that we all watch our shows whenever we want. Anyway, I know we have a video of some play Max was in when he was in kindergarten. Here, yes, I think we have a video of a baby shower, one of your guys. Baby showers Bay is the only one that everybody was hope it in double over. It not that baby showers are so great. There's a video from the wedding. This is footage from our wedding shot on my brethre in law cell phone. The video of my

parents wedding is silent. This is all stuff that I guess other people shot because we didn't have game for it. But I mean, the problem is thirty one years of magnetic degradation. I have no idea what it's gonna look like. But as VHS, I have a working VHS deck. Last time I checked, like four years ago. I don't think there's any audio really, so I don't think there's much. It's sad, is it. I don't know what would we do with it anyway, right, I have no idea what

can one do with old tape? To keep things straight? So you've got it filmed. That's Bob and Sherry. You've got a tape that's Bob, Sharon, Larry's your role. A five different tapes are s twice together. Here they're on a gape. And then you've got a tape that you made that's Bob, Jerry and Larry. But then you're in there even though it's not you're just through your voice, like there's an element of you. Oh yeah, re recording of the recordings. Yeah, we were exactly in a room

full of analog tape machines. Michael live mixes, reels, transcription tapes. First First of the World sets, all kinds of things recorded live in stereo on reel to real tape. The first collection of this work, titled Home Movies, was composed from the tapes described at the top. Everything I had kind of planned out and like, okay, I don't want to press play on this first, Wait a little bit, press play on this one the next. See what happens.

Let's play on this one. Pretty simple struck. Everyone has a good Boys, and the cassette was looking for in the first place was used on the album third Bouquet for Elizabeth Warriors. Why do you choose the family recorded tapes for creative projects? Because they were handed to me. What are you gonna do with them? Now? Probably hold onto them, just sit on them, I mean, put them with the other tapes? What else can you do? Ready? Where were we? Spring semester of film concluded with the

assignment of an autobiography. I don't know what to do. I'm coming down to a deadline. Okay, I'll do video tapes and then I think during that process in making that film, for a couple of weeks, I remembered that I had that camera and codak autographic. When you look at it and it's closed, it's like the height of a VHS tape and probably two or three inches across. You push a button on the top and the lid opens just slightly. You pull that down and you can

see the lens. You clamped two pieces in the side and you pull out the billows. The billows unfold and you're able to look down into the viewfinder and see a very fuzzy image. And then ever so slightly take the trigger. Grandpa Bob took really good care of his gear. This is one of his mics, an electro voice run through an old brown XLR that was his. As far as we know, this Kodak autographic has worked beautifully since, but it takes an outmoded film stock A one six,

but you just can't find anymore. I wanted to figure out how to get this coldek autographic working, so I go over to the camera doctor. We missed your camera doctor. He taught me how to build up the spindles in size so that they could fit one twenty film, which is what we have available today, and what he developed in his shop, just cutting off rounded pieces of black cardboard and fixing them with epoxy, stack stack, stack, stack, until we had the height that would fit one film

onto that spindle. So in the film, I'm mixing together the videos and there's a little footage of me continuing on with this process of building up the spindles. I think I started to restore it, not thinking it would be part of the film, just feeling sentimental watching Grandpa Bob, watching us all of her family, and then taking into that shop and learning that it's not just a piece of art. It could be restored and used. Victoria, Hey,

let's go. I never met Grandpa Bob, but I have to imagine that given a beautiful camera that he couldn't use, he would have done the same thing. As you can tell. The recording session ended on a very very happy note. God Da, oh, you're gonna go baby again. Why don't you just playing yourself this time? You know, just be Joyanne. Say this is Joyanne. I'm talking to you from goggle Ball. Say anything on, take me get you dot the mat of the clock, the clock Brandon Rass and day Gray dot.

Thank you all anyway, so you say conde yees are you? You don't have to push anything. Don't push. This is a historical recording. We're not sure about this next series of sounds from the tapes all they're out of synchronization certainly as far as chronology is concerned. It is being recorded by Joyce and Jim itself. I'm just going to get it all down and then we'll try to do something with it later. So here goes now all the um I don't to say. My mother is making us practice.

Now I have a broad back and we are having some sorts, sweet roles and again, okay, take up hello thanky, duncy hard now shaw girl, I gotta think say okay, man and do And the next time you will hear will be joint and snapping her fingers. Joe will now whistle whistle while you work. Thank you whipple, Oh movie, Jimmy humming a song, Holly song Mester. How the chronologically they got so screwed up? I don't know. Restaum me up. Yeah, it's warming up. One. Can I take some of the

eleven he took? Do talk Lena so interesting, kicks in tin Hi Canny say Tenny for skin. He stay five twenty six, twenty celty at kink Nike Tenny nine ten goady and we got Dick Jenny machine. And he says, maybe we're gonna cut in on this last part of this tape to explain that danks my father Mr Till somehow, some way, this is Joyce be class today in doing these dicta belts. A girl told me that she stole cars. They got all all messed up. I got it down today.

I love my mother. How nice it is for us to be in here playing with this machine and my father's sitting on the catch reading the paper. Mama's out in the kitchen doing the dishes, and I'm up. You don't eat your spaghetti and meatballs all gone exposure to sista. And remember this is scare Jimmy Phillips, good night. You have to just take up that big skip um. Just being recorded on Saturday, March thirty, nineteen hundred and sixty three. I'm five years old and I'm in kindergarten. I cleaned

the upstairs and Daddy enjoyed getting here. That's fair. I painted the sand box. Then Jimmy and Joy were all buddy duddy. So in a few years of anybody ever listening to us for setimental reasons there it is unco thanking to do it. We have jim at a much earlier age with Joy finishing off the tape not to stay. They must have been doing some of them in the office. And I'm in and out office in which we are recording, recording while they're playing with the dick and dictating chen.

He says, maybe we're going to cut in on this last part of this tape over or Tony, have shiny notice moda gord to show my bitch it I made that the Johnny Jump. I said it best. The thing we are like to hear you think up your so users user pleaserable of born on AMASAF thing bank in the free and like so we new every tree I made him a bar twenty was only alright, Michael, Yeah, hold on, felm a little bit more. Do you think your grandfather was the documentarian before you? I'd say so.

He used to make most of the trip videos at some point. I guess when he got this new cam quarter you let me start doing it. I kind of took over. I think I did a crappy job. I think are right when when you started recording? Did your grandfather stopped recording? You know? I don't know if he continued. I'm sure he still records things. I know he goes around taking pictures more than anything. As far as film, I don't know if they've made any recent films done

anything like that in a long time. I've never known them to document anything on the set. That's why that one family cassette so interesting. Do you feel like you've followed in some way in your grandfather's footsteps? Certainly that motivation was placed on me a lot, and I think I took it to heart. Papa always would call me his one and only, so my one and only because

I was his only grandson. I'm going to inherit his earth and his family and all these people he's influenced and affected where I was going to be the next I feel that now heavily great Grandpa Bob was definitely the family documentarian and his family, and then my mother was in our family. And when he was in the convalescence inert at the end of his life, that really

had an impact on me. When he was there, he said something to either me or my mother, saying keep shooting the video, and I didn't realize that was like a mantra of his, but my mother says it all the time, and so it's a mantra of mine now too. The document I think this is my favorite spot in Quebec thus far. So where are we right now? The Grand Canyon? Where do you call it back? So they're going, yes, say Louis, I get this feeling, Oh, that thing just

passed me by. I wish I had that, And then I get this other feeling like I've got my phone out and I'm recording my cat. Well, that's never a bad idea. But I've got my phone out and I'm recording something, and I wish I was just interacting with this moment and living in it. But I turned my phone off, and I'm worried that I'm missing it. How do you use when to hit record? As soon as I got my video degree, I felt this pressure from my family is like, well, you're gonna be the one.

He was like taking movie quality images of everything we're going to be doing. I have not been doing that. I want to be there with those people in those moments. But at the same time, if we don't record it in any way, then it is gone. And those two ideas exists always together at the same time. When I went to Maui with your mom on our honeymoon, we ended up at a hotel which was very, very swanky, that had a nice breakfast and they had black swans

swimming in a pod on the Lennai. We got really lost trying to get to the restaurant, and we ended up windering through the hotel pool, not literally through the water. Now, mind you, we're in Maui. There are beautiful beaches in every direction, but there were all of these rich people on lounge chairs, and it was packed, and there were no less than five guys standing around the pool with camcorders videoing all of the rich people in their chairs.

And I'm thinking, Hey, there is nothing going on here, why are you filming this? And b I don't want to be a guy who spends all of his time videoing what's going on instead of being part of what's going on. And that is the way I've always lived my life. And I always feel guilty about it because I feel like there needs to be a record. I don't want to begin O Santi Vick and necks one.

They're your loved ones. And when their children, everything they do is fantastic, Every new thing that they learn or that they show you is awesome. I mean, it's all inspiring. So why wouldn't you record it? Why wouldn't you record it so that you can watch it when they're a couple of years older, or you get older, when they're out of your house, so that their children can see what they were like when they were little. Because it's fleeting,

especially when it's someone's childhood that goes back quickly. You say thank you again. Okay, I think we're gonna turn it off now now that it's still going. I don't, Joe, I can't. I think about it this way. If I know my wife is they're enjoying a moment with my son, that she's so present with him that the thought of getting her camera out or any kind of recording device and hitting record is nowhere near where her mind is. But I'm, you know, a bit of a third party

to what's occurring. That's when I will record and things like that. It's registering that you're talking and showing you sound wave, but to what sound way you see when you talk? It makes it go up and down? Watch this, Watch this, watch the sound like you all? Is it a little back. My sister and her husband live in Phoenix with their six children. My parents are in South Carolina. You and I are here, so is Andy. And so when we're all together, I want to film as much

as possible. I want to take snapshots as much as possible, because we're so far apart from each other, and those more much that we're together are so important and so happy and so joyous. Wow. I can enjoy it and be in the moment. I also want to preserve and no one and her family thinks twice about taking a photo when we're all together, but are you doing or video?

And when we're all together eggs, one green egg and help everyone experiences family time together like that too, because well it may put some people on the spot to like be in a video recording. I think I'll be so grateful that someone took the time to preserve that in ten years time. There have been lots of family occasions where I wish I had taken a couple of photos, because that's not the same thing. Videoing something live is

almost all considered. It requires almost all of your attention, and you can't talk because you're gonna be the loudest voice in the video if you talk, and you can't put the camera down because you're gonna miss something. I guess it is a delicate balance of when to record and when to quote unquote be in the moment, But I don't think that those things are mutually exclusive. You're in the moment and recognizing that it's a very special

time and you want to preserve it. It seems to me my parents used to take a snapshot like every time we opened a present. This is the days of the instematic camera, so not good snapshots is what you should read into that. It was exciting for them that we were opening the presents as little children, but the photo wasn't necessarily worth anything after that. Maybe I'm wrong, I don't know, but they thought it was important to spend the money to buy the film and take the

photo in the moment and then get it developed. And then they look at it and they're like, oh, yeah, it was Christmas December nineteen two footage. Oh Alex Williams. This Christmas party for Uma is pretty school. This is young man. It's preparing the documentation for this tape. He is ready to go to the party, a party which he may never remember, but in which he will enjoy himself. Nonetheless, Victoria, Matt, Michael and I all came of age as digital recording

technology overtook the old ways of doing things. Nostalgia's side, is there something special about analog media, some intrinsic property that does not translate into binary I think it all has to do with having a physical interaction. Imagine that moment where you're going to the closet, like my grandfather, did you open the closet, you smell the clothes that have been there for a while. The boxes that are

maybe a little bit dusty. You reach up and you pull out an old shoe box or some thing that has cassettes lined up in it, and you open that box and you pull out a cassette tape. You hit the eject button on your cassette player, You slide that cassette and you make sure it's perfectly in there. You're closing, you hit that play butt, and then this voice comes through of someone that you love. I mean, that's a

magical thing. I don't know if it's just because of when we grew up and what we experienced and living through that, but it's not the same as moving your mouths over your track pad over and clicking on a file or just hitting spacebar that kind of connects you more with the past. I feel like that hard plastic VHS tape and you know, you could pop the top off and look at the magnetic tape and run your finger across it, and I hope that your VCR is not going to eat it up. Do you feel that

way about Real too? Real? Yeah? I think it's great the sound of its spinning, especially when it real ends and it's just hitting the tape against the machine. It almost seems like it has this warm quality to it, but that could all be in my head completely. There's a reason we still print out family photos and put them on our walls, so that we can be reminded

of this beautiful, tangible moment. We are attracted to a VHS tape or a DVD or a real to real this quote unquote archaic technology or this this out of date medium. But it's also so romantic that you're holding something that they held for our grandfather's, grandmother's This was the everyday, commonplace thing that they had when they were young or when they were, you know, raising their children. You could watch it tonight when you have prints. It's

so tangible. And when you guys were young, all of our photography was on princes and we have all of that soul. Whether we should or not, you know, because some of them are terrible photos. But I worry about digital photography a lot. I have this bad feeling that people are losing parts of their family history all around the world because people are crappy at managing computers and

they just die out of the blue on you. It's like, oh, man, all of my personal files were on that hard drive, and I think pushing it all online, like into the cloud or into Facebook or any photo service possibly more perilous, just because how much are you exposing your family to the world. We're all giving our data away without even realizing it. The things that we count on from our childhood's like my grandma's horrible eight millimeter films shot out

the window of the Lincoln. Those are kind of special, the bad eight millimeter of me jumping off a stump. When I was two. My stepmother, her daughter died, and one of the things she regretted the most about it she never had a recording of her voice, no audio, and she was afraid she would forget what it sounded like. That's such a big part of the identity of a person, their voice and how they sound. And I told you about that when that when I heard that, and that

had a big impact on me. I feel like, maybe that's why I've been so focused on these family recordings, some just trying to document voices. When you you asked me to come down and talk, I started thinking about do I have any sound of my dad because he's the one who's so absent from my family of origin,

because he died so young. It's it makes really uncomfortable sometimes to think about the fact that I've outlived him by more than ten years now, And so I think back to my dad because he was so alive and so present whenever we were together as a family, which was a lot. And whether I actually have any of his voice recorded, because I bet you've never heard it, folks.

Judy and I have a few things we wanted to say to you before the children come down, and they'll be a part of this tape later on or on the other side, depending up put how long it goes. We just found this aunt Jennifer and Uncle Day have spent their Saturday tracking down this cassette and the hardware to digitize it. Well, what was the first thing we wanted to talk to him about, dear, Well, we were going to tell him about the heavy snowfall we've had

within the last couple of days. I mean, you were already the family documentary because some for some reason, you're a thirteen year old kid and you like feel like compulsed and to turn the camera on and document things as mundane as like you know, sitting in the car and checking out the new hotel room. With the bathroom. Looks like that complusion is already there, but maybe they put a finer point on it. Yeah, yeah, no, it

it affected me in a way. I kind of started thinking about who's going to die next, and how I'm going to possibly get their voys their voice any time for anything in any medium. That's tens of thousands easily. How many tapes do you think we've made together? Oh? Man? Uh, tapes of any time? Tapes where it's audio tape, videotape, digital tape. Over a hundred, maybe hundreds. It's all right, we'll we'll do it again later. We were kind of

obsessively recording on tape cassette for a while. First, how many times do you think that we've been together and hit record? H O? Could I could go into the thousands maybe, And most of the times we kept the first thing, even though it would have been better if we've just done it one more time. Yeah. Yeah, But then you know there's something to that as well. I feel like, you know, you get to hear all these mistakes and how it just how it sounded when it

first was born, hearing the birth of something. How many times we recorded something? Oh, it's uncountable. There's how many photos of cats do you and I trade on a daily basis? I would say, on a on a low day, two or three on a good day, ten snapshots that you're going to see in a couple of hours. But you think that they really have two cats, But they're being so precious and so sweet and so like evil that day, and you just have to take a snapshot, even though you're gonna come home to it in a

couple of hours. But it's that important right then. I think it's so amazing that that could touch someone so instantaneously. Someone's had any really crap day at work and you send them a cat photo day made like you feel much later? Where are you some vicious today? How? I think it's amazing that cost doesn't weigh into whether someone can be the documentary and their family now, not to do any extent that it was in the fifties and sixties and even in the nineties when I was growing up.

A camera is expensive. Just get the shot, Um, yeah, I got it. Why do you think we recorded so many things just kind of being obsessive about it? I don't know. I mean, I I guess we both came from backgrounds where we had the tools to record and do all of this stuff. Mari. When we first got together, it was on a film project. We have watched that recently. I bet it was horrible. It's not great, it's rough. We're editing on a VHS tape. Thanks for that, Dad.

I have a lot of stories about dobbing. I try to be very cognizant of what should be easily disposable in case I should pass on, because I think a lot about what happened to my mom when my dad died. But I have my weakness is I have a lot of VHS tapes, a lot of which are probably not very watchable anymore, and haven't figured out a good way to recycle him. You know, they won't take him in the big blue bin. I spent a lot of time collecting media or I have at least at various junctures,

like with my DVR and video tapes. We are all interested in the future of all that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of all eyes. I like to think that other people have enjoyed the things that I've recorded, but it's mostly for me. I know that such a the will affect you in the future. But the stuff you don't get rid of by chance or by choice, the good they're not so good. What

happens to all of it? Thick and I have been fixing up our old house, which inevitably means sorting ephemera. What goes to a thrift store, what goes to a friend, what you try to sell, what you need to recycle, what you have to throw out, and what you keep. We have a historical box that has you and Max's stuff in it, and I have a history box that has stuff from my childhood in it. There are some amazing things in there that, like I would not be able to not cry if I pulled out and explain

to you what they were. People who have been important in my life, who have been dead for decades. More than likely they're just gonna get boxed up and left in the attic someone's attic, maybe my kids or my grandkids. I would hope something like that would happen versus them getting tossed out. Really, what's the difference? I mean, I guess if they're stored somewhere, then there's the possibility that someone could find it later, in versus if they get

thrown out, give me something to think about this. They will just fall apart on their own too. Yeah, that'll take a while. I don't know what the shelf life for a cassette tape is, but some of those reels I have are recorded back in the fifties and they still have audio on them. I'm also we wasted a trips. Now we've gotta go. Now, goodbye, We've gotta see mommy

by Daddy, Bye Jimmy, by everybody. Let's listening to this take someday with this, it's a very talk of woman, and I'm so sorry to wold from your first joint. And there lest farewell, cruel world. Goodbye, we gotta go a home and see you later. M Ephemeral Season one was written and assembled by Millions and produced by Annie Reese, Not Frederick and Tristan McNeil, with technical assistance from Sherry Larson, Matt Michael Victoria. Thank you for sharing your families with me.

Albums to stream and handmade reels to buy at Michael Weaver dot bandcamp dot com, and a podcast to stay in touch with at Ephemeral dot Show.