JBTV PUTS MASSIVE MUSIC VIDEO ARCHIVE UP FOR SALE
Published in Reel Chicago, January 2015
Jerry Bryant, founder and chief of the legendary Chicago-based live music entertainment program JBTV, announed this week that he intends to sell the studio’s archive of 30,000 remastered first generation digibeta music videos from the 80s, 90s and 00s.
Including pop standards from superstars like Madonna, classic cuts from hard rockers like the Foo Fighters, uncensored takes from oddballs like Primus, two x-rated performances by Icelandic squealer Bjork and one Flaming Lips’ video that Wayne Coyne made “just for JBTV,” the painstakingly preserved vault of 1,100 one-inch tapes is a cultural motherlode of Smithsonian proportions.
“It’s a one of a kind collection that nobody has,” he says. “It’s got some of the best and some of the worst of all the music videos ever realeased, sort of a history of rock and roll since 1984.”
Likewise, the story behind the collection is a sort of a history of JBTV. Bryant began the collection during the show’s early days, when he was developing it’s exclusive music format and occasionally broadcasting videos that he discovered pretty much by accident.
“We would do commercials and on the same reel would be a Peter Murphy video,” Bryant remembers. “He was so excited that there was a TV show that played it.”
As JBTV became a preferred step for serious bands hoping to climb the charts, so did Bryant’s acccess to music videos. He began receiving material from unsigned acts across the country, including a group of kids from the Chicago suburbs who called themselves Fall Out Boy.
“We have the first video before they were signed to a record deal,” Bryant says, “and then they got signed and the record company goes, ‘well, that video’s not good enough, let’s make a real video.’”
The show also received original music videos directly from “every label” in the country, a pipeline it shared with MTV.
“MTV and JBTV were on one-inch, D2, quad, the high end formats,” says Bryant. “They would send videos to both of us.”
Once he got his hands on the originals, Bryant would often correct the color and remaster the sound or, in some cases, completely replace the audio with the song from the band’s CD. He also archived the material on digibeta tapes from “the very beginning” of the format’s existence, meticulously listing each song’s title and artist next to the exact minute, second and frame of its location.
“One tape can hold about 30 videos,” he says. “It was so much easier to do the show.”
The collection grew until the mid-2000s, when JBTV devoted its entire program to live music and Bryant began authoring his own videos with footage captured in the show’s studio. It now occupies twenty feet of floor to ceiling shelves in a temperature controlled room adjacent to Bryant’s editing suite, where it’s been stored the whole time.
When asked how much it’s worth, Bryant enthusiastically responds, “I have no idea.”
“I treat all these videos like they were my kids,” he adds. “It’s been a labor of love.”
Photos by Dan Patton