The title of this recording is "John Raines - audio preservation". It is described as: John Raines talks about preserving audio/visual material for the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. It was recorded in Castro District, San Francisco on the 20th June 2012. John Raines is being interviewed by Gareth Watkins.  Their names are spelt correctly but may appear incorrectly spelt later in the document. The duration of the recording is 53 minutes. A list of correctly spelt content keywords and tags can be found at the end of this document. A brief description of the recording is: In this podcast John talks about preserving audio/visual material for the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. The content in the recording covers the decades 1970s through to the 2000s. A brief summary of the recording is: This summary details an interview conducted by Gareth Watkins with John Raines, which focuses on Raines' role in audio/visual preservation for the GLBT Historical Society in San Francisco. Recorded in 2012 in the Castro District, Raines discusses their experience in analogue media and software development, which aids in their work archiving materials from the 1970s and 1980s. Initially, Raines explains their transition from a career in software development back to media by leveraging their knowledge of both analogue and digital systems. The importance of the GLBT Historical Society, founded by Willie Walker in the 1980s, is underscored. Walker recognized the necessity to preserve significant documents of gay culture, particularly as San Francisco was a hub for the gay liberation movement. Raines became involved with the Historical Society in 2009 as a volunteer. An exhibit featuring Harvey Milk's bloodstained suit profoundly impacted Raines and underscored the importance of preserving and communicating the history of the GLBT community. Raines also touches on how various artefacts, including Milk's jeans and camera sign, came into the Society’s possession and the importance of provenance in such a collection. Subsequently, Raines describes their efforts to organize and brand a series of disorganized DVDs to enhance the public's understanding that these were part of the Society's work. The audio/visual holdings of the Society are extensive, with media ranging from the 1940s to the 1990s. Raines mentions Hal O’Neal's super eight films, which document their life as a gay man, and a documentary collection from Karen Everett on Marlon Riggs. On the audio side, the Society owns a significant amount of phonograph records and open reel tapes, including the Randy Alfred collection of radio masters and a diverse array of recordings from the San Francisco gay men's chorus. Raines discusses the difficulties of media preservation, detailing technical challenges such as transferring analog media to digital formats, dealing with sticky shed syndrome, and the delicate process of handling and repairing historical tapes. Raines elaborates on the processes of cataloging and digitizing Randy Alfred's collection, The Gay Life, which was meticulously organized and documented. These shows captured critical moments in LGBT history, including the White Night riots. Raines notes the importance of both preservation and accessibility, detailing the process of creating archival masters and service copies for public access. The interview concludes with Raines’ discussion of the Society's collection policy, emphasizing the relevance of GLBT-focused materials. Looking forward, Raines indicates the intention to tackle the David Lamble collection, foreseeing the significant effort required due to potential disorganization and technical challenges. The full transcription of the recording begins:  My name is John Raines, and I have had a career mainly in software development and database and corporate application design. But in a previous lifetime, back in the 19, uh, somewhere back there, um, I worked in radio and, uh, a little bit in television, So I have experience with analogue media and also the conventions of that time. And so, uh, this niche that I've been kind of carving for myself with the society is really a perfect fit, because I'm able to use the knowledge that I have of analogue media. Combine it with the knowledge I have of digital processing in order to preserve and convert to this vast inventory of materials in the archive. Can we just take a step back? And can you just tell me a wee bit about the historical society the, uh, the, uh GL BT? Well, first it was the G. Then it was the GNL. Then it was the GL BT historical Society. Um was founded back. I believe in the eighties by Willie Walker. Willie Walker was a nurse who was caring for AIDS patients. And he was ending up with materials of patients, Um, and decided that we needed to save this history. Uh, because these were important documents of this gay culture and San Francisco being one of the centres of gay liberation and then GL BT culture. After that, um, he thought it was very important to preserve this material. So he started having stacks and stacks in his living room and eventually with community support and, uh, uh, the support of the city of San Francisco as well. Um, he and his successors were able to develop it into a full blown archive. And now museum. And when did you first get involved? I got involved, uh, in 2009 as a volunteer at an exhibit that was mounted at the corner of Castro on 18th Street was really a small storefront and a fairly constrained exhibit. But I found it very compelling. And among the artefacts that were there was the blood soaked suit of Harvey Milk that he was murdered in. And that was a very moving and, uh, impactful experience to see that. Certainly that's true. Of the many visitors who were there, everyone commented on that, but I I was It struck me that yes, we have a history. And, yes, it's important to preserve. And not only that, but communicate outward to people. So who hit the foresight of keeping Harvey Milk's suit? I? I don't know for sure. Um, it probably was in the care of Scott Smith, his lover. I imagine there are a tremendous number of artefacts of Harvey milks at the archive. When Scott Smith died, his estate, which included a lot of materials of Harvey's, went in two different directions. Uh, most of the written materials went to the Hormel Collection at the San Francisco Public Library, and most of the the artefact the well, 3D is kind of a bad way to put it. But you know what I mean. The, um the, uh, clothes the objects, yes, went to the, um, Historical Society, and it's a fascinating collection. One can walk back into the archive and open a box. And here are a pair of Harvey Milk's jeans. Here is ha. Regrettably, only half of the canvas Castro camera sign in another box. Um, it's a story that, uh, Levi's had an exhibit about a year ago. They're also a benefactor of the society, and they asked for a pair of Harvey Milk jeans to show in their, uh, lobby. So we walked in and found three pair, and, uh, we you know, we check them out, we check the size just to make sure they were plausible, because sometimes the provenance of these artefacts is not entirely clear. There's often a lot of, um, a lot of, uh, scurry and disorganisation at the time of someone's passing. And so some of these collections are not that well organised when they come in. So when Harvey Suit was exhibited and you were a volunteer there, what what kind of comments from people coming through were there. They almost always started with Wow because it brings the the tragedy of it so close, literally close to your eyes, to see, to see the clothes, to see the blood stains to to feel the impact of what happened. Um, it was also staged a little bit in the back. In a fairly good theatrical fashion. It was behind a scrim, so it was kind of a surprise. As you turned a corner amongst other fairly lighthearted and interesting artefacts, you would suddenly be confronted with this glass case with this crumpled brown suit and wonder why there's a crumpled brown suit with darker brown stains on it in a case, and then read the card and find out You know what you're seeing. So from volunteering in that exhibition What What was your next involvement with the society? Well, we had a series of DVD S running on a on a, uh uh, display a video display in the window that were, uh, quite disorganised. Um, So what I did was I took them and I edited them down to smaller chunks and put a little more branding. Put our name in the name of the society in it. So they had a little more of a context. Um, because I felt it was important that people realised they weren't just seeing random home movies passing by. But this was part of an effort mounted by the historical society, the audio visual holdings of the society. Can you describe what what they encompass? They encompass quite a variety of media and time periods, data. And when we say, uh, media, I'm talking about moving images and audio. There's a lot of photography as well in the archive. Um, but the moving images go back to the forties. Uh, one of our most intriguing and and unprocessed collections is of regular and Super eight film by a fellow named Hal O'Neill. He was an enthusiastic amateur, extensively edited, made Inter titles for his movies and documented his life as a gay man beginning in the forties. And there's a treasure trove, and only a few reels have ever been transferred. But they uniformly gain a tremendous amount of attention whenever we show any of that stuff. So that's one. That's probably the oldest that we have ranging up through, I would say, probably the nineties uh, a woman named Karen Everett who made a documentary on Marlon Riggs. The black poet, um, spent quite a lot of time with him about a year before his death, and she donated all of her raw footage to the archive. So I think that's probably the latest collection that I'm aware of that we have. There are bits and pieces to There are some very extensive collections of primarily audio tapes or videos, and but there are also videos sprinkled among the personal collections of other other, uh, grantors. And what about the audio side of things. What kind of audio collections do you have? Well, we have a fairly sizable phonograph Or do you say gramaphone? I forget which the you know, there's the phonograph. Was the cylinder originally? The gramophone was the disc, so it's properly a gramophone record. Uh, we have anyway, those flat black things that people don't know about anymore or they're becoming popular again. We have a fairly good collection of that. A lot of that stuff is in wide release, but there are a few rare titles, including some 70 eights, uh, from the forties of a fellow named Ray Bourbon who was a very campy, very campy comedian. Um, we also have quite a lot of, uh, open rail tape, the extensive, uh, Randy Alfred collection of radio Masters, Um, ranging to, uh, cassette tapes as well. Well, actually, it's a San Francisco gay men's chorus collection that had the largest range of, uh, technologies in their audio collection, which contained open reel tape, compact cassettes, something called DTRs digital tape recording system, which was briefly popular in the nineties. And, um, and what's it called? It's the A Ali A. Now the last two AD and DTRs are based on video tape media. Uh, DTRs was based on high eight video cassettes, and AD was based on super VHS cassettes. But they both took advantage of the hill recording system to record multi track digital sound. So getting those transferred was, uh, yeah, I'm sure we're gonna get into the technology. But, um, that was a challenge to find machines to play this variety of formats back on. And you should hear about the video. But I know that's not No, no, no. Talk to me about the video. There's there's also, you know, video tape with everything from one inch, which was in the eighties was the professional format, um, to a VHS to a beta max to beta cam, which was a professional format to, uh, digital beta can. And, curiously enough, open reel videotape, which is a very nasty substance from the seventies. Open reel tape. Well, if we get into this too, I have a question. But open reel tapes are take a lot of work. Can you talk to me about the kind of collection policy with regards to the media items? Because I'm thinking, does the media item have to have some queer or gay focus in terms of, you know, a gay person speaking or a gay topic? Or is it the donor? That's important? This is always the tough question, isn't it? What? What's important, what to keep? Generally, I would say yes, There needs to be some kind of GL BT scope to the media. Um, either it is about some GL BT topic. If it's merely produced by a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person, that's really not enough to qualify it to keep it in our collection unless that person, unless it really informs something else. And that person is an important GL BT history figure historical figure. Um, because we have collections of quote unquote ordinary people as well, which is important. You know, too. But I have come across some tapes that have no GL BT oriented content on them or they're commonly available on another. You know, if someone collects video tapes, we might record what was in their collection, and we might want to know what was of interest to them. But we're not necessarily going to hang on to copies of tapes that are commonly available on Amazon these days for example, unless unless they were extremely rare, then we might hold on to one. There's a huge collection of pornography, you know, mostly on the film huge collections of film pornography. And, uh, we don't We don't know quite what to do with that because, you know, sex is definitely part of the GL BT realm. But, um, um, there are also archives that do collect erotica and focus on that. And I know that sometimes we do donate materials, send them to other places where they seem better suited. You mentioned Randy Alfred, can you tell me about his collection? Yeah, The Randy Alfred Collection is quite extensive. It encompasses 256 reels of tape, takes up about 23 bankers boxes of space and is wonderfully meticulously organised. Which is why I made it my first project because I knew I wasn't going to have to battle any inherent disorganisation. He produced the show as a public affairs programme, and at that time there was a governmental regulation that broadcasters produce and document a certain amount of such programming. So with each tape, there was also documentation of exactly who the guests were. It it was really a dream archivist dream. Everything is fully documented. So what was the show? It was called the Gay Life. And, uh, it began in the late seventies, probably around 1978 I wanna say and ran until 1984. And Randy was the host and producer from 1979 to 84. And in addition to those programmes, his collection also includes a few other tapes from the radio station, uh, including, um, an unaired interview with Harvey Milk and some very charming early programmes called the Gay Liberation Show from 1973 which also aired on Is this the first kind of documented gay broadcasting in the San Francisco area? I would say no because a predating, uh, Randy show was a programme called Fruit Punch, which aired on KPFK, the Pacifica public station in Berkeley. And Fruit Punch was a collective of producers who had a weekly show. Um, I believe beginning earlier in the seventies than around 78 is when the gay life really got ramped up. So I want to say they started much earlier, probably around 73 74. I don't know for sure, because I've only done a few of their tapes from another collection, and that was, um, only four boxes. And when you say do tapes from whatever collection What What are you doing? What? What? Well, converting them to digital form. So, uh, playing them back, getting them to play back and turning them into digital files that can be preserved and copied almost indefinitely, as can most computer data. So it's a preservation thing that you're doing. Is it also an access thing? Absolutely, Absolutely. Um, you know the old days of hunting through a tape forward. Forward. Guess guess Stop. Play. No. Forward. Forward. Guess Stop. Play. No. Rewind, rewind, play. You know, it takes an amazing amount of time compared to these days. Click, click, click, click. You find the spot you want in a digital file, so access is a huge part of it. Preservation, though, as well, because some of these tapes now are approaching about 40 years of age. It's kind of amazing. Some of them are, are still in good shape. So can you describe, uh, the shape of Randy's collection in terms of physically, what was Randy's collection? In excellent condition Properly. All the tapes were boxed, stored upright. The hubs, Um, and just in stellar condition, I think I only had to heat treat three or four, maybe five reels out of 250 tapes. What is that? Well, yeah, You may or may not be familiar with the phenomenon of sticky shed, which is not nearly as exciting as it sounds. It entails the absorption of water by the tape. Over time, there was a formulation that was created in the late seventies that was superior in many ways. But what they the engineers didn't know at that time was that over 10, 2030 years time, this new formula would absorb water from the environment and become so sticky on playback that we could bog, literally bog the machine down, the tape would just stop, and one winds up with great black gobs of goo that require gallons of alcohol and stronger solvents to get off the machine. But the real problem is getting the tape to play so you can preserve it. So the, uh, the cure, which was discovered by Amex rightly because they were the the culprits behind this new formula was to treat the tape with a low heat about 100 and 30 degrees or so Fahrenheit, um, for anywhere from 8 to 20 hours, depending on the condition of the tape to make it playable, at least temporarily, so that it can be transferred. So you put it into an oven or how how do you do that? Well, um, my favourite, uh, machine. These are the trade secrets now is the SCO food dehydrator, which makes excellent jerky and dried fruit. By the way, I might say, but it makes even better baked tapes. It's just the right round shape for a reel, and it has stacking trays, and it has a very even thermostat at a low temperature. And it doesn't cost a jillion dollars, which helps, uh, what puts the tapes in the dehydrator? You turn it on for however long it takes. Tapes from the seventies now are taking, uh, a good 12 hours to become at least to become playable. Sometimes more 12, 12 to 18 hours, I would say. And when they become playable, does it mean that you only get one shot at capture? No, no. They generally will remain playable for Well, this is not well documented because most of us play the tape and then throw the damn thing back in the box and forget about it after that. But, um, it appears that they will remain playable for a matter of weeks. Maybe depending on it's not a permanent fix. The the the they suck the water back up again. You know, the the the the biggest danger is trying to play a tape that has this problem and damaging the, uh, the magnetic emulsion because that is the recording. And if you damage that, you've destroyed the actual recording so that when you put a a tape of unknown provenance on the machine, um, you wind it very carefully at first, uh, to see that it's not going to be sticky. Although there are other signs when you take it out of the box, it may have a certain odour. Um, if it's back coated with a carbon black back coating, that's a good sign that it might be a problem if it seems to stick as you try to unspool it by hand. It doesn't it doesn't hang straight off the reel. That's another possible clue. On the other hand, uh, tapes of the very first public concert planned public concert by the Gay Men's Chorus, which was 1978 not their impromptu concert on the assassination of our remote but their planned concert. Those tapes of 78 I put them on the machine and it sounded like they were made yesterday played perfectly well. So one never knows you mentioned damaging the the the audio, the content. What kind of damage can be done to a tape? Well, again, The main problem is, um, damaging, destroying, removing, obliterating the magnetic emulsion, which is the side of the tape that faces the heads and contains the actual magnetic encoding of the recording so it can it can come off. It sounds like nothing. It sounds. It's a drop out or it's a loss of it's a It's a loss of audio. I've only found one tape so far that was so badly damaged that I could not play it and it was blocked. A blocking is when the layers of tape have adhered to each other, layer by layer. This usually occurs when a tape is stored in very high heat and humidity, and a tape like that is very very difficult to salvage. You know, I'm not. If this was the, uh, lost Elvis studio session, maybe it would be worth a million dollars to, you know, take a year to take this tape apart to make it play. But, um, it takes that kind of heroism with a tape like that if it's blocked. The sticky shed problem is usually not doesn't stick to itself so badly, but to the machine. Another problem, of course, is what they call diction, which is kind of a sticky friction with the machine and and transmits mechanical squeals and actually messes up the recording. So you're a squealing pitch with the tape that's a related phenomenon to sticky shed. Generally, Uh, that's a loss of lubricant, which is more difficult to treat. Sometimes that can be, um, handled by playing back in a cold temperatures, so he would literally take the tape and the machine into a refrigerator and and get it to play at 40 degrees. Everything's at 40 degrees, and it will play. That's an extreme measure. We've been talking about tape, and we haven't actually I don't think defined what tape is because I think for a lot of people they'll be thinking, Oh, cassettes, you know, small tape. Can can you describe the the tapes that, um, that Randy has deposited What kind of tapes? Well, I bash open the cassette and pull out the little tiny reels and all that naked ribbon of plastic is the tape. It is a long ribbon of polyester. Generally, the earlier tapes are made of, um, acetate. But all the tapes I'm working with are polyester, and it is, um, for radio. It was a quarter inch wide, and that's two track stereo, and it's coated on one side with a soup of very finely ground magnetic metallic particles mixed with lubricants and glues. And who knows what and that's painted on one side of the tape. And that's what actually holds the magnetic imprint of the recording. And then the other side is either, uh, just plain polyester. It looks shiny like tape, or it's back, coated with a car kind of a carbon black process, which helps the tape move more smoothly on the reel and dissipates static electricity. But it's also the culprit in many of these sticky tapes. So how much tape would you need to record, say a a 58 minute programme? Well, yeah, In general, a 10 inch reel of tape will hold an hour at a standard thickness of tape. And there's a thinner kind of tape that allows you to put more tape on the reel and that will hold generally about 90 minutes of material. A smaller, a seven inch reel. Behold about 30 minutes at that standard. Thicker size. You know consideration is the hardiness of this tape. The thinner it gets, the more susceptible it is to breaking and open reel tapes. In contrast to con cassettes, open reel tapes, in contrast to cassettes, are subject to so much handling and potential damage and contamination. It becomes a real concern, So Randy's collection actually would would take up quite a lot of physical space. I'm I'm guessing. Yes, well, all of these, um, tapes, which are what, maybe a half inch or less thick since the reels because we have the aluminium reels or plastic reels with the tapes in. Boxes are then stored up right in, uh, bankers boxes, and there are 23 of those in his collection. But that's nothing because we have another collection of 43 boxes that I've been too afraid to open so far, but I'll get around to it. And what are they of? They were produced by a man named David Lamb, who was a radio producer for many years and also worked on this fruit crunch programme. So I'm very curious about the contents, but that is a very far ranging and a less predictably organised collection. I've opened a few boxes and seen reels tossed in at Unboxed at odd angles with bits of tape unspooled here and there, and that's very just simply very time consuming to handle that material. The other collection I did, the Kevin Burke Collection. Many of those reels were stored in what we call pancake form, in which the tape is wound about a hub but not placed within real flanges, simply carefully taped together and put on a piece of Styrofoam, maybe in a box, and one has to take that and assemble it into a metal reel in order to play it. And if you weren't quite careful, yes, it's the equivalent of 52 card pickup, except you have an hour's worth of tape that all in a very spectacular fashion cascades to the floor. I could tell by the look on your face that you're not totally unfamiliar with this phenomenon. So pancakes are an example of the, um the intense labour that can be required of open real tape. How long would it take you to go from start to finish on a tape in terms of not only digitising the say hour long programme, but actually documenting it and looking at the tape box and and looking at all the details, I would say at a minimum, two hours. Best case. And that includes the one hour of real time required to actually transfer the, uh to play them the real back in real time. Um, ranging anywhere from there up to 18 hours, 20 hours if the reel needs to be incubated, heat treated to make it playable. Naturally, I'm able to do something else while the reel is, uh, in the baker. But it can take that long to actually get through the whole process of playing the tape back, creating an archival master documenting it, creating a service copy and storing it in some permanent fashion. What is an archival Mazda an archival master is the original digital conversion of the tape. It is meant to be as faithful as possible to the original, so it contains no extraneous material, no artefacts. I try to set the tape up for the best playback of the entire tape, and I make no adjustments during the playback. If I find that my levels are I've guessed very badly and the levels are way off, I will generally stop and go back and start the whole thing again because I don't want to introduce anything into that master that is me fiddling with a knob and not the actual recording. So we want that to be a faithful, very faithful record. And that's at whatever the full fidelity of of our chosen digital format is, which for these radio tapes has generally been stereo at 48 kilohertz, sample rate and 24 bit sample depth from that, Then we'll create a smaller file. Since those files can be quite large, we'll create a smaller file, which we call a service copy, and that will be a compressed, um, MP four, for example, or or MP3 file. How hard is it to scope a digitization project like like Randy's audio items. I mean, how how do you work out how long this is going to take you? And how long did it take you? In the end, you you can plan to a certain extent, but there are always surprises. I, I think I chose again. I chose Randy's collection because it was so well organised, and I sensed that I was going to have a few surprises and I was right about that. But in other cases, you know you can you can. You can pull out a tape that has 30 splices, and they all blow when you wind the tape because the glue is dried up. So then you're replacing 30 splices, and suddenly this tape takes you an extra hour, and the slice is a cut on the tape. Yes, yes, quaintly enough, they used to, and I did it myself. Actually. Take a razor blade and cut the tape to make edits and tape it together with a little piece of adhesive tape. And the glue in that tape can simply dry up after 30 odd years, especially if the tape is being heat treated on top of it and I've had a few tapes where I've had to go back and replace However many splices there were, uh, to make the thing playable again, or you or you find tapes without leader where the recording begins at the very, very end of the tape, and then you've got to put leader on it so you can win thread it in the machine so you aren't missing any material on, you know, on playback. Um, but I I'm I'm going off your question now, which was basically looking at how how do you scope it, right? How do you and and actually how long it would take ultimately? Well, I again the scoping one tries to set general bounds, but there are always surprises. I have learned to do my best, but then to just pick up a box and start pulling wheels out, and if I know that I'm gonna be able to convert the entire collection, then I'm not going to worry that much about the precise order in which I bring out the material. I will just reach in and pull out another reel and, you know, have at it because I know I'm gonna go through all of it. Um, Randy's collection. Well, I got into a rhythm of doing about six programmes a day because it was so well organised. You know, I would do the documentation while the tape was playing back. I had an hour to look at the other tapes and and look at the the written docs and transfer them. So it was a pretty compact operation. I don't remember how long it actually took. I could find out for you. I don't remember. It is I have all of my dates recorded that I actually transferred the material it took me from I would say march to about April, maybe 2. 5 months or so, working rather steadily five days a week or so on that. I made it my job for that couple of months because there's so much tape, I figured Well, this has to be my job to pass through it. And so that was all volunteer work? Yes. So I would be there at the archive that transfer I made at the archive, I obtained a reel to reel professional reel to Reel Player made by Otari, the last manufacturer of open reel tape machines. In fact, it was only one model on from the last machine that I worked with back in the eighties, so I was quite familiar with it. I brought that in in my computer and my, um, external sound card. And they did all the transfers right there at the archive. I would be there every day. That's a huge commitment. Yeah, but, you know, it's, um it was almost like working in radio again. You know, when When you work in radio and you're the, um they don't call you a board operator for nothing. Yeah, sometimes it could be a bit boring while while you're playing tapes back for an hour or two. I kind of got into that rhythm. Although I enjoyed listening to the tapes. You know, I did not. I'll tell you a secret and say that I did not listen to every single second of every single tape. I would say I listened to the vast majority of all the recordings, but sometimes I did. If I felt the tape was was doing quite well and these tapes were all in such great shape, I might, um, run out for a bite. But Of course, I always, um, went through the files visually, which is something we can do now with the digital recordings. And if anything stood out, I could go see if there was a blip or a problem. But, you know, these tapes were in such great shape the machine. I never came back to find the machine eating a tape or anything disastrous like that. Other collections I would not walk away from at all. I would be there all the whole time. How hard was it to source a tape machine? I'm I'm I'm guessing that I I'm not sure when tape stopped being used in broadcast situations, but, uh, tape machines. When did they last get made? I believe Otari was still selling machines through the mid two thousands. So I Yeah, I would like to say, uh, probably mid to late too. I don't know for sure, but I have the impression they were still available for again from this one manufacturer out of, you know, a number of manufacturers Sony, um, and and the Germans invented magnetic tape recording, by the way. And also which is the big American firm, Um, out of all of them. Only Otari was left and they made new machines up through, Let's say the mid to late two thousands. And that was it. And so how How hard was it for you to source? Well, you know, I, um, eventually found one through eBay and using the knowledge that I had, I could ask the right questions. And I found a machine that was in rather good condition. It was a professional machine, but it had been in a hobbyist studio, so it did not have a tremendous amount of use. It wasn't abused like a broadcast machine would be. It was a bit customised that the, um, XL R connections have been replaced with RC A jacks. So I The first thing I did was rip those out and put proper XL R jacks back, back in for balanced audio. Other than that, it just needed, uh, a little bit of a calibration and, uh, lubrication. And it was ready to go, you know, for 300 hours of transfers after that did quite well. You were saying earlier that you were noting some material down as you transferred. So, like I I'm assuming things on tape boxes and a bit of documentation about the recordings. Yes, Randy's collection was superbly documented. There were actually rundown sheets inside each box that detailed all of the guests and their titles. So all I really had to do was transcribe that information. Were you doing any other kind of summary or keywords of actually content that was going through? Was that part of the job? No, I have not been doing that, Um and that's that is an important task, especially with our other media, which is not nearly so well documented. But I think that once the material is transferred, it becomes much easier to share it and invite other people into the process, especially people who were around during this era. And that's really the next step for us is to bring some of these people in and look at the material and identify what's happening and create well, then, beyond that, more of the librarian type role is to create Indices. I really would love to see us have a subject index for the archive because we see the same people and events and places turn up over and over. So the the the collection is digitised what are what are some of the outcomes Now that you have digital files of of the audio? Well, that really is the good question. I was asked this frequently while I was making this huge effort. What are you going to do with all of this? You know, what are we going to do with it now that it is so easy to to play back? So we did decide to make it publicly available by uploading it to the Internet archive, which is a free, completely free parking space. Really, it still took a huge amount of time because we did not have a fast upload pipe. So it took quite a few days even to get these compressed service copies uploaded. But once we did, I built built a Web portal in a database, a searchable database for downloading the material, and that's turned out to be a pretty big hit. I think we've had Oh, I saw the number the other day, something in the order of 9000 downloads in the last couple of years of this material, so it's not on the word. It's not like YouTube, but it's pretty good. Were there any considerations given to the fact that these were radio programmes like one off broadcast radio programmes from the seventies that are now being made available to anyone in the world at any time. And I'm just wondering if there were people in those recordings that maybe didn't want to be on the Internet, Was there any Did you come across any of those kind of issues? No, I really didn't. You know, uh, we owned the recordings outright because Randy retained copyright when he was normally as a producer. You'd be working for hire, and the station would own your the results of your work. But Randy made a different arrangement, and he retained the, uh, copyright. So he was able to do that to us. So we actually do own the copyright in the recordings. Now there are a few of the usual stickier questions of Are we playing someone's musical composition? Is he playing someone's musical composition? We don't necessarily have all the documentation to show, you know that we own We don't necessarily have the documentation to show on all the subsidiary copyrights. You know, when you play that back on a radio station, the station has a blanket licence, which enables them to play any pretty much any music they want. But, um, no. So far. Well, you know how it is. You proceed on a complaints basis, right? After all, we're not out here. We're offering it for free. You know, we're not trying to make a lot of money. We're in a nonprofit place, so we haven't run into any issues. And you're talking about people not wanting to be made available. Well, you know, they were willing to go on the radio and let thousands of people in the Bay Area hear them anyway at one time. And I and I wonder for quite a number of these recordings, the people actually in them have probably passed on and and III. I wonder if that is also an issue in terms of, you know, whether family and friends are actually hearing these recordings for the first time in maybe 2030 years. Have you had any feedback from from people in in that regard? But I simply haven't Well, you know, the thing about the about the eighties is that, as as the AIDS epidemic was spreading, there's just simply a whole generation of people who are missing, you know, they and all their friends are gone. It's a big gap. So not all of them, certainly. But, um many, many of them. And the material that I've been working with both audio and video is primarily from the eighties, a little bit of seventies, but primarily eighties. It's hard. It's really hard to estimate the impact of of that epidemic on, um on the culture. And maybe that's another reason the history is so important to preserve because a lot there there's this great discontinuity. So many people are gone. We're we're bridging in a way, since they're not available to carry it forward, many of them. So in listening through the 256 episodes of Of the Gay Life, what have been some of the most memorable audio moments for you? As I mentioned, these very early, uh, tapes, which are not part of the gay life proper but are out of another series, were very curious to me. The Gay Liberation Show, which was, uh, done by a couple of guys who also had a book to sell, called the Gay Liberation Handbook. But the whole, uh, sense of the times. One of the shows has a bathhouse ad. A radio ad for a bathhouse on it. Um, that was very striking. An interview with divine I don't know if there are tapes When Devine was here in town, Um, an interview with gay male hustlers working Polk Street in the early seventies. I guess it's always a matter of distance that which is most distant from you, seems somehow quaint and precious and that which is closer to you, it doesn't seem so special. And then you meet people younger than yourself who suddenly think that now is special, right, you know. So I meet some of the older gentleman to Loretta. They It's like, Oh, you show this poke Street whatever. Anyway, I digress. The other thing that that really strikes me is from the gay life proper, and that is definitely Randy's, uh called whitenight black dish. And I really enjoy it because it captures a very historic time around here. When people were rising up in protest against the acquittal or the near acquittal of Dan White, his conviction on much lesser charges than he deserved, and also it's it's expressed in this really wonderful artistic way with music dramatisation, documentary clips. That's the sort of thing that radio can do at its best instead of just being a jukebox. So, um, I wish I'd heard more of that on Randy's programme. But, um, that really stands out to me. I would say also some of the live event recordings, especially of the The Nights of Candles, which were the annual memorials of Harvey Milk's assassination. There's some very compelling material there as well, but we did recently did a radio show in San Francisco to play a lot of these historic clips. Um, and so I pulled out a few things that stood out to me. Um, yeah, I think it was a lot of the documentary recordings of events, especially protest events, live unpredictable audio that stand out to me. Randy did a lot of programmes that were very important in a documentary sense, a lot of public meetings, but which tend to be, uh, drier in terms of their immediate impact when you listen to them. Randy was fond of a psychiatrist who had a theory about how psychiatry got Dann White off the hook, and he used that interview a number of times. That was one challenge in transferring the programmes. I will admit what Randy did do as a good producer would do was not rerecord the information which degrades it. When you're working with analogue and digital, you're gonna make a perfect copy. But in analogue, you can never make a perfect copy. He actually cut out that interview as well as this white knight black dish. He would cut it out and move it to a different show so I would have the rundown for the show and be missing material from the real. And I finally had to put together He usually made a note about where it went. But then I would get to the next stop and say, Oh, I was pulled from there and went to the next one. So what I did do, I'm trying to I don't remember right now. If I messed with the archival masters or not, I don't think I did. I know for the listen. I think I left the archival masters as they were again because they should reflect exactly what's on that reel today. But for the listening copies, I did go back and lay in the material that had been in that programme. So it sounds like the programme that was broadcast. One of the things I've noticed in doing preservation projects on, uh, lesbian and gay radio shows earlier than my time is I suddenly get really, um, drawn into the issues that are being discussed and sometimes get really inflamed and and and, you know, angry for the issue and always have to at the end of the day, kind of distance myself from that and say that actually, this happened 30 years ago, you know, it's not going to help getting inflamed about it. Um, did you find yourself walking out at the end of the day after hearing six hours worth of material in that kind of state? Well, yes and no, I would say inflamed. No, because I'm That's simply not easily inflamed. Um, but stirred definitely stirred and also cast into kind of a time travel, especially when working with a large collection that spans a number of years. I did feel like the time traveller on an accelerated schedule, because here I was going through six weeks a day of this programme. Um and I would become familiar with the, uh, with the issues and a person would pop up again and I would think, Oh, no. Here he is again with beating his old drum. So it was kind of it was like being there, But it was an accelerated trip through time. Yeah, definitely. I felt like I was in that I was somewhere in time to make a bad movie reference. Um, but in Flint are are, really, you know, angry. No, I don't think so. I mean, I have to say I wasn't angry all the time, but there were there, were certain. I mean, there were certain issues where you know, if if if there was a, um, say a legal issue in terms of adoption or or same sex partnerships or whatever, Um, you know, it would really kind of rile you up. Well, you know, the the this time period was not as full of in your face anti gay people as it had just been, You know, we're talking about, um, Anita Bryant and the moral maturity, which is really the late seventies. This collection really picked up a little bit after that. So I wasn't encountering so much of that, and Randy was not again. He's in San Francisco. San Francisco, even as early as the eighties was becoming more insulated from that kind of opposition simply because it had become a magnet for gay people. And there was a lot of solidarity. By no means were there no, um, homophobes around. But it was not like many other places in the world at that time, so I maybe that's reflected in it. What was being debated and discussed here were, um, issues of somewhat higher orders than just don't beat us up. You know, for example, being able to teach or even to get married. There were shows in the early eighties with guests saying we're sure that gay marriage is right around the corner and this is 30 years ago. So that did strike me how much and how little progress we've made in in different ways over 30 years time. And what about in terms of voices and how people speak and the language they use did that. You know, I did not notice that much difference from the eighties to today, and maybe that reflects on me as well, because I was an adult in the eighties, I will say the seventies programmes, the the 73 programmes and definitely some of the language I remember as a child but does stand out to me when they talk about with a completely straight face. And they say, Well, that's your trip earlier, that was really a far out experience. You know that suddenly there's this great hippie ring to it. Um, that did stand out to me a little bit. Trip was a word which was very popular around 73 possibly a drug reference. So now what is your next preservation project? Well, I'm just finishing, actually. Working on a very huge video collection approximately. Well, I don't know how many hours, but it's been about 700 cassettes of a professional video production library again, mostly from the eighties. I'm finishing that up. Um, I'm probably going to go do a little more video right away at the, uh um the Marlon Riggs Collection that I spoke of in terms of audio. Really? The the the big nut here is the David Lambo collection, which is a very important and very large and, um, and possibly fairly difficult collection to get through, so I want to get my machine rehabbed a little bit before I take that on. It is amazing how hardy audio tape machines are especially compared to video tape machines. But, um, yeah, that collection. I have a feeling there's a lot of material in there which may or may not be in our scope. I believe this man donated his entire library of, of open, real tapes and he worked as an arts producer and arts critic. So we will approach some of these fine lines that we talked about before. Do we keep this merely because this is a gay man reporting you know, about something that is possibly unrelated? You can always make an argument. It's related if it happened in San Francisco, I guess. But, um, we're gonna be visiting that and again. It's simply the labour intensiveness of open rail tape, um, handling of the tape, the sticky she problem, the splices and such that make that really a huge project. 43 cartons of tapes. But some of them are quite intriguing going back into the early seventies and these fruit punch programmes that I would really more of the that um far out trippy stuff that I want to hear. And I admit, you know, I. I like doing this not only because it's important, but I also, um, again feel kind of like a time traveller. And I'm delighted to hear different things and hear different voices and and learn about other times. Do you have any help in this? I'm thinking that not only do you have to have the right equipment to do these transfers, but you also need skilled people. Um, so far and now, you know, it's, um it's a hard process to to come up with AAA Division of Labour for, I suppose, to an extent, Um, I suppose one could have one person who is preparing tapes and doing the transfers and then creating the the service copies or that sort of thing. There's not a lot of opportunity to to, um to have a workforce, in part because, um, it's hard to come by machines. You know, if I could get 10 Otari that are in good condition and get 10 or 20 people to help, well, then we'd be done with it much more quickly. But that equipment simply isn't available, and also the It's the experience and the expertise, and some of this stuff is quite difficult to work with. And so having been through a few 100 hours of it really makes a difference to know what to look for. And, of course, the last thing we ever want to do is damage a tape. You know, we always want to err on the side of caution. So if there seems like there's gonna be any problem, and I'm very happy to say that I have only barely heard a few seconds of tape here and there on reels that turned out to to be, have surprises in them. Sometimes you know, uh, people put different brands and types of tape on the all in 1 to 1 reel, and you don't always You can't always see it, so you'll be zipping through and think, Oh, this is a perfectly fine reel. I can rewind this, and suddenly you'll run into a patch of sticky tape so I can never I can never wind at full speed with these old tapes unless I know exactly who I'm working with. It's that kind of thing that makes it difficult to pull in a force of 20 volunteer volunteers and just have at it. We don't wanna rip things up. So this is all about preserving the past, and I'm wondering and we've we we touched on it a wee bit, but I'm just wondering, Does the society have any programme to bring in material that is being created now so that things that are happening nowadays are deposited in a timely fashion? No, we really don't. As far as I know. No, we don't. We we pretty much have waited for things to come, or or we know of collections that are out there that we may. It's a bit morbid, I admit. Keep an eye on, um, things don't always tend to get donated during the Creator's lifetime, you know? So we gotta keep an eye on things, But, um, we don't have an ongoing repository sort of pro. No, we don't have that sort of that programme. I would say just it's not our mission. And what is the mission? The mission? Well, it again to preserve, um, historical material. So what's being created today will be historical. Um, but it isn't necessarily yet, and I think also that We have many more mechanisms in place to to preserve media now. Now that it's all digital to begin with, you know if people think it's important, all you have to do is keep it on your hard drive in a studio somewhere, archive it off on a tape, and it's saved. It's not like these old tapes that required oodles of space, and they were expensive and frequently got reused and wiped. It's simply a different environment production environment. Also, we have much more dispersed production now. There was a time when, uh, you know, one had to go to a studio or a station to make a recording because you had all this gigantic, expensive equipment. Now people can put together quite decent radio programmes in their dining rooms or a separate dining rooms across the country at the same time. So it's a it's a different media landscape anyway. But I think, um, you know, Gerard can speak more to that. I'm not giving you any official. Paul always tells me this. Don't speak for the side. So I'm not. I'm trying. You should know that I really am not an official with the historical society. I'm a volunteer, so I can tell you what I know. But I'm not necessarily giving you gospel on policy. The full transcription of the recording ends. A list of keywords/tags describing the recording follow. These tags contain the correct spellings of names and places which may have been incorrectly spelt earlier in the document. The tags are seperated by a semi-colon: 1970s ; 1980s ; 2000s ; Anita Bryant ; Aotearoa New Zealand ; Castro Camera ; Castro District ; Chorus ; David ; David Lamble ; Events ; Fruit Punch ; GLBT Historical Society ; Gay Radio ; HIV / AIDS ; Harold O'Neal ; Harvey Milk ; Internet Archive ; Job ; John Raines ; KSAN ; Moral Majority ; People ; Randy Alfred ; San Francisco ; Scott Smith ; Space ; Stuff ; The Gay Liberation Show ; The Gay Life ; United States of America ; White Night riots ; access ; activism ; adoption ; alcohol ; archives ; arts ; beating ; bisexual ; blood ; board ; boxes ; branding ; broadcasting ; career ; carving ; change ; community ; community support ; composition ; connections ; copyright ; culture ; data ; death ; design ; difference ; division ; documentary ; dream ; eating ; environment ; epidemic ; erotica ; exhibition ; face ; family ; fashion ; film ; food ; friends ; fruit ; fun ; gay ; gay liberation movement ; gay men's chorus ; health ; heroism ; history ; hit ; hunting ; internet ; knob ; knowledge ; language ; legacy ; lesbian ; liberation ; library ; listening ; loss ; love ; lover ; march ; marriage ; media ; meetings ; movies ; music ; nurse ; opportunity ; organisation ; other ; passing ; photography ; plan ; policy ; pornography ; preservation ; protest ; psychiatrist ; public library ; queer ; radio ; running ; sex ; solidarity ; spaces ; straight ; suit ; support ; technology ; television ; the other side ; theatrical ; time ; top ; tough ; transgender ; travel ; treat ; video ; volunteer ; walking ; water ; wind ; work. The original recording can be heard at this website https://www.pridenz.com/john_raines_audio_preservation.html. The master recording is also archived at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, New Zealand.  For more details visit their website https://tiaki.natlib.govt.nz/#details=ecatalogue.1089274. Please note that this document may contain errors or omissions - you should always refer back to the original recording to confirm content.