I love music. But I’ve never been much of a concert-goer. In fact, I’ve never been to an iconic rock and roll concert in my life. But I have seen what they are like from some of the videos I have transferred for my customers.

I recently transferred some footage for a client that was taken at one of the Beatles’ US tour locations in the 60s. It brought me back to the time when they first appeared on the Ed Sullivan show. As a young boy (I would have been nine years old then), I didn’t understand why all the women were screaming. To be honest, I still don’t. Don’t get me wrong… I like the Beatles’ music. I just like it better when the person next to me isn’t screaming or fainting.

The footage I transferred was taken from the stands of a baseball field where the English mop top quartet was playing. It was a bit on the shaky side – probably from all the jumping and jostling taking place in the bleachers. And there was no zoom. The Beatles actually looked the size of beetles.

But the oddest thing was the fact that there was no soundtrack to the film. It was silent. You couldn’t hear them. All you could see was some diminutive figures dressed in suits on a stage in the middle of a baseball field shot from hundreds of yards away. But as my client explained, she couldn’t really hear them live either. The sound systems in the baseball fields back then weren’t designed for a musical performance. They tried to use the field speakers that were present but they just couldn’t do the job. The screams from the female fans drowned out any of the vocals that were being broadcast.

And that didn’t make a difference to the die hard fans that populated the stands… my client among them… They cheered and screamed for all they were worth. I know, because at the very end of the footage, the camera turned to catch her face and her tear streaked cheeks, her glistening eyes and her glowing expression summed up the experience perfectly. What a memory to be captured and preserved forever.

Michael Ondrasik and Home Video Studio specialize in the preservation of family memories. For more information, call 352-735-8550 or visit http://www.homevideostudio.com/mtd.