I have asked this question on the old Rage messageboard but got the 'slipped down the back of the sofa' response so i thought i would ask it here.How come Rage are missing videos they used to have? Also, are the ABC library and the Rage library the same thing? If a clip is dumped from the Rage library is it still in the ABC library or is it gone completely??

I believe they had a big clear out some time in the mid-late 90s; presumably to clear space. I'm guessing that videos take up less storage space these days with digital formats? I remember the moderator of the old guestbook once replying that they wouldn't need to clear room for new videos any longer.

It's safe to assume that much of what was thrown out was pop/dance stuff that doesn't fit the JJJ 'alternative' format Rage have largely stuck to over the years. Though some of their choices for videos to cull and keep seem surprising - e.g. they kept Debbie Gibson's 'Electric Youth', but cleared all of Tori Amos's videos from her first 2 albums except 'Cornflake Girl' (I remember somebody asked in the guestbook why these weren't featured after her 2005 guest programming). It seems odd though that they couldn't track down the missing Tori Amos videos when she guest programmed, but they could dig out stuff like the 12" version of Bananarama's 'Venus' for the Wild Card #3 special.

I have a copy of the top 40 for 1988 from Rage, and even by December of that year, numerous clips that were in the charts had been cleared - e.g. no video shown for Tiffany's 'Could've Been', Eric Carmen's 'Hungry Eyes', or Rick Astley's 'Whenever You Need Somebody' on the end of year chart.

Regardless, it's disappointing that Rage have disposed of many rare videos over the years that are probably difficult to re-acquire. Though some of their omissions do seem puzzling - e.g. they aired Bonnie Tyler's Countdown performance of 'Total Eclipse of the Heart' a few times last decade, instead of the actual music video; yet Video Hits had it in their library and aired it during this time. Rage seem to have finally re-acquired it, as it was aired just last week. Why couldn't they have re-acquired it when guest programmers chose it earlier? I even have a segment from Bent guest programming in 2005 where they describe the video, assuming this is what Rage will play, then the Countdown performance is aired

Thanx Nathan. I too had a copy of the 1988 top 40 and just assumed that were running short of time so just skipped a few.

How many videos/music videos are here in the ABC library and the Rage library?

During the 20 years of Rage special they said they had over 70 000

If that's true then rage has been collecting a lot of videos very quickly. In January 2004, rage had 17,000 videos in their archive (I got this directly from someone in the rage team at the time).

If they had 70,000 by April 2007 that would mean they added 45 videos per day, every day, to their archive.

I suspect that's very unlikely, hence 70,000 can't be correct.

Wow, I'm truly shocked that Rage would only have 17,000 videos in January 2004! I have roughly 8,500 in my collection now (probably 60-70% sourced from Rage), so that's half, and I estimate I would keep less than 10% of the videos rage air on average. They must have done an awful lot of throwing-out over the years if that figure was correct back then.

Oops! I stand corrected. On the 20 years of rage special it said "The current on air rage library has in excess of 24,000 videos. The rage archive has many thousands more". So there you have it.

All this news would eliminate any desire to ever want to GP an episode of Rage.

Imagine you finally actually got in there and then were not able to select the videos you wanted as they were all unavailable. There are 24,000 videos and 20,000 of those are Nick Cave.

Re ohnoitisnathan's comment "I have roughly 8,500 in my collection now (probably 60-70% sourced from Rage)" - but are they all "unique" i.e. no duplicates? I have 2400 in my collection but only about half of them are unique because I have multiple copies of some clips, normally from different sources.

The other thing to consider is while you may have them, rage may not. I believe they keep everything they get now (digital storage is very efficient), but even back in the late 90s rage, or the ABC library, would occasionally cull clips. So you may well have some clips we know rage has played in the past, but no longer has in its library.

How far back do your rage recordings go? My oldest are from 1988, back in the days when they used the very big onscreen font (which if you're curious was called "Bureau Grotesque"), but I have only a handful of clips from back then.

ClipMagnet, yes that tally I posed was for "unique" clips. I do have multiple copies of many of them, from different sources, but that count is for unique vids. I started recording things from Rage in Feb 1989. Since going digital 5 years ago, my collection has increased exponentially, as it's so much easier to capture & edit things down.

I have a small number of clips I've obtained from 1987-88 Rage episodes, going as far back as when they just displayed the artist's name on the screen, and not the song title . It seems they were still doing this into early-mid 1988, as I have a copy of Bananarama's 'I Want You Back' from then (the second version of the video, different to the one they aired in January) that has just 'BANANARAMA' on the screen.

> There are 24,000 videos and 20,000 of those are Nick
> Cave.

20,000 of them are probably Triple J/"alternative"/pub-rock type stuff

Some of what Rage has in the library seems quite puzzling - e.g. this is the 3rd time I've seen Debbie Gibson's 'Only In My Dreams' (which was never a hit here) in the last 5 years or so; but they probably tossed her actual hits from that time like 'Shake Your Love' and 'Lost In Your Eyes'. Why?! I know they have 'Electric Youth' still though...

Hmmmmm... googling:

site:www.abc.net.au/rage playlist "nick cave"

brings up:

Results 1 - 10 of about 303 from www.abc.net.au/rage for playlist "nick cave"


That's the number of playlists he appears on between 1998 and now; the number of clips of his aired would be higher.

So, assuming approximately 104 episodes of Rage per year, that's approximately 1266 playlists on the Rage website; of which Nick Cave appears on 303. So, Nick Cave appears on 23.9% of Rage playlists... which is roughly once every 4 episodes. In other words, Nick Cave's videos are aired on rage every 2 weeks on average

Considering he doesn't have many new releases these days (at least not that I've bothered to notice), you could almost double that figure if only including Saturday night Rage. So he basically appears every week on Saturday night Rage

And this isn't including The Birthday Party or any other acts he's been involved with!

How utterly depressing...

"Results 1 - 10 of about 303 from www.abc.net.au/rage for playlist "nick cave""

What do you get if you type in Birthday Party - Nick The Stripper? That will probably fill in the blank gaps missed by Nick Cave not being in episodes. I haven't seen that for a couple of weeks now, was wondering whether it should make Wildcard IV if we don't get it again by the end of March (roman numerals make it look more official although it didn't help Jaws IV the movie). Considering that no one bought the single at the time - it never made the Australian Top 100, let alone anywhere else in the world - it does get disproportionately represented in GP choices for a song with no tune and an ugly video.

I would think that Rage probably do have about 70,000 clips. I think in the early 2000's they changed the format and that is why they may have only had 17,000 in 2004 and 70,000 a few years later as their archive people transfer the clips to make them compatible with what they were broadcasting. I would have about 11,000 unique clips from the 1980's and maybe 40,000 all up with all the duplicates and other eras but only a small percentage of them would be clean so it is a fair number for them to have in broadcast quality I guess.

I have a 3 hour tape which has Rage from May 21 1988 recorded on it and they were still using that large font (which was also in different colours) at that stage - Paul Kelly & The Coloured Girls fills nearly half the screen. Many of the songs were just common clips but there were a couple of rarer new releases from Oz acts Getaway Plane, Red Ochre and a Ceberano/Matthews duet which I couldn't find anywhere so I uploaded them. I hadn't heard of Richard Crawley, Omar & The Howlers or Powerstrike so it was a mystery as to what some of the song titles were supposed to be. There was a song played between Kim Carnes - Draw Of The Cards and Laurie Anderson - Language Is A Virus that didn't even have the band name appear, I have no idea what that was.

The current crew at Rage have only been there for about 3 years since Narelle Gee and her lot left and they are not responsible (and neither was Narelle) for ABC policy of dumping clips. They do seem to be adding to the library consistently and must have some sources to get clips from if they could dig out "You Know That I Love You" from 1978 for the Christie Allen special. I guess they still have a lot of work to do if they haven't gotten Sam Fox or Stacey Q done yet but I would think that if it was important then such clips could be tracked down.

On a lighter note, the following YouTube clip is the funniest I have seen, although I don't check out too many comedy ones. It is some US College humour on the Google Street View guys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35LqQPKylEA

Ah yes... in the very early months of rage they indeed just put the artist name on the screen and not the name of the song. They also did not brand the videos with the "rage" logo.

This approach was a legacy of the single-clip, pre-news music video show "Videodisc" that aired on weekdays in the early to mid 80s in the capital cities (regional ABC channels showed 5 minutes of "local" news prior to the capital city bulletin).

"Videodisc" was simulcast in Sydney on JJJ, and was the first show that only put the artist name on the clip, and not the song name. Because so few clips were in stereo those days, ABC re-striped the clips they played on Videodisc with a stereo soundtrack.

But interestingly they also often re-edited the videos without the permission of the record companies (but no-one ever sued!). Why did they do this? Sometimes to fit the video to the stereo track they had, and sometimes simply because they wanted to.

One of the self-edited clips was Simple Minds' "Love Song" which was utterly butchered to fit the album version of the song (which is the only stereo version the ABC had). If you've seen the original version on the Simple Minds DVD compilation you'll know what I mean.

The amazing thing is this clip survived into the rage library and is the version they still have, with seemingly no-one the wiser as to its illegitimate origin!

Duncan Browne's "Wild Places" was another clip re-edited beyond recognition because the official clip wasn't interesting enough for Videodisc. Ah, those were the days!

Who else here remembers "Videodisc"? Does anyone have the opening title to that show they could copy for me? It was really cool

I can't actually remember the Videodisc title, although I saw a version a few years back when they played Monitors - Singing In The 80's, but I do remember seeing those music clips before the news. In early 1984 they played Pat Benatar's Love Is A Battlefield for about 2 months straight - or so it seemed - I got sick of seeing that at the time.

Gee Guru Jaws IV was a bit of a shocker I agree - especially as I was seemingly the only person in the country who actually paid to see it! Same goes for Superman IV as well...

Anyway onto my point - I certainly remember video clips being played before the news.

In Adelaide (not sure about elsewhere) the clips were played in a segment called 'Take 5'. It had its own intro using the opening bars of Video Killed the Radio Star by the Buggles and some computer graphics.

This used to be shown for years from about 1980 - 85. The reason I remember so well was it used to be on just after Dr. Who or Monkey - great shows.

I loved those little video segments...got me in the mood for Countdown later in the week!

Guru Bob-you mentioned Omar & The Howlers but couldn't pinpoint the exact song of theirs.Sounds like Hard Times In The Land Of Plenty to me.A song I've loved since I first heard it,been chasing the song for donkey's and is one of my many requests for the Wild Card 4 special.

Patrick
Take 5 actually sounds familiar, I'm sure we had that here in Victoria. I couldn't recall Videodisc although at the time they showed The Monitors clip CJ recalled it so I guess we must have had it as his memory is far better than mine. I used to also watch Dr Who, Monkey, The Goodies, Kenny Everitt Video Show, Wayne & Schuster (some Canadian sketch show), Sweet & Sour etc, the ABC was must see for me at that time. There were other little 5 minute filler shows as well such as Spike Milligan's Q8 and Peter Russell Clarke's cooking.

John
"Hard Times In The Land Of Plenty" is the Omar & The Howlers song, if they don't play it in Wildcard IV then I can do a copy if you like.

It's a shame that Videodisc was taken off air by so many complaints from the older generation. I remember John Fox's 'Dancing like a gun' was extended as well to fit the full song in. One week they played some of the Toni Basil videos from her 'Word of Mouth' video album.

Hi Guru Bob!
I'd like to take you up on your offer-the only snag is there's a whole bundle of other equally elusive items I've been chasing for ages and I'm not sure if you'd be able to help me out with them as well.
By the way-out of all the shows you mentioned,I loved Sweet & Sour,The Goodies and The Kenny Everett Video Show the most.Kenny Everett's show,like Sweet & Sour,is screaming for a DVD release.I know there's been a couple of highlights DVD's,but to have the whole series in its entirety would be fantastic.