Gone from Youtube are two brief but vivid excerpts from Sonny Rollins’ 80th birthday concert at the Beacon Theater on Sept. 10 — one showing the great tenor saxophonist in duet with percussionist Sammy Figueroa, the second documenting the surprise, climactic contributions of Ornette Coleman to the set, and Rollins’ inspired improvised responses.
Though neither clip — evidently shot from the same vantage point, perhaps posted by the same videographer — was authorized by anyone or should have been permitted by the venue under standard presentation arrangements (though no one recalls an announcement being made in this instance forbidding flash photography and recording in any form), both clips depicted to the general public, at no charge, one of the most gratifying and unrepeatable meetings and performance by American musicians in recent memory. By the standards of any jazz-covering journalist, a once-in-a-lifetime onstage interaction between Rollins and Coleman, both 80 and revered as fonts of ongoing, enduring, in-the-moment musical creativity, is news. In olden times, a bootleg audio tape of such an encounter might be passed around avid fan-to-avid fan, duplicated in ever-worsening versions and promoted as a holy grail when years later the original was acquired by a museum (cf., the Savory Collection).
As a YouTube viewer and someone who creates and posts many videos, I believe it’s the artist’s choice as to whether or not unauthorized concert/club videos be posted. I know that when a fan shoots a video and then posts it on YouTube, it’s not done to exploit the artist and profit from the posting, but to share the experience with the community.
Some artists see these postings as promotion, and, for the most part, I would agree. In the age of digital media fans can easily record part of a concert and share it with their friends and the global YouTube audience. The videos serve to as a powerful marketing tool for the artist.
When the Grateful Dead played, they would allow their fans to tape their concerts, because they knew that this network of collectors would enhance their reputation and solidify the community. The Dead made their money from live appearances, not recordings.
But some artists simply don’t feel that way. They want to control their content, just as a writer who publishes a book doesn’t want paragraphs of their priceless prose quoted without permission.
At the incredible Beacon Theatre concert Sonny Rollins played on September 10, there were many people taking pictures and recording the concert on video via phones. They simply wanted to document the event that they were lucky enough to attend.
There’s also the matter of quality control. Many artists only wish to release professional quality audio, and video, of their work. Even though the music played at Sonny’s concert was superb, and the surreptitious recordings are okay, they’re simply not up to his standards.
If all the people taping had asked him, he probably would have appreciated their interest and support, and told them to wait for a more professionally produced recording.
But no one asked Sonny’s permission, and so he requested I have the videos removed. — Bret Primack