Origins

The story of VHS.or.die

Once upon a time (Maybe the summer of 2017) my good friend Mux was having a Weirdo Yard Sale at his place so I decided to downsize my belongings, hang out in Athens for a day, and get a few bucks. I had a fistful of VHS tapes I was planning to sell for 25 cents each. Mux stepped over to peek at the tapes I was hocking and was overjoyed to see a copy of "Street Trash". At the time, I didn't care for the flick (I've since changed my mind!) and didn't understand the rarity to that physical copy... days later I looked up the value of an original Lightning Video copy of "Street Trash" and nearly shit my britches. A used copy sold for roughly $80 (which is quite a bit cheaper compared to now in 2024). This incident broke my brain in a great way.

I was bewitched by this "dying" media format I'd grown up with and how these videos were still being appreciated by a niche tribe of collectors. My VHS third eye had been pried open and would look for tapes at thrift stores, yard sales, estate sales, wherever tapes were being sold. From here I started to collect tapes and began to check out other people's collections online. I'd swap with old pals Kyle and Luke via media mail (which was roughly $1.75 per pound) while gathering more knowledge on tape history, distributors, duplication, and the VHS community which I was unknowingly becoming a part of.

That collection grew quickly so I drunkenly created a VHS focused Instagram to downsize while selling my collection at much lower prices than eBay offered. This enabled me to connect with a lot of very cool and knowledgeable people online. After a while, I grew interested in bootlegs as a means of celebrating and honoring films that were far too expensive or had never been released in the USA on tape. I'd also tapped out on drinking so VHS became my new vice.

I used to have vivid dreams about thrifting and finding the craziest looking tapes only to wake up disappointed. To make those dreams a reality, I started experimenting with graphic design, spool swapping, and hydrodipping tapes for more bizarre and fun looking tapes. This caught some attention from fellow artists who wanted to team up to present their works on unique, limited tape runs.

My first collaboration with nightshroud for his release of Future Mediation.

Thanks to the horrors of Covid, I was capable of working from home which enabled me to work feverishly on projects while refining and learning more about the analog world. I'd picked up a barely functional VHSC camcorder from an antique mall which included some pre-recorded tapes and a VHS adapter. Most of the VHSC tapes contained family functions. The camcorder barely functioned but I still tried to utilize it to film random outings around Toccoa, GA. This inspired me to learn how to digitize videos but also acquire a functional camcorder.

I bought another cheapo VHSC camcorder from an antique mall which functioned well but in order to polish up and cut videos, I picked up Adobe Premiere and referenced YouTube University for specific tips. I started shooting little videos, digitizing, and editing them for fun in between new projects, fulfilling orders, and doing my "real life" job. To clean up and structure folks' orders, I decided to open an Etsy shop. It's a user-friendly site for selling tapes but the fees are a bit rough at about 6.5%. In order to multiply the dubbing process, my online homie RetroWeab shared a ton of great info on making a DIY dubbing station using an RCA switcher/splitter and several VCRs.

In 2021, I decided to buy a house in Athens, GA which I yearned to live at ever since moving to Georgia. There's a big music/art scene plus it's a town full of weirdos, which is exactly why I moved here. One day, I was over at the JOKERJOKER Gallery (Mux's place) shooting some live sets when this other fellow who was filming started asking me about my camcorder. His name is Gregory Fredrick and he has become my mentor for shooting shows around town and a constant source of wise words. He's also non-stop filming machine who has over 27,000 videos he's shot and uploaded to his YouTube page titled Athens GA Live Music.

Gregory asked if I could film a show at the 40 Watt for him which I gladly did. From here I started filming occasional live shows for my new friend and he would upload these sets to his channel while I would still upload select videos to my own. I kept entertaining the idea of creating a VHS centered event in our town along with live music and visuals. Mux also thought this was a cool idea so we teamed up to hold the first ever Athens VHS Fest in his backyard. I created a video to promote the shindig which I then dubbed onto multiple tapes and would disperse throughout town (thrift stores, coffee shops, record stores) so that collectors would find a copy, pop it in their VCRs, and stop by. Mux created a series of posters for the event based on blank T-120 tapes while promoting the event on his weekly livestream JOKERJOKERtv. My good pal Josh Anderssen created a glitched out promo video and flyers to help push the word further. We've since then had 2 more yearly Athens VHS Fests both at Athentic Brewing Company and have had incredible turnouts, amazing vendors, wonderful live performances, and so much love. It's been an incredible way to connect with other like-minded individuals while enriching our VHS culture/community.

For all of my projects I used a black metal font but teamed up with Spaghetti Jesus to release their stop motion compilation onto VHS. In exchange they were going to create a logo and claymation intro for my future releases, they could only create the logo and a glitchy vhs.or.die intro before sadly taking their life. This is the current logo and intro being used today which is constant reminder of the amazing work SJ left behind.

It was around this time I began digitizing for the Athens community with a big thanks to our local magazine Flagpole under their weekly Bulletin Board. Analog media continues to grow bigger in my heart and mind and I'm so excited to see where else this journey will go!