Re: I'm old enough to remember ...
 

I was one of those IATSE guys, although not too worn (I was just in my 20s). I remember the "piano boards" and ran a lot of them. They hung on for a while because in the '70s some (or all?) of the theatres in NYC had DC backstage, not AC (a holdover from the Con Edison days) so only resistance dimmers would work. IIRC we took piano boards to the USSR in '74 with Joffrey Ballet. I was doing sound on that tour. It was a real nightmare. The Russian stagehands didn't speak English, and we were allocated ONE translator (who didn't know stage terminology) for setup and strike.

Re: I'm old enough to remember ...
 

Very cool Greg! Trying to remember whether Joffrey toured to the University of Virginia while I was the house electrician up until 1971, I think they might have. I remember the Alvin Ailey tour, I hung out and partied with them which was very cool for a college kid. Alvin said the first thing he would do in a new town was go to all the record stores and buy stuff, looking for new ideas. We sat around his hotel room while he went through a big stack of new records, if he didn't like one he would just chuck it across the room, haha.

Around 1990 we had a small group from the Bolshoi Theatre come to SUNY Oswego where I was the TD. That was really interesting, I speak a litte Russian. Went out one night and drank vodka, I couldn't keep up with them, don't think I've even been that drunk in my whole life. It's a miracle I survived the 15 mile drive home through a snowstorm!

Re: I'm old enough to remember ...
 

I recently watched Robert X. Cringely's 1996 "The Triumph of the Nerds" on DocuRama, somehow I must have missed it along the way. Made me think of this thread. Some really terrific computer nostalgia there, especially cool to see a 1996 Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (who was currently "in exile" from Apple at that time).

And to relate this all to video, just found this ESRGAN AI upscaled version on YouTube. Compare it to some of the other VHS versions, it's quite impressive. Didn't know things had come this far with upscaling.