You may not recognise Andy Ellis, but he and his Sony Walkman were a common sight at concerts by Dunedin Sound bands during the 1980s.
The Dunedin Sound enthusiast and Convert It Ltd owner has amassed one of the largest collections of live recordings of bands such as The Chills, The Clean, Straitjacket Fits, The Verlaines, Snapper, Sneaky Feelings, Look Blue Go Purple, and many other more obscure Dunedin Sound bands, performing during the 1980s and 1990s.
Now he is digitising his personal cassette recordings, and giving the original copies to the Hocken Library for safekeeping.
''A lot of it is my own personal collection, but a lot of it I've inherited through other people who were filming at the time as well, he said. ''Some of them were recorded off the sound desk and others were boot-leg type recordings, which was quite fashionable to do during the day.
''I just used an old Sony Walkman with a microphone.
''I used to tape a lot of shows and photograph the bands back in the day.''
Mr Ellis said many of the recordings were made at concerts before the bands were picked up by recording companies.
''In the early days, the live performances of some of the bands were terrible.
''When they first started out, their musical ability was not as good as it was 10 years later.
''You can hear the growth and development of the bands over time.''
Mr Ellis said he had already digitised more than 100 performances captured on his cassette recorder and given the original cassette tapes to the Hocken Library. He was now digitising a further 60 recordings, so the originals could also be given to the library.
''I really want to preserve the history. They're all on standard cassette tapes . . . and as you know, they can deteriorate over time, get chewed up and malfunction.
''It's about getting all that history off the original tapes and putting it in a digital format.
''The tapes can still be played, and I wanted to put them in a safe place.
''The Dunedin Sound is a big part of Dunedin's and New Zealand's history, and I wanted to have that music stored in a safe place for future generations.
''They don't have any value, but in terms of history, they're priceless.''
