0 Comments

Apparently, in 1980, RSO sent this videotape to record retailers to play in-store to promote the soundtrack to Times Square. It features the two songs performed in the film, “Your Daughter Is One” and “Damn Dog.” The fact that the lyrics to “Your Daughter Is One” consist primarily of curse words and racial slurs guaranteed that it would never be played in any store for more than thirty seconds. The fact that nobody at RSO, from the tape’s conception to its distribution, realized that would happen, boggles the mind.
 

 

The middle portion of the tape is an edit of the dance the girls do along 42nd Street to “Life During Wartime” by Talking Heads. Much of this sequence is made up of shots that do not actually appear in the film; unfortunately here they’re only four or five frames long. Even more unfortunately, this digitization is at such low resolution that individual frames turn into pretty smears of color.
 

This video was originally digitized and uploaded on February 24 2012 by “PsychoticNorman”. I’ve offered to buy or borrow the tape to make a higher quality transfer, but have not received a reply. I have fixed the aspect ratio and brightened and sharpened the image a little. You can see PsychoticNorman’s original upload here. My file is technically at a higher resolution, but that’s an artifact of my editing software refusing to save at the small resolution of the original file. I’ve tried to make it easier to look at, but there isn’t really any more detail.

 

 

 

TIMES SQUARE soundtrack promotional video (trailer (motion picture) AAT ID: 300263866), videotape promoting the film and soundtrack for use in record stores, 5:29 (work); H264 – MPEG-4 AVC (part 10) (avc 1), 480 px (W) x 386 px (H), 19.4 MB (video); MPEG AAC (mp4a) stereo 48000 Hz (audio)
(video modified 25 December 2015 from the file digitized by PsychoticNorman at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S38UzHtkmeA)

 

RSO Promo Video Image4.png, RSO Promo Video Image5.png, RSO Promo Video Image15.png, RSO Promo Video Image17.png, RSO Promo Video Image21.png, RSO Promo Video Image22.png: frame captures from “TIMES SQUARE soundtrack promotional video”, 655 px (W) x 486 px (H), 72 dpi (images)

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Posts

Times Square UK Pressbook, 1980-81, pages 6-7

This is the center spread of the glossy UK pressbook for Times Square. Of the seven images circling the European logo, four are cropped from photos used on UK lobby cards (clockwise from top left, that would be One, Two, Five, and Seven). Of the three remaining: Four is a…

Trade Magazine Soundtrack Ad

[gallery columns="2" size="medium" ids="1949,1950"] Just like the title says, this is an ad for the soundtrack that ran in 11 x 14 industry magazines. The first one was laminated for display by the person I purchased it from; the yellow border may not be part of the original page. The…

Robin and Trini “Bandphotos”, UK 1981

More recently-turned-up Times Square publicity from England. Exactly how these fit in with the rest of it, I'm not sure. I'm guessing they were relatively early UK publicity, since the photos still have the American numbers on them. Perhaps before their own publicity machine got going, EMI contracted with Alan…