About

My name is Roy Deane and this is one of my blogs. Since 1982, I’ve collected video on every strand of popular music from the mid fifties onwards.

I’ve had nearly every type of video recorder and player known to man from half-inch reel-to-reel black and white, through VCR, LVR, VHS, S-VHS, Betamax and Beta SP to U-matic. Most of those were made redundant with the advent of digital recording codecs, although even some of them are now no longer used – like my old VCD recorder.

Over the years, I’ve amassed more than 10,000 hours of pop and rock video but it’s all on tape and rather than digitize it, I thought I’d just build up a collection of links to what already exists in cyberspace. It’s really a personal resource for me but the experience of my own website and other blogs has shown me that my interests are shared by a lot of others.

I’ve called it Rockmine Television because it is very much like a dedicated TV channel where you can choose from the available playlist just what you want to watch. I got the blog name on Christmas Eve, 2009 and decided what I was going to do with it on December 31st, so I’m quite pleased that within a week I’ve got more than 1,000 video clips up. I’ve started with two perennial pub quiz favourites – Eurovision Song Contest Winners and U.K. Number One Singles.

You can also find it by using the domain name www.rockmine.tv which is a name I’ve had for years but never done anything with!

Since 1985, I’ve run Rockmine Archives, providing everyone from the BBC and MTV to radio stations and newspapers across the world with material and information. In 1995, I started www.rockmine.com but in recent years it, like me, has lost its direction.

Rockmine Television is an attempt to get both Rockmine and myself back on track. The discipline and focus has been good for me.

I mentioned my other blogs. Here’s a rundown of what else I’ve got: The Ballerina Ballroom – one of Scotland’s best known venues of the late 60s and early 70s. The Fillmore Auditorium – the legendary venue. The Two Red Shoes – The Ballerina’s sister ballroom that ran from the early 60s. There’s also The Rockmine Blog which has a daily extract from the Rockmine Almanac and which I’m currently re-thinking.