Sunday, February 06, 2005
This was a side project I've been working on in earnest since the beginning of last month.
Back in the late Fall I met with Frantic Paul Chato to discuss a project he was interested in doing involving the release of their old Frantic Times shows from the early 80s into a form that could be made available for sale in some format on their Web site at frantics.com. As a long-time, rabid fan of the comedy troupe, I had previously expressed interest in doing this sort of project, so I was Paul's choice for tackling the job.
The first part of the plan called for me to rip the shows into an Internet-friendly (and more compact) MP3 format. I already have a set of CDs taken from the original master reels that Paul sold to me several years ago, and had the necessary tools to rip the CDs properly. I ripped all existing Frantic Times shows (about 110 episodes) at 256kBps -- overkill for spoken word, but I figured the fans ought to have CD-quality sound. That idea came from the efforts of They Might Be Giants, who sell high-quality MP3s of their tunes that can be played back on a computer, and also easily converted into playable CDs for those who want them. So I figured that at that bitrate, Paul would have the option of possibly selling "albums" of their skits or shows as MP3s.
Ripping was the easy part. But Paul had also mentioned that he had discovered an extensive listing of their skits derived from an old Commodore 64 printout he had. So I volunteered to additionally tackle the task of re-typing out this list, putting it into a spreadsheet, and then renaming each of the MP3 tracks individually against their proper names. He made me a photocopy of the original printout and I set to work on that.
It took a few days to transcribe the information from the listing, which not only gave me the official names for all of their skits, but when the skit was aired, whether or not the skit was a monologue, a duo, group effort or song. The skit list ran to 890 entries, spanning from October 15th 1981 to June 30th 1984. The list only went up to show #91, so I cobbled together skit names for the remaining twenty or so shows from a secondary list compiled by the fellow who originally did the CD mastering, along with my own names for skits for a few shows, mainly those which survive only as relatively low-quality broadcast versions.
Though not necessarily the goal, the end result is as comprehensive a listing of the Frantic Times shows, their contents and their air dates as is likely to be possible. Paul has the right to publish it first, though the information will eventually appear on my own long-in-need-of-an-update frantics.org Web site. It turned out that that there are at least 3 "lost shows", and other than for the later shows in the series, I have nailed down the broadcast order.
Stay tuned to the official Frantics Web site for more details as to what comes of all of this. All I can say at this point is that fans will definitely get value for their money.
This is a bit more work to be done, as I only tackled the Frantic Times shows, and not their post "Four on the Floor" radio shows, like "The Frantics Look at History" and "Fran of the Fundy", but they will both be tackled after I take a breather.
And I ought to add that I am being paid for this. The sum will to go to a charity of my choice, and I will get a production credit for the work done.
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