Scope and arrangement
The Perfect Marketing Corporation collection, dating from 1983 to 1994, contains the company's audio and video recordings of concerts in the United States that were largely created for broadcast on Japanese television, specifically Japan Satellite Broadcasting's (JSB) New York Live series. Most of the recordings are of jazz musicians. The collection is arranged alphabetically by artist.
Video recordings make up the majority of the collection. Often, videos feature raw footage from different cameras, as well as edited versions compiling footage from all cameras that closely resemble the final broadcast tape. Audio recordings usually contain the full concerts. Recordings from 1983 and 1984 are exclusively audio, and were produced for radio broadcast, primarily on FM Tokyo.
Concert locations are listed in the container list when known. Technical credits, which include engineers and producers, are also listed when known, as are track lists. Some recordings contain track sheets and job sheets that have been separated and described in the container list; job sheets detail how the videos were edited.
Dates in the container list do not necessarily indicate the performance date. Rather, the dates are those that appear on the physical recordings, typically referring to when recordings were dubbed or edited.
The most documented musician in the collection is jazz singer Nancy Wilson. PMC's recordings are of Wilson's 1987 JVC Jazz Festival concert at Carnegie Hall, which was released commercially by VIEW Video in 1989. The recordings here feature various audio mixes, and video footage from different camera angles not present in the commercial release. A few recordings contain editing notes in the tracklist. There are also three studio recordings of Wilson's song "Quiet Fire" from her 1988 album, Nancy Now!
Many of the recordings in the collection, specifically those from 1989 to 1994, were created for JSB's New York Live series. Artists that PMC filmed for the series whose recordings are in the collection include Cornell Dupree, saxophonist Bill Evans, Tethered Moon, and John Zorn with his avant-garde group, Naked City. Recordings from 1989 to 1994 that are not described as being part of New York Live likely were created for the series, but are not identified as such on the media.
Other notable artists in the collection include Chet Atkins and Stanley Jordan; Chick Corea Elektric Band; Kimati Dinizulu and the Kotoko Society; Bill Frisell; Astrud Gilberto; Kimiko Itoh with the NY Jazz All-Stars; Pat Metheny; Mingus Big Band; Lew Soloff; and Cecil Taylor. Several non-jazz musicians are represented as well, namely Black Uhuru, The Blasters, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Robert Cray Band, Judy Collins, and Huey Lewis and the News. Some of these recordings are from the 1991 Paul Masson Summer Series in Saratoga, California.
A few New York City venues documented in the collection are no longer in existence. These include the Lone Star Roadhouse, Top of the Gate, and Time Cafe.