Steve Silvestri would like to think of himself as a visionary, but the truth is he had no idea something called YouTube would ever be invented.

Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Silvestri spent a lot of time filming rock concerts in Lawrence, mainly because he liked local music but also because he was thinking about starting a music show on public-access TV.

Most of those bands – ones like Kill Whitey and Sin City Disciples that helped make the Lawrence scene famous – are no longer around today.

But thanks to video tapes that had been gathering dust and new Internet technology, those who were in Lawrence 15 years ago can relive the shows and a new generation of Lawrence rockers can learn from their elders.

“I was like an archivist,” says Silvestri, a TV news photographer in Kansas City. “My big thing was to document what was going on, whatever big or little size it was. YouTube made it all worthwhile.”

YouTube.com, which allows users to upload videos, is the 14th most popular Web site in the world, according to the Alexa Web ratings. According to the rankings, its number of users has increased 123 percent in the past three months.

Silvestri has 374 videos posted on the site. His range from music to trains to other random clips.

“YouTube is the greatest thing on the Internet since the Internet,” says Silvestri, who lives in Bates City, Mo. “People can see videos they’ve only heard about.”

Timeless tunes

In the case of older Lawrence music videos, that means providing a link to the past.

Silvestri and others have posted dozens of clips from older local concerts from venues such as The Bottleneck, 737 N.H. and The Outhouse 1837 N. 1500 Road (back when the performers wore clothes).

The band list includes Chickasaw Mudpuppies, Uncle Dirty Toes and UK Subs.

There’s also a quintessential Lawrence music moment – when Pearl Jam played Day on the Hill in 1992, just after the Seattle group made it big.

Tim Mohn, who played drums in the heavy rock band Kill Whitey, says it’s “very strange” to watch clips of his band.

“It was really weird,” said Mohn, who now lives in Emporia. “It was stuff I’d never seen before. It was weird hearing these songs that I barely remember.”

Mike McCoy, who played in the band Cher U.K., says friends sometimes send him new videos of him on stage.

“It’s hard to look at sometimes,” he says. “You can watch your youth pass you by.”

He says it’s good for those currently involved in the Lawrence music scene to have access to the videos.

“I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all, to have a historical connection to a scene,” he says. “I was sort of thinking it extends a band’s life. It’s a historical document itself.”

Current clips

In addition to the older videos, there are dozens of more recent Lawrence concerts posted.

For example, there are about 100 videos from the Wakarusa Music and Camping Festival on YouTube.

Wayne Klick, who lives in Lawrence, is one of those who posted band clips from Wakarusa.

“I was just looking for a place to put it up, and the service was free,” he says.

Klick says especially likes looking at YouTube for MTV videos from the 1980s.

“They weren’t a commodity for sale – they were a promotional thing,” he says. “So it’s hard to see a video from 1985. Most of what I’ve looked for out of curiosity (on YouTube) I’ve been able to find.”

Promotion potential

Some of today’s local bands see YouTube as the marketing tool of the future.

One act, Fourth of July, put a music video on the site Aug. 18 and already had about 75 views by Friday. Combined with the band’s site at MySpace.com, it translates into free publicity.

“Because of the whole MySpace and YouTube thing, the fact is thousands of people have heard our song and hundreds will watch our video,” says Brendan Hangauer, the group’s lead singer. “The whole Internet is changing the industry. It’s not just a record label choosing to make something popular. Good music will be popular no matter what. Everybody has an equal change. It comes down to how good you are at writing songs and how good you are at playing songs.”

Another band, Dead Girls Ruin Everything, has had its video viewed more than 1,000 times in the past month, partly because it was a featured video on the YouTube home page for a day.

Josh Dubois, whose company Footage Productions shot the video, says he thinks YouTube will revolutionize local music marketing.

“Used in conjunction with MySpace, local bands that once had to be pretty tech-savvy can now not only have a free Web site, but through that site their fans or people they wish to add as fans have an opportunity to immediately get access to music and video,” he says. “Most people want to use YouTube to watch silly short videos, but a lot also like it to expand their knowledge of music and video artists.”