My Story With Preston Reed

The story started 2-3 weeks ago. As I was deleting the SPAM and virus-related E-
Mails from my Inbox, I noticed a mail with subject `Preston Reed`. It was quite a
surprise for me to see the name of the best and most innovative acoustic guitar
player ever, so I opened this item.

It was sent by Cathy, who is the wife and manager of Preston Reed. She was saying
that she has found me through my website which contains a link to Preston`s
website (http://www.prestonreed.com/). Many of you will remember that Preston visited Turkey in 1996 and had two
performances in TRT and HBB where he played together with Asim Can Gunduz and
Arif Sag. Cathy was saying that they were looking for the videos of these
performances, and she asked if I can aid them in their search. I said that they
found the person who is most likely to find the footage because I played with
Asim Can Gunduz for one year, I know Preson`s rodi in Turkey and my girlfriend is
a TV producer. I also said that it`s almost impossible to find the broadcast of
HBB because the company has been closed.

Just like I guessed, they were very happy with my good news; they sent me the
details of the broadcast – like the date, time, etc. I forwarded the details to
Azade and she contacted some news agencies and TRT about it. The agencies told
her that they don`t keep broadcasts older than 3 months (if they don`t provide
important documentaries), so the only place left was TRT. Unfortunately, we
couldn`t get the help I was hoping for. The people in the archive department were
very friendly and helpful – I thank them for that. However, because the archive
is too large (and probably because many things aren`t indexed as they should be),
we couldn`t even find out if the video exists in the archive or not.

Because I didn`t want to turn down a succesful and innovative person like
Preston, I didn`t give up. I started looking for the footage around my own
network – and guess what? I have found it in the most unlikely source… The
performance of Preston & Arif Sag was missing, but at least, I had his
performance with Asim Can Gunduz. When I told Cathy about this, she and Preston
were very happy and surprised. Cathy told me that Preston was after this video
since he left Turkey, but couldn`t manage to find anyone to help him.

There are some valuable lessons in this experience. The first lesson is; we are
supposed to answer to help requests from foreign sources – especially if a very
successful and innovative person who deserves many good things is involved. The
second lesson is; TV channels are supposed to have better indexed archives. I
hope that the video I have found made Preston`s former disappointment vanish…

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