The VeraGroove, Last Exit Live Take to YouTube for an Acoustic Performance

If you're old enough to be reading this post, there's a fair chance your parents carried a comically large camcorder around to capture your every toddle in the years before you were old enough to either love or hate the camera a little too much. You've seen the video enough times to know that the sound is terrible, and you've seen how big a camcorder has to be when it's wrapped around a VHS tape. You've seen, in short, exactly why there weren't always very many videos of indie music out there -- why video of local bands a few generations out is so hard to come by.

That is no longer the case, to say the least. Everybody's smartphone -- even my smartphone, an iPhone 3GS distinguished most recently by the time I shut it inside a car door -- is capable of video (and portability) that your parents would envy. There's not just plenty of video, there's too much -- if you're under six feet tall, there's a fair chance you've watched most of at least one show on somebody's enormous Samsung phone, recording the whole thing.

But there's another benefit: People with more professional aims, like Last Exit Live's Matty Steinkamp and Brian Stubblefield, can give local bands the MTV Storytellers treatment without the MTV. Last Exit Live's "Summer Acoustic Sessions" series comes a little late in the summer, but the finished product is worth the wait--take a look at Andres C. Rodriguez of The VeraGroove, performing "Rooftops," after the jump.

It's a really interesting move for a venue, and it's not the only way they're using their YouTube channel -- here's Mergence covering the Rolling Stones' "Miss You" at a show back in April, though that's audio-only.

It's a natural fit; venues already have great acoustics and good audio equipment, and the local bands who play there already don't have many chances to put together professional-looking and sounding recordings. And the performances are already going up on YouTube anyway, in blown-out, Blair Witch phone-video format.

So here's hoping this summer video series, and others like it, continues into the fall. (And here's hoping that, if enough venues start putting together professionally shot video of performances themselves, you might eventually be able to stand in the back without watching your favorite band through somebody's iPad.)

Read More: - MTVu Picks Up Fayuca's New Video - The VeraGroove, "Hand in Hand": Exclusive Track - Emby Alexander Talk New Video "Dressed Undressing"

Top 40 Songs with Arizona in the Title 9 Tips for Using A Fake ID To Get Into A Show Here's How Not to Approach a Journalist on Facebook The Ten Most Metal Deaths of Metal Musicians