In honor of LanaBoards' 1-year anniversary this week, I thought I would share some of my sleuthing tips and tricks. Please contribute your own sleuthing tips in this thread.
Google Is Your Friend
You can force Google's search engine to return only results that include or exclude specific phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks and prepending a plus or minus sign respectively. For example, if you wanted to search for information on the song "Paradise" you might use something like the following search in an attempt to weed out results talking about Paradise Edition or "Dark Paradise":
+"lana del rey" +"paradise" -"paradise edition" -"dark paradise"
You can restrict your search to a particular site by including site:URL in your search query where URL is the URL of the particular site to search. For example, if you wanted to find every mention of Lana Del Rey on Hipster Runoff you might try this search:
site:hipsterrunoff.com +"lana del rey"
You can also restrict your search to particular types of files by including filetype:EXT in your search query where EXT is the file extension type to search for. In fact, in trying to come up with a good example for this post, I stumbled across a PDF scan of a 2008 article on Lizzy Grant that appeared in the Lake Placid News using the following search:
filetype:pdf +"lizzy grant"
Probably the most powerful and necessary Google search feature for Lana sleuths is the ability to do custom date range searches. If you're looking for information from before her rise to fame, it is absolutely essential. I'll often date restrict searches to results before January 1, 2011 or something like that. You'll still get more recent results from pages that were created before that date, but have now changed or pull current data into sidebars, etc., but you'll still weed out a lot of results you don't care about by doing this. After performing a search, you can date restrict the results by clicking on 'Search tools' and selecting 'Custom range...' in the 'Any time' dropdown menu. You can leave either the 'From' or 'To' fields blank if you wish.
Reverse image searching is another incredibly powerful feature Google provides. Enter the URL of an image you wish too search for and click 'search by image' and Google will find similar images. You can often find a higher resolution version of an image or find where the image originally came from this way.
Try searching on variants of her name (i.e. lizzy grant, lizzie grant, lana del rey, lana del ray, etc.) appropriate to the era you're investigating. CalendarGirl originally found the live video of the rock version of "Yayo" here searching on "lizzie grant" instead of "lizzy grant" after I mentioned this to her. (Note: you may want to include -"entourage" in your search query if searching on "lizzie grant".)
If you don't know what to look for, try looking for something known. If I recall correctly, I believe I originally found the Nefarious Bovine Radio podcasts with a search query that included +"pawn shop blues" and +"mp3" in the hopes that matching results might also include Lana songs I didn't already know about. Sometimes you get lucky.
Archive.org Is Your Friend
The Wayback Machine at archive.org is an archive of snapshots taken of many web pages in the past. This is an incredibly useful tool since many sources of information about Lizzy's early career are not on the live web anymore for one reason or another, but can still be found on archive.org. There's a lot of information we wouldn't have without it. Familiarize yourself with it. It's indispensable.
In addition to using archive.org to look at particular web sites, you can also see all the files ever archived under a particular web directory by appending an asterisk at the end. This is how I was able to find the performance photos taken by NBR that Television Heaven posted before he even said where they came from. Since I recognized the NBR logo, I went to archive.org and typed nbr.rathpa.net/* into the Wayback Machine and filtered the results by jpg to look for images. Since many of the files were named by date, it was easy to find them since I already knew the dates of the performances. The asterisk trick can also be very helpful in exploring the current site architecture of a page on the live web if it has been recently archived.
Checking if a page has been archived often appears to trigger the Wayback Machine to archive unarchived pages, so if you stumble across something interesting, it's wise to check if the page is archived in the hopes that the Wayback Machine will archive it if it hasn't already so that it doesn't disappear forever.
(BTW, I'm unaware of any way to keyword search Wayback Machine archives. If anyone knows of a way, please let me know.)
Screenshots.com Is Your Friend When archive.org doesn't have any snapshots of a site from the time period you'd like, sometimes screenshots.com will help you out. Unlike archive.org, screenshots.com does not archive the files making up the web site, but merely takes a screenshot image of it. Sometimes this is desirable since it avoids the common problem of missing image files when viewing archive.org snapshots. But screenshots.com only takes full screen screenshots, not full page screenshots. Another severe limitation is that it only captures second-level domain names. In other words, home pages but nothing under them. For example, screenshots.com has screenshots of myspace.com, but not myspace.com/lizzygrant. Thankfully, it does capture redirects from second-level domains. We still have a lot of snapshots of Lizzy's MySpace page because she owned several domain names that redirected to it.
Various Exploits
Pay attention to the URLs for images. If the filename ends with a number that could be a pixel dimension, it may have been sized down. Try the URL without the pixel dimension number at the end. Sometimes this will yield the original image in its original dimensions. Otherwise, if the filename ends with a number, try adjacent numbers (especially if there are multiples photos close in number but with numbers skipped). You may find additional photos that have been uploaded to the server but not displayed on the page.
Flickr allows users to disable downloading of photos. However, you can get around this easily by viewing the page source and looking for the image's URL in the HTML. (You can also get around this using any tool that shows your network traffic like Chrome Developer Tools as described below.)
Occasionally a Flash slideshow will read an XML file containing the URLs of the images it plays. It may be worth extracting the URL of the SWF file by viewing the page source and examining the results of running it through a free online Flash decompiler like showmycode.com in order to discover details like this. If it's a Javascript slideshow, the URLs can probably found directly in the page source code. (In both situations, you can also likely using any tool that shows your network traffic like Chrome Developer Tools as described below.)
As a Lana fan, it can be a common occurrence to find yourself frustrated by privatized YouTube videos. Although I know of no way to view a privatized video, it is possible to obtain several stills from one using the following URLs where VIDEO_ID is the YouTube ID of the video:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VIDEO_ID/0.jpg
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VIDEO_ID/1.jpg
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VIDEO_ID/2.jpg
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VIDEO_ID/3.jpgFor example, consider the YouTube video at the following URL:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPBUp9xZr_EThe following URLs display stills from this YouTube video:
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rPBUp9xZr_E/0.jpg
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rPBUp9xZr_E/1.jpg
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rPBUp9xZr_E/2.jpg
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rPBUp9xZr_E/3.jpg
You can also use the Google YouTube API to get information about a privatized video by entering the following URL:
http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/VIDEO_ID?version=1For example, using the same video as before, entering the following URL tells us the title is "Lana Del Rey! Pin Up Galore" and that the length is 1:06:
http://youtube.googleapis.com/v/rPBUp9xZr_E?version=1You can try different versions of the API in case they display more information. The current version of the API is 3.
Google's Chrome web browser has an incredibly powerful and flexible built-in feature (the Network tab in the Developer Tools window) that you can harness to download the actual audio or video files that stream from many sites including Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and Reverbnation just to name a few. (In fact, no one should ever have to ask anyone on this forum for a rip of a Soundcloud file ever again since I teach you here how to download the file directly from Soundcloud yourself. One exception: I discovered this method after the Soundcloud account I found "Prom Song (Gone Wrong)" on was taken down so if anyone downloaded it using this method I'd appreciate it if you would send a link my way.) Select the tab in which the page with streaming content is loaded. In Chrome's menu, click Tools -> Developer tools. The Developer Tools window should appear. Click the Network tab at the top of the Developer Tools window. Begin playback of the audio or video. The Network tab should populate with filenames of the files your browser is downloading. Hopefully the audio or video file streamed will be among them. It is easier to pick out if you sort by Type or Size. If the streaming file began loading before the Developer Tools window was opened, you may have to refresh the page and restart the audio or video. Once you have identified the filename, right click and open the link in a new tab. In the new tab, you should be able to right click and select "Save as...". This method does not work on sites like MySpace that do not directly stream a file and use Flash or some other technology to deliver content more securely. However, some such sites (unfortunately not MySpace) will directly stream files if Flash is disabled. To disable Flash in Chrome, open another tab and enter chrome colon slash slash plugins in the address bar (for some reason it won't display here if I type out the colon and slashes). One of the plugins listed should be Adobe Flash Player. Click the "Disable" link. (Remember to enable it later.) Now reload the page and restart the streaming media in the other tab. Some sites will also only directly stream files if you are using a device known to not support Flash such as an iPhone or iPad. Chrome also provides a way to fool web sites into thinking you are on such a device. Click on the gear icon in the bottom right hand corner of the Developer Tools window to bring up a Settings page for the Developer Tools window. Under settings, click Overrides. In the Overrides settings check the User Agent box and select "iPad — iOS5" in the dropdown. (Remember to change it back to the original setting later.) Now reload the page and restart the streaming media in the other tab.
Keep an Eye on the "Industry Players" Many of Lana's songs, including several found by me, surfaced because they were publicly posted-- intentionally or not-- by Lana's producers or management:
"Prom Song (Gone Wrong)" was posted on a now (probably inadvertently) public Soundcloud account for Three Six Zero Productions (account now defunct) on which the "National Anthem (Nexus demo)" and "Driving In Cars With Boys" had also been posted. (Was this the original source of those songs? I don't know.)
"Stoplight De-lite" and the studio version of "Motel 6" were intentionally posted by Jeff Peretz on his website. (A little over a month earlier, I discovered he had produced Lizzy Grant doing a Google search.)
Though it has not been removed, the alternate version of "Hit & Run" was posted on Soundcloud by producer Tommy Tysper. (I followed clues from a screenshot of an old post on Lizzy's personal Facebook by another producer he often works with that mentioned "Tommy".)
The "Ride" string arrangement was posted on Soundcloud by Daniel Heath.
And of course, the Y&B demo, JFK, "Starry-Eyed", "Hollywood", IDWG, "Black Beauty" & AFFA were all infamously posted by Rick Nowels in inadvertently public directories his website. (I discovered those directories back in April looking at the URLs of the files streaming on his site using the Chrome Developer Tools trick.)
And those are just the ones I found on producers' websites or Soundcloud accounts. "Dangerous Girl" was also posted on Soundcloud by Daft Dog, Blockhead posted "Heavy Hitter" on his blog, Princess Superstar posted alternate versions of "Maha Maha" & "Golden Grill", and Ben Mawson himself posted demos of TIWMUG, BTD, NA & "Lolita" on his (probably inadvertently) public Soundcloud account. And there have probably been other songs that originally surfaced in a similar manner.
Contacting People Sometimes in the course of sleuthing you may find it necessary to contact someone. I recommend following these suggestions:
Think twice before contacting anyone. Always keep in mind that you may be imposing on people by asking them questions about Lana.
Be polite. People are doing you a favor just by entertaining your questions, let alone if they answer any of them. Return the favor by being polite.
Use flattery. People are more receptive to you if you show an interest in them or their work. However, try to be genuine. Whenever I contact another artist about Lana I make a point of reading or listening to their work until I find something I genuinely like that I can compliment them on. Sometimes following these tips can yield unexpected results.
Respect people's privacy. You shouldn't pry into anything personal. Let them decide if they want to volunteer anything.
Avoid contacting romantic interests. Respect people's privacy, especially if they are not a public figure like Lana. If you do find the need to contact someone you know or even suspect might have been involved with Lana, avoid asking questions about their relationship.
Pay Attention I've had my share of luck as well, but a lot of sleuthing comes down to noticing details, making connections, and following up on things.
