Science and archaeology are constantly finding or proving the existence of things that were thought to be non-existent. But what about things that you were told never existed or if they did (e.g. films) have been lost/destroyed?
For me it happened with The Yardbirds. I discovered them in the late 70’s and began a quest to find everything the did as part of my quest to follow the foundations of Cream (Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker). Between released recordings and bootlegs, I managed to piece together most of what was available. The missing link was the short lived Jeff Beck/Jimmy Page version of the group. It was fact that recorded only two songs together Psycho Daisies and Happenings Ten Years Time Ago and only footage of them together was in Blow Up (1966). I accepted that as fact and stopped my search, though occasionally finding compilations of works in process and BBC studio recordings. Then about 8-10 years ago, I did a Youtube search and found several videos of them playing together that to my knowledge had never been documented to exist before. This honestly shocked me.
Related to this was the sudden appearance of a video of Blind Faith’s free Hyde Park debut concert. Again, never any mention of any audio recording, much less film footage of the entire concert was ever even rumored. Now I’m waiting for the day complete of both days days of Cream’s final concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in 1968 appears as there have been rumors of people seeing alternate versions of The Farewell Concert of Cream in theaters in the 70’s!