OddityArchive

OddityArchive is a YouTube channel created by Benjamin "Ben" Minnotte,, a former musician and current host of the Oddity Archive. He lives in "Beautiful Downtown" Aurora, Colorado.

Early Life
Ben Minnotte was born in 1986, to a middle class family. He once owned a Kid Pics video tape featuring "Michael the Happy Hamster", which was ultimately sold in a garage sale. In 1996, most of his classmates owned digital pets, except him, because he was "too cool" for it. When he was fifteen, he and a friend started a music duo; it was ended because his friend said he was taking too much attention from him. He left to start his music career.

Music Career
Whether spewing out tongue-in-cheek observations, pouring his heart out or going off on an instrumental excursion, singer/songwriter Ben Minnotte has managed to make what would on paper seem like a tremendous mess, somehow make sense.

After a series of false starts in the early 2000’s, Minnotte quietly made his debut in May of 2004 with the homemade, analog-recorded EP West of Elderbush Gulch. A six-track affair, West…, anchored by a trio of folk-minded instrumentals, established Ben as a distinctive (if idiosyncratic) songwriter and instrumentalist. The EP also featured the (as described by Ben) “on-the-road hotel room saga” known as “Lightning Never Strikes Twice”.

West… was followed in the summer of 2006 with the more straightforward singer/songwriter effort, Greetings from Elderbush Gulch. Greetings from Elderbush Gulch was mostly recorded in a furious one-day session in the basement of a (now defunct) art gallery in Longmont, Colorado. While the album was met with little response, it has nonetheless spawned a minor cult-classic in “The Horror Movie Song”.

During the recording of Greetings from Elderbush Gulch, Ben walked away from live performance to focus on being more of a studio-based artist. However, little was heard from him afterwards, a satirical four-track EP surfaced in September of 2007 (released under the pseudonym James H. Tartan), but quickly came and went from availability and a pair of home demos posted on his MySpace page followed a year later.

In the summer of 2009, Ben resurfaced publicly for the first time in over three years to open a four-day Denver music showcase/festival, he then followed it up with a couple more local gigs only to spend the remainder of 2009 in the studio cutting a new album. That album, entitled Minn-Knot was released in June of 2010. Minn-Knot is currently available at CD Baby.

Most recently, Ben has remixed and remastered his 2006 Greetings from Elderbush Gulch LP. The album was released in an exclusive digital-only set, available at Bandcamp in August 2011.

He also did a polka remix of Nine Inch Nails' "Survivalism".

Oddity Archive
Ben originally wanted to post a blog, but realizing his jokes didn't make sense written, he when to v-logging, and finally, he decided to just post videos. The show premiered on July 5, 2012 on YouTube, with "The Max Headroom Incident" as the first episode.

Personality
Ben is shown to have endurance, as he once had sat through the whole album from AC/DC, and the whole film Hell's Bells, which was about two hours long. He doesn't like most conservative folk songs, but listens to presumably AC/DC, Smashing Pumpkins, Nine Inch Nails, and many other musicians. He's not shown to be really into current trends and fads (like internet memes), but does use them occasionally. He has desensitized himself to most of his former fears and to most oddities, like the Emergency Broadcast/Alert System, clowns, creepy cartoon characters, etc.

Physical Appearance
Due to him always hiding behind a cardboard box, we barely see what his face looks like. We do know his hair is dark brown, and his eyes are brown. His full face was seen briefly in the promo and in the Halloween Special and on the first Ask the Archive Live (twice).