One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Perhaps no individual lives by that old saying more effectively than 50-year-old Bill Shelley, the film archivist and preservationist who will be presenting a Pink Floyd retrospective tonight at DeBaun Auditorium on the campus of Stevens Institute as part of the city's "Music Legends Live on Film Series."

The three-hour show will feature rare concert footage of Pink Floyd and interview footage with members of the psychedelic classic rock band from their early years through the release of the band's 1979 album The Wall. Last month, Shelley hosted a similar presentation featuring The Rolling Stones and next month he'll be displaying rare footage of Frank Sinatra. In addition to numerous early 20th century silent films, Shelley's archives consist of thousands of hours of rare footage of classic rock titans: Bob Dylan; The Doors; The Grateful Dead; Eric Clapton; Jimi Hendrix; and Led Zeppelin are among the bands for which Shelley owns, in many cases, footage so rare that those bands, or their record companies, don't even own it.

So, how'd all of this footage become so rare and how was Shelley able to acquire it?

"I was lucky enough to get it when people threw it out as garbage," Shelley says. Back in the early 1980s, Shelley was employed at various TV, sound recording and post-production studios in Manhattan, like Sound One, a prominent recording studio in the famed Brill Building, working blue-collar jobs.

While taking garbage to the dumpsters, Shelley noticed that record companies and recording studios were literally throwing away reels of film footage and still images of bands that had recorded or mixed their albums in these places.

Shelley had the idea to take the discarded films home with him, but before doing so, he was kind enough to give the studios one last chance to reclaim the footage. They declined.

"I said to my bosses, 'Are you sure you want to throw this stuff out? Can I take it home with me?'" Shelley recalls. "They said, 'If you don't take it, it's going out in the garbage.'" And just like that, the Shelley Archives were born.

Shelley says many of the films were tossed for good reason; the films contain footage of outtakes that simply aren't good for a multitude of reasons. But after logging about 10,000 hours of footage, he's also found many rock-and-roll gems that, had they made it to the landfill, would have been lost forever.

Much of Shelley's work involves restoring the film footage, which is tedious, time consuming labor that can involve, for example, wiping residue from the film by hand using a special chemical cleaner. Then, he has to convert the footage to video and digital formats. Shelley says the time and effort is all worth it, though, particularly when his work turns up a nugget like guitar legends Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton performing onstage together, footage that someone actually tossed in the garbage decades ago.

"We used to show this stuff in my basement," Shelley says of impromptu screenings he held for his friends, adding that in the last couple of years he's begun putting together presentations for the public in various venues around New York and New Jersey.

Shelley says he invests his own money in the restoration of the film and in some cases has actually licensed footage back to the bands or their record companies when they want to release a live concert DVD. But he's adamant that profiteering has never been his chief motivation in amassing all of the rock nostalgia.

"My big thing is preservation," says Shelley, who worries that U.S. culture is in danger of losing content contained on old films as the celluloid ages.

When asked if he has any memorable footage of classic bands that will never be shown outside of his basement screenings, Shelley chuckles, "I have footage of the Kinks so drunk they can't remember the words to 'Lola.' We have footage of Johnny Cash really drunk." He claims to have footage of several other iconic rock artists in advanced stages of inebriation, but has so far abstained from displaying the footage because he often consults with the bands and typically only shows what they are comfortable having presented to the public.

Shelley's live concert footage series actually sprang from another idea: He offered to organize a presentation at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, NY of some early silent film footage he owns. The manager there passed on the idea and asked what else Shelley had on film. Shelley told him he had some rare footage of The Beatles performing and the manager jumped at the opportunity to book a presentation. "I was expecting about 10 people to show up," Shelley recalls. "But a huge crowd, almost 2,000 people, turned out."

Tonight's show will explore Pink Floyd's early performances with footage featuring its first singer and founding member, Syd Barrett, followed by concert and TV interview footage of Floyd's prime years, in which the band released the classic albums The Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, a tribute to Barrett, who left the band in 1968 due to problems with mental illness. Following the Pink Floyd retrospective, and underscoring how Cultural Affairs Director Geri Fallo views music as a "timeless experience," The Stevens Institute of Technology Alternative Controller Ensemble will perform.

"This event will not only explore the past but the performance by the students from Stevens' Music and Technology program will offer a glimpse of the direction that music is headed in the future," Fallo told Patch. (Check out this video of the ACE covering The Rolling Stones' classic hit "Paint It Black.")

Fallo, who also works with the nonprofit group Projected Images of Hudson County, said she discovered Shelley and his unique archival footage through a referral by a friend's friend.

"We are very excited to be working with archivist Bill Shelley," Fallo said. "Thankfully he understands the importance of preservation and took the initiative to save this early footage of music legends like Pink Floyd so that we can enjoy them today."

Moreover, Fallo said, the proceeds from the Pink Floyd event will go toward offsetting the cost for the 2011 season of Movies Under the Stars next summer.

In a city that has a vibrant and storied music scene, the Music Legends Live on Film Series is a no-brainer for Hoboken and pretty much anywhere Shelley takes his footage, he says, because of classic rock's power of endurance.

"Classic rock never goes out of style," Shelley says.

The retrospective begins at 7 p.m. Thursday night, at DeBaun Auditorium at Stevens Institute of Technology, and includes a Q&A session with Bill Shelley. Admission is $12.