Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Video Schmideo

by Vince R. Ditrich

I suppose music videos are as common as dirt nowadays. Everyone does them, every group shoots one, every artist has one in the press kit. When Spirit of the West started out, in the Pleistocene Era, they were a very big deal indeed. Expensive, complicated, mysterious, labour intensive, they were often alienating to the very band they were meant to represent.

Today, my children use our little DV camera to do ‘videos’ with excellent and sometimes hilarious results. I shake my head when I compare this to the baskets full of money Spirit of the West wasted on music videos through the years...

Fans of the band will know all too well that appearances have always been a little lower on our list of priorities than say, Cher, for example, witnessed by exhibitions such as Hugh McMillan performing in a kilt and moccasins. The music, we would intone imperiously, is more important than the visuals.

Though this may be indeed be true, our stubborn 'music-first' ethic has left a legacy of remarkably pukey music videos.

I hearken back to my first video experience with the band where, because of our far-too-tight schedules, we had to jam the entirety of the filming into a day-trip to nearby Salt Spring Island. After arrival we stood around in Hugh's yard and asked, 'what's the concept'? If there was a concept on-the-go, and if I had been briefed upon it at that time, I have no accurate recollection. I know that at one point we were filmed shooting darts in a Pub. Geoffrey & I were far more interested in the taps at the bar. John was hovering around the barman, too, and I seem to recall that they were giving us pints for free. Soon afterward someone came up with the brilliant idea that we should be filmed chopping firewood. Being quite pissed-up by then we all dutifully lined up and hacked away for the camera. I recall then, through the haze, that Hugh McMillan (not drunk) realized that for a change he could make use of his sobriety and manipulated events so that we could be filmed in a ‘planting bee’ of his vegetable garden. After a few minutes of this I began to suspect that we were merely being hornswoggled into doing all his yard-work -- and that in no conceivable context could this footage be used in a proper, creditable music video!

I had been correct.

During another video shoot, one that was being done by a bustling crew of people we didn't know who referred to us collectively and somewhat disdainfully as 'the talent', we were left completely in the dark as to what was to happen next, what the plan was, what was expected of us. The director flitted about, fey and detached, concentrating apparently on all sorts of abstruse matters that lil ol’ Spirit of the West would NEVER be able to fathom. So he completely ignored us. I remember asking him, with mounting frustration as the shoot wore on, for some sort of direction. Finally, after I pestered him for what must have been the tenth time, he deigned to speak and dismissively said, with a wave of the hand, “Just do whatever it is you do…” I remember instantly clouding up in full-on rage and bellowing angrily at the little prick at the top of my lungs. I wanted to tear him a new arsehole right then and there!

Then there was the time, just before I came onboard, that the band was featured in makeup that made them look exactly like corpses. The promised production technique of full candy-red lips was either overlooked or someone misappropriated that part of the budget on Burger King runs. The lads recount this disappointment often, but I say, better to look dead than be caught on camera, drunk, planting Hugh’s vegetables…

There is one music video that we made which I can’t remember. I do know, for example, that the damn thing likely cost us a fortune, that this expense probably still haunts us in some diabolical manner, and that other people tell me they’ve seen it (and that it sucks). My memory lapse, I suspect, is a form of self-preservation, my id having chatted with my ego and deciding that I’d actually die of embarrassment if I were to have total recall of the miserable event. Yes, I suspect that it was that weak an effort…And this from someone who once gigged in a ladies tank top, brilliant blue in colour, with spaghetti straps and some delightful lace filligree at the collar, accented by heavy woolen jodhpurs...By the show's end the shirt's blue dye had badly run and I was left looking like some sweaty, demented Druid. But I digress. Mysteriously all I recall of the ‘Memory Gap Video’ is one ‘Extra’ on the set who was quite a hottie, clearly not impressed with my mammoth beer-gut, and who ignored me at the craft services table where I was lingering around the chocolate glazed donuts.

It has been some time since we put out a video but I suspect there’d be plenty of renewed interest if and when we do offer another. First, there’d be the kind of fascination shown by the kind of people who gawk at bloody car wrecks…”Hey Vern…Another Spirit video…I betcha 5 bucks it’s even worse than the last one…” And then there’d be the fans from the old days, slack-jawed in disbelief that we’re still making vids, and with no walkers or colostomy bags in sight!! There is also the family contingent; we have enough children to qualify as a demographic in itself. And then there are the tried and true fans who realize that, in the end, it has never really been about Geoff Kelly’s pongy North Van Canucks jersey…It has always been about the songs.

VRD

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home