I compared tattoos with the guy from The Used
Most of the time, when people ask me to volunteer for something out of the ordinary, I do it simply because it will make a good story later on. It's how I wound up spending two days in a dusty, cramped little apartment on the Upper West Side cleaning and boxing literally thousands of books to be sold in my friend Zack's mother's bookstore. It's how I wound up doing visibility for Pat Buchanan in Manchester, New Hampshire during the 1996 primaries. (Disclaimer: I am neither conservative nor a wing-nut. Again, my motives were purely story-driven.) It's how I wound up running errands for Slash, Bono, Usher, and a host of other mono-named folks at a New Year's Eve party in Washington DC in 1999/2000.
And it's how I wound up working as the Location Supervisor for a music video shoot at my church last Sunday.
When my pastor asked me to do it, I knew it was probably because I give the impression that I'm a good balance of responsible and cool. After all, I'm entrusted with the spiritual advancement of 8 middle-school-aged kids for an hour every week, and I do happen to sport a bitchin' Luther Rose tattoo. My job would basically be to hang out at the church all day and make sure nothing got broken.
The band filming the video was a group called the Street Drum Corps, and the song was a cover of John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" featuring Bert McCracken, who is the lead singer of a band called The Used. This was how I knew it was kind of a big deal - this is a band I have actually heard of. For all the pop-culture-guru posturing I do, I have to admit that top-40 isn't exactly my forte these days. The last album I bought that was still on the Billboard charts at the time I bought it was Outkast's "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below". (I'm still waiting for something else new to be that good.) I'm more of a Coup D'Taco person than a K-Rock or a Z-100 person, which is probably fairly obvious. So these Used guys must be pretty big if they've reached the brain of a 26-year-old bookworm like me. Let's see...what did I know about them? They'd covered "Under Pressure," and they were from Utah. That's about it.
Anyway, I made the periodic lap around the church to watch them set up and film, but I spent a good chunk of the afternoon hanging out in the craft service area making last-minute edits on the piece I would read later that night at Barbes and chatting with various production people and musicians. While Bert, the Used's lead singer, dyed his hair in the choir loft sink, we talked about tattoos and music and growing up in the West and how totally awesome it is to be able to do what you love and get paid for it. He seemed like a really down-to-earth guy, as did the guys from the Street Drum Corps (as a fellow former marching band nerd, I thought these dudes were especially cool) - genuinely humbled by their success, I think.
This wasn't the best part of the day, though. The best part of the day occurred while I was standing on the curb watching the exterior portion of the shoot. Two passing teenagers stopped short a few feet away from me trying to figure out what was going on. After about ten seconds of surveying the scene, they froze, their jaws dropped.
"So you guys know who this dude is," I said to them.
"Are you kidding me? That's Bert from the Used!" One of them replied. "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen!"
They weren't in anybody's way, so we let them stay on the curb watching the shoot and calling every single person they knew with, "come on, man, pick up the phone. You are NEVER going to believe what I'm doing right now!"
These kids - actual fans, both of them - are going to be telling and re-telling this story for years. I know I'm still telling people about the time I rode in an elevator at Carnegie Hall with David Byrne, and that was almost four years ago. Well, this is their David-Byrne-in-the-elevator story, and it was extremely cool for me to have been there for that expression of total, unmitigated delight. I'm told that later on they did get to meet Bert and get hugs and autographs, which I'm glad to know.
Anyway, I obviously got to hear the song for which the video was made at least 30 times over the course of the day, and here's what I can tell you - it has the feel of a ubiquitous Christmas single. It'll be for 2005 what Wham!'s "Last Christmas" was in the mid-80s or Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You" was in the mid-90s or hell, even the original Lennon tune was in the late 70s. You will hear this on the PA in malls, you will hear it on the radio, it will be something you will find on every music channel whenever they're showing videos between Halloween and New Year's. It is one of the most radio-friendly little ditties I've ever heard. I'll even refrain from making cracks about how John Lennon is spinning in his grave (or in his urn under Yoko's bed) because I don't think he would. I think he'd have been okay with this one. I know I am.
Hell, I'll probably even buy it when it comes out. (Actually, I promised the producers and the band's manager and the Street Drum Corps guys I would, so I guess I'm kind of stuck.) You can, too - the song will be appearing on the Taste of Christmas compilation from Warcon Records, and it hits stores on October 25th.
When I went to my guitar lesson on Monday, my guitar teacher (who is cooler than I am) further helped me place Bert. "He's that guy who used to date Kelly Osbourne," he told me. Aha. That explains why the name was familiar - I think he was on the show a few times. I still can't get very starfuckery about the whole thing, though. To me, he's still just this cool guy from Utah who gets a tattoo in every new city and has a great story to go with more than a few of them.
(He thought mine were cool, by the way, and supports my intentions of getting sleeves when I can afford them and don't have to work in an office.)
And it's how I wound up working as the Location Supervisor for a music video shoot at my church last Sunday.
When my pastor asked me to do it, I knew it was probably because I give the impression that I'm a good balance of responsible and cool. After all, I'm entrusted with the spiritual advancement of 8 middle-school-aged kids for an hour every week, and I do happen to sport a bitchin' Luther Rose tattoo. My job would basically be to hang out at the church all day and make sure nothing got broken.
The band filming the video was a group called the Street Drum Corps, and the song was a cover of John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" featuring Bert McCracken, who is the lead singer of a band called The Used. This was how I knew it was kind of a big deal - this is a band I have actually heard of. For all the pop-culture-guru posturing I do, I have to admit that top-40 isn't exactly my forte these days. The last album I bought that was still on the Billboard charts at the time I bought it was Outkast's "Speakerboxxx/The Love Below". (I'm still waiting for something else new to be that good.) I'm more of a Coup D'Taco person than a K-Rock or a Z-100 person, which is probably fairly obvious. So these Used guys must be pretty big if they've reached the brain of a 26-year-old bookworm like me. Let's see...what did I know about them? They'd covered "Under Pressure," and they were from Utah. That's about it.
Anyway, I made the periodic lap around the church to watch them set up and film, but I spent a good chunk of the afternoon hanging out in the craft service area making last-minute edits on the piece I would read later that night at Barbes and chatting with various production people and musicians. While Bert, the Used's lead singer, dyed his hair in the choir loft sink, we talked about tattoos and music and growing up in the West and how totally awesome it is to be able to do what you love and get paid for it. He seemed like a really down-to-earth guy, as did the guys from the Street Drum Corps (as a fellow former marching band nerd, I thought these dudes were especially cool) - genuinely humbled by their success, I think.
This wasn't the best part of the day, though. The best part of the day occurred while I was standing on the curb watching the exterior portion of the shoot. Two passing teenagers stopped short a few feet away from me trying to figure out what was going on. After about ten seconds of surveying the scene, they froze, their jaws dropped.
"So you guys know who this dude is," I said to them.
"Are you kidding me? That's Bert from the Used!" One of them replied. "This is the coolest thing I've ever seen!"
They weren't in anybody's way, so we let them stay on the curb watching the shoot and calling every single person they knew with, "come on, man, pick up the phone. You are NEVER going to believe what I'm doing right now!"
These kids - actual fans, both of them - are going to be telling and re-telling this story for years. I know I'm still telling people about the time I rode in an elevator at Carnegie Hall with David Byrne, and that was almost four years ago. Well, this is their David-Byrne-in-the-elevator story, and it was extremely cool for me to have been there for that expression of total, unmitigated delight. I'm told that later on they did get to meet Bert and get hugs and autographs, which I'm glad to know.
Anyway, I obviously got to hear the song for which the video was made at least 30 times over the course of the day, and here's what I can tell you - it has the feel of a ubiquitous Christmas single. It'll be for 2005 what Wham!'s "Last Christmas" was in the mid-80s or Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You" was in the mid-90s or hell, even the original Lennon tune was in the late 70s. You will hear this on the PA in malls, you will hear it on the radio, it will be something you will find on every music channel whenever they're showing videos between Halloween and New Year's. It is one of the most radio-friendly little ditties I've ever heard. I'll even refrain from making cracks about how John Lennon is spinning in his grave (or in his urn under Yoko's bed) because I don't think he would. I think he'd have been okay with this one. I know I am.
Hell, I'll probably even buy it when it comes out. (Actually, I promised the producers and the band's manager and the Street Drum Corps guys I would, so I guess I'm kind of stuck.) You can, too - the song will be appearing on the Taste of Christmas compilation from Warcon Records, and it hits stores on October 25th.
When I went to my guitar lesson on Monday, my guitar teacher (who is cooler than I am) further helped me place Bert. "He's that guy who used to date Kelly Osbourne," he told me. Aha. That explains why the name was familiar - I think he was on the show a few times. I still can't get very starfuckery about the whole thing, though. To me, he's still just this cool guy from Utah who gets a tattoo in every new city and has a great story to go with more than a few of them.
(He thought mine were cool, by the way, and supports my intentions of getting sleeves when I can afford them and don't have to work in an office.)
