Thursday, November 13

Chimp - The Living End - Music Video

So, Dave Stewart and I formed a band a decade or so ago. The band is called Chimp. Way back then, we recorded a baker's dozen of original songs. We recorded them in my living room, using a 4-track cassette recorder we rented from Toomb's Music for a week. We also rented a microphone and stand and, I think, a guitar pedal. Dave played bass (mostly) and I played guitar (mostly). We didn't have a drummer. We used pre-recorded drumbeats from my cheap Casio keyboard.
After the week was up, we still had a bit of work to do, so we borrowed a 4-track cassette recorder from Wayne Dunsford.
So, in two weeks or so, we recorded these songs, as best we could, and mixed them down to cassette. We dubbed the cassette a few times and handed them out to friends.
And that was that.
Then, last spring, we decided we'd try and find the original 4-track cassette, digitize them and try and clean them up as best we could with an audio program on my computer. The cassette was found in a shoebox in a closet in my house, and over the next couple of months we cleaned them up, removing hiss, remixing, restructuring (in a limited way) the songs as we saw fit. We got Jason Rogerson to come on board as a fresh set of ears and together, the three of us remixed 12 of the songs. We also recorded a few new vocal bits at Moses Media and inserted them in a couple of songs.
So, after all that, we had 12 songs we thought were pretty rocking, in a lo-fi way. We decided we'd put them on a CD, get a small number made and throw them out to the world. We called the CD Thundercrack! as an homage to this movie.
At that point, the idea of a CD release party came up, and it was decided that Baba's would be a great place to have it. Not having played the songs in about a decade, and not having any rocking equipment to play on, we came up with the idea that it would be cool if other local bands played cover versions of our songs at the CD release. So, we got a few bands/people to play some of our songs at the CD release.
It's this Saturday night at 9 at Babas. Musicians performing include John Connolly, Jason and the Forget-Me-Nots (the aforementioned Jason Rogerson and a compilation of his musical associates), The Love Junkies, Pat Deighan & the Orb Weavers, Lennie MacPherson, Riley's Lane (a ladies celtic group) and String Theory.
A couple of months ago on the PEI Locals music webforum I solicited any/all bands the invitation to join the evening and play a song or two. From that solicitation, the band String Theory bravely stepped forward and offered to play a song, song-unheard. I can't wait to hear their cover of Killer Bees. String Theory will also be playing at Babas later Saturday night, after the CD release wraps up.
Wade Lynch was also going to perform a song, but had to cancel due to a conflicting schedule. I'll miss hearing his interpretation of Boy Likes Girl.

So, that's the story of Chimp.
A couple of weeks ago, we thought "wouldn't it be cool to have a video for a couple of the songs?" Not really wanting to invest time and energy into shooting new footage, we thought it would be fun to create a video using pre-existing film we had. That is how the video for "The Living End" (below) came about.
Dave and I have known each other for over 20 years. I met my wife through my friendship with Dave, or I met Dave through my friendship with my wife. I can't quite remember.
Anyway, just before Dave and I became friends, Dave shot an 8mm film called "Goodbye, Columbia" starring his friends. Shortly after we became friends he shot another 8mm film called "Attack of the Angry Moon Cats", starring his friends, which now included me.
A few years later, Dave and I wrote and made a short-film called "Florid", starring our friends.
We took a key scene from Florid, and some of the "actiony" parts from Goodbye Columbia and Attack, and threw them all together to create this video. It's supposed to be the end-credits of a movie called The Living End, but I don't know how well that concept plays out.
Anyway, lots of interesting images, a couple of shots of a younger Dave and younger Rob, and some brief clips of Charlottetown landmarks that no longer exist.

Here, then, is the world premiere of the music video for The Living End by Chimp.




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