live-charge.com

Ah yes, our first video as Live Charge. John Dalbey, one of my best friends in the whole world who was one of my best friends in the whole world until he just told me that he’s not visiting me on his trip back from Germany and I made this on a whim as a video announcement for our church, New Community. They were having a photography/art day and wanted a creative way to announce it.

The story:

Some time before I moved to France, John and I had been playing around with starting to do some nerdcore. Don’t worry yourself it’s not something dirty. It’s basically nerdy, white guy, black tie rap about technology. Needless to say we never made it very far in the nerdcore scene.

However we did have an itch to do a music video, and when the opportunity popped up shortly after my return from the land of the frogs we jumped on it. You’ll notice I also had a sweet beard at this point in my life. I’d grown it while living abroad, a sign of solidarity with my distant country in some strange way. The ladies in my life tended to disagree with the awesomeness of said facial hair, but I had enough support from the fellas that I kept that thing for way too long (thanks a lot Garner, Scope).

I think I wrote Photonym in something like 15 minutes in the recording studio at EWU. I’m not sure but I know Mexidate was done in a similar time frame; regardless the lack of time spent shows through I’m sure. Not exactly a lyrical masterpiece. The track was one by Mr. Kooman and since it was a free-to-use download I’m hoping he doesn’t get mad at me down the road for using it.

We figured it’d be good to get some sweet dancing in there so we called up our buddy Brian and asked if he’d bust out some moves. Another friend, Kyle (KDUB), is a bit of a local legend as far as rapping goes so we figured we’d have him cameo. A bit of a stupid idea for a cameo though considering no one in our church knew who he was. It was fun to have him in it either way.

The lyrics are as follows:

Uh! Heck yeah y’all
-Mr. Kooman-
It’s time to roll, let’s do this uh!

Photography, the act of taking photos
you wanna mess with me? I’ll turn you Quasimodo
All of that to say I’ll hit you in the back
then dance in circles round you as my photos click and snap y’all

You want a piece of this?
You know you cannot handle this
Your aperture is way too small
Your viewfinder is bound to miss

You know I’ll take you down
I’ll make you smile I’ll make you frown
I’ll Photoshop your face and make you look just like a clown

Photology: The study of the photo
you know you are a geek
when you’re always flying solo

Photonomy: Is a photo in isolation
You know it is my fixation
An army base has a station!

Photogomy: Being loyal to one photo
You don’t wanna mess with mine
or I’ll kick you in the ho-ho! Yeah

*You know–

There are lots of things in life you can take photos of
like cats and dogs and baby birds and architecture yo

I took a picture of a man
he said his name was Stan
but in reality his name was Chase
so I shot him in the face y’all

*John originally repeated the “in your ho-ho” with quite a violently emphatic rhythm, but we edited it out just in case we’d offend anyone on Sunday morning. This was unfortunate however because the edited version was what ended up on YouTube, and it’s not nearly as funny (in our estimation).

And so began the trip down musical lane.

Interesting fact: that orange wall we danced in front of used to be a Burger King.

Slightly less interesting fact: we played the music from Dalbey’s car CD player and lip synced each shot.

VASTLY less interesting fact: filming by the dumpsters behind Safeway was a terribly (and literally) smelly idea.

Filed under: Videos by Jay