A FAN-BASED VIDEO IDEA...

A music video idea, courtesy of Lorelei Loveridge, who describes herself as “chief rabble-rouser” of the Performing Songwriters—United Worldwide group that coalesced in the wake of Performing Songwriter magazine’s demise a couple years ago. (Good group, by the way. Full of neat ideas—and innovation, in my opinion, is what is going to allow independent writers and musicians to make a living in the Modern World.)

There are apparently some artists and groups out there that have done “fan-based” music videos—the video consisting of clips contributed by fans, sometimes footage of them singing, sometimes photos… There’s one Johnny Cash tribute song that consists of line drawings of the Man in Black contributed by fans, and strung together along with the music.

Could I do this? I think so: I’ve wrestled with scripting out video for my songs for a while, and only have four where I could create something that’s both (1) innovative and (2) easy and cheap. (I have a couple that would take production and expertise I simply don’t have and can’t afford.) And I do want to do video; as DJ Len Amsterdam says, “Video is the new audio.” For a lot of the songs, though, I default to “well, maybe we ought to just film a live performance.” I wouldn’t want to do that for everything—in fact, I’d rather do it for very few things. I am insistent that every song has to be different.

My candidate for a fan-based video would be the Southern Pigfish anthem, “For Their Own Ends.” The imagery is strange—Dylanesque obscurantism, after all—but one doesn’t want footage of the band performing it, because Southern Pigfish (as I remind folks every concert) doesn’t exist. On the other hand, the song is popular; we play it every show. (It can be argued that Deathgrass’ performances are why the song is popular—but we wouldn’t be performing it if people didn’t like it.) So it’s a song people might want to contribute something to because they like it.

Here’d be The Call, I think. I’d ask people to both film and record themselves singing along with the song. If they play an instrument (the “joelist” is chock full of other musicians, after all), feel free to play along, too. I’ll take the footage and “soundage” and mix and match things together to where I think it looks and sounds best. (I may need assistance with that. I’m not sure either “Alice” or “StuartLittle” has the brainpower to handle mixing on that scale.) The basic soundtrack on the video, though, would be Deathgrass, recorded in the studio—and I have to do that first, before issuing The Call. That soundtrack is what I’d need to send out to everybody.

And then we’ll see what we got. I have a feeling it might be great. If it is, I might try to do some more, using slightly different parameters (because every song has to be different—see above). I know some painters, some photographers, some mechanics (now, that would be interesting), some actors—there’s a lot of ignored talent out there

Timing? January, perhaps—it’s pretty certain my job in Lafayette ends the end of December, and then I’ll be both schedule-free and income-free until I can garner another temporary or permanent job (which, more than likely, would be out of town again). January, accordingly, would be the time to do all this work, as long as I can do it for very little cost. Another item for the 2011 worklist.

The fan-based video idea is one way to accommodate the need for people (I don’t want to call them “fans,” really) to be connected to “their” artists and writers. They need to feel not only that they know the artist personally, but the artist knows them personally, too. That’s something I and other small-scale independents like me can do, and the Big Boys can’t (especially with the Big Boys’ focus on not letting “non-members” inside their closed circle). The question has always been how to involve “our” people in what we do—just being listeners and audience isn’t really enough. Maybe this is a way.

Joe