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Today is the day the Oregon Coast is supposed to get six inches of rain—not that anyone would really notice: my rain gauge (a 5-gallon bucket) already has a foot of water in it, and sunshine is kind of a dim memory. Lots to do besides watching the floodwaters rise, however.

After the apparent success of the video of “Can I Have Your Car When the Rapture Comes,” I got excited about doing another one. This one will be “50 Ways to Cure the Depression.” A recording of the song already exists, but it’s only a draft, and I’ll re-record it. I’ll still do it on the Tascam, but I’ll enlist the members of the band if possible to play different tracks. (The band will be performing it at the Failed Economy Show Feb. 5, but I don’t have any way to record it there.) I don’t want to invest money—or, for that matter, time—in what will be essentially an experiment.

The video will be done “French” style, as a fast-moving slide show with sound track and captions rather than actual film; this song lends itself well to captured images. I’ve done that twice before, but this time, I’ll use exclusively photos I’ve taken myself—that way, I can control the resolution.

I have scripted the thing out, and know where and how I can take most of the photographs. The other new thing I want to do here is enlist other people—making the video more of a community project, as it were. The choruses (3 of them) all describe things one can do to cure the Depression (17 of them, in fact). What I’d like to do is have 17 different people in the photographs that reference those 17 different things. (The song, after all, talks about “We’ve got to help each other in our struggle to be free.”) During the instrumental break, besides identifying the band, I can give “special thanks” to those folks for being in the video.

Since just about all the material can be photographed locally, I can (hopefully) enlist 17 local folks I know to be subjects. I’ll raise the issue when I perform the song at the Bay City Arts Center’s open mike (that way, they’ll have heard the song, and can decide if they really want to participate—my music, as many have noted, is an acquired taste, and not everybody’s interested in acquiring it).

All I’m doing here is refining technique, really—making sure that when I do this “for real” (in making the Southern Pigfish videos), that I can create a salable product quickly and competently, with the tools I have at hand. The same thing I already do with my graphic-design stuff. If I do want this to be one of the Southern Pigfish videos later, I can easily substitute their soundtrack for mine—one of the advantages of using a slide show rather than film.

Started giving out posters for the Feb. 5 Failed Economy Show; hard to tell if people are interested because (1) they’ve heard and like the band, (2) they remember the last Failed Economy Show and how great it was, or (3) they’re attracted to the eye-catching poster, but they do appear to be interested. The notice is done, too—and a “media” list of newspapers, magazines and radio stations to get it along with the “joelist.” I’d like this to be the biggest event of February (a month that, ‘tis true, is not known for big events).

Joe