A Feast at the Video Diner

The Video Diner they showed on Sunday (or Saturday? I'm not sure) was fantastic. All local bands' videos. Which is a little weird, to be watching videos and suddenly think "Hey! That guy overcharged me for my coffee yesterday!"

Since Video Diner probably doesn't play in New York (although it totally should), a rundown for you.

1. American Minor, ”Buffalo Creek." Very nice, very stylish and slick and professional looking. It's very Rob-focused, though. Bruno gets to swing past in shadowy profile about twice, Bud gets some nice guitar-man shout-outs. It looks very well done. And they look very tough.

2. Lorenzo Goetz, "Never Look Directly into the Disco Ball." Video Diner re-run! Boo! I'll cut them some slack, though. I like this song. This video looks fine on its own, but coming up after the MTV2 flash of American Minor's video it feels extra locally made. Still nice, though. Hey! That one guy doesn't have a beard! When didn't he have a beard?

3. Poster Children, "Western Springs." Also a rerun. I love this video and this song. It's all retro home movies and car-window landscapes, while the poster kids sing very flat affect and deadpan along the bottom. The song is all "I want to get back home, where I'm good and life's good and all this weirdiness is gone," but the faces are like "I am dead inside." And then die-cut Jim goes zipping all along the border like a draw-back racecar.

4. Mad Science Fair, "....". I forgot to note the name of the song. The video is pretty cool, cartoony and pipe-cleanery and storytellingy. But, oh, dear. They've used commas inappropriately in the title screens. I'm sorry to have to report that, but there it is.

5. i:scintilla, "....". I forgot to note this song title, too, and VD is apparently pretending this episode never happened, as their website lists the last episode as early November. I thought I had seen i:scintilla, but apparently that was some other band, because these people are not at all familiar to me. The song seems to have been used in a movie? And I'm guessing some of these scenes come from that movie? Or else they didn't, and they threw in the movie information to confuse us. They sound like that band with that one woman, and I've been trying to think of the name of the band (or the woman, or a song) for about a week with no success, so that's probably as accurate as that's going to get. Anyway. I'm afraid I missed most of this video due to other pressing matters.

6. The Living Blue, "....". Hmm. I could sing you the song, but I have no idea what it's called. Geez. I got to take notes. Oh my gosh! First thing you see is a bit of a crowd to watch them, but there's only one person clear enough to really see. And it's Becka! Hey! Oh, somebody just ripped down a poster for this "show" and it says "The Blackouts." Woman riding bike around Chicago. Band playing while she's riding riding riding. Steve is very perspirey. Joe's got a little mustache. When was that? The bass player is a very shadowy figure--very nice for rotating in new faces. The bike rider gets hit by a car and then becomes Vanishing Ghost Bike Rider, just as a moment before the audience for their "show" became Vanishing Ghost Audience. I'm not sure I get it. The Living Blue is so good, they'll kill you?

Edited to add--It looks like they're playing NYC tonight, should you be bored and desirous of rock.

7. The Beauty Shop. Of course I don't know what this song is, but it's kind of a nice little video of a party out in the country at which the BS put on a little show. Oh, no. No no no no! They start off with a title card with an obvious comma error! This is so sad. If we could perform a comma transplant, using the MSF video as a donor, we could benefit grammatical health all around. They did a great job of making it look like this party was super fun, with all the regular Champaign locals having a hoot and holler. The Blackouts kind of get a two-fer on video exposure, 'cause there sure is a lot of Steve in this one. And a splash of TJ Hunter, which is nice way of rooting the video very firmly in the local scene. Awww.

Yay! Good job all around. Unless we're talking about punctuation. Which I often am. (And hence, why I have no rock video of my own.)