Here's something you might be interested in.
Scott Wilson's new video for his song "Slow Movin' Driver" debuted online this week. "It's really a documentary music video," he tells the *Reader. *
"We went into Studio West in Rancho Bernardo on September 30 and recorded a song live to Pro Tools with a class that was learning recording techniques. There were about five students in the class and an engineer/teacher, Caleb, and it was a combination of a class and a recording session."
"The video was shot by myself and Jay Lauterwasser, our bass player, on 2 Flip HD cameras [720P]. They're about the size of a cigarette box, but they work pretty well. I edited the video on Final Cut Pro on my laptop, which is a MacBook Pro."
"We had a little while to rehearse during lunch so we shot some rehearsal footage without headphones of all of us in the same room running through the song three times, and then we shot with a couple of cameras live while we were recording the actual song. We did four takes of the song, picked the fourth, then did some guitar overdubs."
"My guitar player Don DeOliveira and I were in such a rush that we recorded our overdubs simultaneously - then he did the lead guitar, then I did the lead vocals, Don did a couple of background vocals, and we were out of there by 6:00 p.m.. The whole thing was basically recorded in three hours at the most. It really makes you focus more when you have to nail everything pretty quickly, so the track has a very live quality to it, which is a little different from my solo recordings."
"I tend to get very focused on the details on my albums which is why they take so long to finish. Either that or I'm a procrastinator. I brought the Studio West tracks back to my home studio, overdubbed a couple of background vocals and a tambourine, and then mixed it at my kitchen table with my laptop using ProTools LE. I'm used to many more tracks on my solo recordings but this was relatively simple in comparison."
"We also shot footage throughout the day while the class was setting up microphones for the drums, guitars, bass and vocals, so we tried to convey what it was like recording there for the day."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLIsEWlPw0I
The song was inspired by road rage incidents that made headlines in CA a few years back, though Wilson says "That's not necessarily what it's about."
“I bought my first bass at age 18 for $99 at a pawn shop,” says Wilson. “It was a piece of crap, but it was a good thing to learn to play with and to realize that it was worth investing in better equipment.”
Wilson cites his main musical influences as the Beatles (“seventh chords”), Nirvana (“grooves”), and Yes (“harmonies”), but nowadays the founding member of the Gandhi Method -- and former bassist for Cathryn Beeks -- would just as soon plug into a video-editing board as an amp. He’s worked on music videos, concert films, and documentaries.
This filmmaking savvy served Wilson well when it came time to shoot a video for the song “Coffeehouse 101” from his 2005 CD Kaleidoscope’s End. “We ended up with around 50 performers in [my] video, many of them local, each one lip-synching a different line from the song,” says Wilson.
Footage was shot at Lestat’s, Twiggs, the Hot Monkey Love Café, and other local spots. Cameo appearances include Gregory Page, Dave Howard, Bart Mendoza (the Shambles), Mark DeCerbo (Rockola, the Steely Damned), and a who’s who of local talent that even the most plugged-in of scenesters would be hard pressed to fully identify. “I couldn’t time it right to get the Locust in there,” says Wilson, “but I [taped] most everybody else I sought out.”
“Some people -- for instance, Robin Henkel and Carlos Olmeda -- were very comfortable with the camera. Some weren’t, and I include myself in that bunch. Everyone brings their own personalities to the table, and people relate to the camera in such different ways that it becomes sort of a sociological experiment in overcoming embarrassment.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eDHvnMUHdE
Wilson’s earliest recordings, with AOR glam band VFX, are being sought for reissue by Retrospect Records in Las Vegas. “I walked away from this style of music in 1994 and never looked back,” says Wilson. “That’s Album Oriented Rock, not Aging Old Rockers,” says Wilson. “Nobody was more surprised than me that people still listened to that type of music…I had no idea anybody remembered a CD I released 20 years ago.”
Wilson says VFX was one of many bands knocked out by Grunge. “When our second CD was released in 1993, Nirvana was going strong. That wiped out what one record executive once told me was all those W bands, [like] Warrant, Winger, and Whitesnake.” That album, The Next Step, hit number one on the Imports Chart in England’s Kerrang Magazine, as Wilson toured Europe with the band in late 1993/early 1994.
“I’ve been busy rummaging through my storage room looking for old masters and forgotten videos,” says Wilson, who moved to San Diego in 1997 and pursued acoustic balladeering. “It’s been a strange experience.” Some of the vintage spandex and cosmetic-heavy VFX videos have been uploaded to Wilson’s YouTube channel, Metapunker. “They’re possibly [worth] a good laugh. I don’t regret doing the music that I did, or dressing up in strange costumes. Some of the pain and embarrassment has faded away, and now only laughter remains.”
“I haven’t decided if I’m going to let them release the CDs yet,” says Wilson. “When I started digging through the storage room and talking to some of the former band members, it brought up a lot of buried issues and feelings that I assumed I had let go of. Which, of course, I hadn’t. So I’m deciding whether I really want to reissue those CDs again, or let them stay part of the past.”
His TV show A Moment in Time broadcast its debut episode on Cox Channel 23 on November 27, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzCBuiRfUus
In early 2011, he began a new music series every second and fourth Thursday at Claire de Lune Coffee Lounge, filming performances for broadcast online and elsewhere, and offering his own band to back participating performers.
"I'm also finishing up on a new solo album at the moment," he tells the Reader, "and I'm looking for someone to mix the tracks, after I clean up a few bits and pieces here and there. I'm within a few weeks of finishing the recording process, and I'm just reviewing and editing the tracks now so it can be as good as I can make it."
Scott Wilson's new video for his song "Slow Movin' Driver" debuted online this week. "It's really a documentary music video," he tells the *Reader. *
"We went into Studio West in Rancho Bernardo on September 30 and recorded a song live to Pro Tools with a class that was learning recording techniques. There were about five students in the class and an engineer/teacher, Caleb, and it was a combination of a class and a recording session."
"The video was shot by myself and Jay Lauterwasser, our bass player, on 2 Flip HD cameras [720P]. They're about the size of a cigarette box, but they work pretty well. I edited the video on Final Cut Pro on my laptop, which is a MacBook Pro."
"We had a little while to rehearse during lunch so we shot some rehearsal footage without headphones of all of us in the same room running through the song three times, and then we shot with a couple of cameras live while we were recording the actual song. We did four takes of the song, picked the fourth, then did some guitar overdubs."
"My guitar player Don DeOliveira and I were in such a rush that we recorded our overdubs simultaneously - then he did the lead guitar, then I did the lead vocals, Don did a couple of background vocals, and we were out of there by 6:00 p.m.. The whole thing was basically recorded in three hours at the most. It really makes you focus more when you have to nail everything pretty quickly, so the track has a very live quality to it, which is a little different from my solo recordings."
"I tend to get very focused on the details on my albums which is why they take so long to finish. Either that or I'm a procrastinator. I brought the Studio West tracks back to my home studio, overdubbed a couple of background vocals and a tambourine, and then mixed it at my kitchen table with my laptop using ProTools LE. I'm used to many more tracks on my solo recordings but this was relatively simple in comparison."
"We also shot footage throughout the day while the class was setting up microphones for the drums, guitars, bass and vocals, so we tried to convey what it was like recording there for the day."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLIsEWlPw0I
The song was inspired by road rage incidents that made headlines in CA a few years back, though Wilson says "That's not necessarily what it's about."
“I bought my first bass at age 18 for $99 at a pawn shop,” says Wilson. “It was a piece of crap, but it was a good thing to learn to play with and to realize that it was worth investing in better equipment.”
Wilson cites his main musical influences as the Beatles (“seventh chords”), Nirvana (“grooves”), and Yes (“harmonies”), but nowadays the founding member of the Gandhi Method -- and former bassist for Cathryn Beeks -- would just as soon plug into a video-editing board as an amp. He’s worked on music videos, concert films, and documentaries.
This filmmaking savvy served Wilson well when it came time to shoot a video for the song “Coffeehouse 101” from his 2005 CD Kaleidoscope’s End. “We ended up with around 50 performers in [my] video, many of them local, each one lip-synching a different line from the song,” says Wilson.
Footage was shot at Lestat’s, Twiggs, the Hot Monkey Love Café, and other local spots. Cameo appearances include Gregory Page, Dave Howard, Bart Mendoza (the Shambles), Mark DeCerbo (Rockola, the Steely Damned), and a who’s who of local talent that even the most plugged-in of scenesters would be hard pressed to fully identify. “I couldn’t time it right to get the Locust in there,” says Wilson, “but I [taped] most everybody else I sought out.”
“Some people -- for instance, Robin Henkel and Carlos Olmeda -- were very comfortable with the camera. Some weren’t, and I include myself in that bunch. Everyone brings their own personalities to the table, and people relate to the camera in such different ways that it becomes sort of a sociological experiment in overcoming embarrassment.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eDHvnMUHdE
Wilson’s earliest recordings, with AOR glam band VFX, are being sought for reissue by Retrospect Records in Las Vegas. “I walked away from this style of music in 1994 and never looked back,” says Wilson. “That’s Album Oriented Rock, not Aging Old Rockers,” says Wilson. “Nobody was more surprised than me that people still listened to that type of music…I had no idea anybody remembered a CD I released 20 years ago.”
Wilson says VFX was one of many bands knocked out by Grunge. “When our second CD was released in 1993, Nirvana was going strong. That wiped out what one record executive once told me was all those W bands, [like] Warrant, Winger, and Whitesnake.” That album, The Next Step, hit number one on the Imports Chart in England’s Kerrang Magazine, as Wilson toured Europe with the band in late 1993/early 1994.
“I’ve been busy rummaging through my storage room looking for old masters and forgotten videos,” says Wilson, who moved to San Diego in 1997 and pursued acoustic balladeering. “It’s been a strange experience.” Some of the vintage spandex and cosmetic-heavy VFX videos have been uploaded to Wilson’s YouTube channel, Metapunker. “They’re possibly [worth] a good laugh. I don’t regret doing the music that I did, or dressing up in strange costumes. Some of the pain and embarrassment has faded away, and now only laughter remains.”
“I haven’t decided if I’m going to let them release the CDs yet,” says Wilson. “When I started digging through the storage room and talking to some of the former band members, it brought up a lot of buried issues and feelings that I assumed I had let go of. Which, of course, I hadn’t. So I’m deciding whether I really want to reissue those CDs again, or let them stay part of the past.”
His TV show A Moment in Time broadcast its debut episode on Cox Channel 23 on November 27, 2010.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzCBuiRfUus
In early 2011, he began a new music series every second and fourth Thursday at Claire de Lune Coffee Lounge, filming performances for broadcast online and elsewhere, and offering his own band to back participating performers.
"I'm also finishing up on a new solo album at the moment," he tells the Reader, "and I'm looking for someone to mix the tracks, after I clean up a few bits and pieces here and there. I'm within a few weeks of finishing the recording process, and I'm just reviewing and editing the tracks now so it can be as good as I can make it."