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Fri. May 21.2004 12:00 AM EDT |
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Steriogram: Tangled Up in VideosBrad Carter lists his six fave clips of all time - Beasties, Foos, and blink all make the cut. by C. Bottomley |
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(Capitol Records) |
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"If anyone else had come to us and said, 'We're making your debut American video out of wool,'" laughs Steriogram's Brad Carter, "we would have freaked out!"
But Michel Gondry isn't just anyone. The French director turned the White Stripes
"For us, it was the opportunity to work with a maestro," says Carter, who plays guitar and shares vocals with hyperactive rapper Tyson Kennedy. "You look into Michel's eyes and you don't have a clue what's going on. That's the coolest thing about him. When we did the video shoot, we had complete trust that it was going to be amazing, but none of us knew exactly what was going on, even up to the last shot. Then we saw the video and we were like, 'Wow!'" Steriogram know a thing or two about videos. Their homemade "White Trash" promo put the band in mullet wigs to goof around with some cuties in Daisy Dukes. It took New Zealand by storm. Then an American talent scout saw "White Trash" on the Internet and signed the group to Capitol. Peppered with Kennedy's kooky rhymes and uproarious tunes like "Fat and Proud," their debut album Schmack! recalls the Beastie Boys, back when they were actually boys. In a recent chat Carter told VH1 about the music videos that send him reeling. As you can tell from his choices, he holds character and comedy in high esteem. Beastie Boys - Sabotage It's my all-time favorite video, bar none. Spike Jonze did it and it's just like, "Oh man, I want to make a video that cool one day!" I'm a huge hip-hop fan. Right now, I'm into the Jay-Z album. Last year I really got into 50 Cent. Before that, we'd always been the hugest Beastie Boys fans. Tyson, the rapper, got me into them like five years ago. [We loved] their style, their flow, everything about that band, even from the early days when they did their punk stuff. "Sabotage" obviously has a lot of influence on us. I want our next video to be something like that. Everyone in Steriogram has his own unique thing and I reckon it would be so cool to act out a role in the video like they did. We're trying to do a treatment for our song "Road Trip" where it's a flashback to us two years ago when we were on tour in New Zealand. We had no money. So at every town we'd go to, we'd ring up people at the last minute trying to sleep on their floor. [People would] chase us, because we owed them money and stuff. Foo Fighters - Learn to Fly The Foo Fighters play all the parts. Dave Grohl becomes this big fat woman in a chair; they're all sitting there [dressed as] girls. Taylor Hawkins in drag really gave Eminem a run for his money! I love the look on Dave Grohl's face when he's a girl with pigtails, and he's totally star-struck by seeing the real Dave Grohl. He's getting an autograph on the plane, and he's like, "Oh, thank you!" It cracks me up. It obviously shows that he's such a rad dude. I've never properly met him, but, you know sometimes when you see a video, you just want to hang with these people because they look so cool? That's what comes across from that video. Like if you ended up some night at a beach, hanging out, it would be a real fun night, you know what I mean? Blink-182 - First Date "First Date" is one of my favorite videos of all time. It brings across the cool side of the band. It's all set in the '70s. Tom and Mark and Travis all play different roles, and they've got moustaches! They go to a water park, and the lifeguard slaps Tom on the butt as he walks past and stuff. There's part of the song when they're all dressed in white. I was watching the "Making of the video," because I got the DVD and they were showing how they were trying to take the piss out of the Bee Gees. I like funny videos. We might like a band whose videos are dark and morbid, but we honestly can't say we hate our moms. If we tried to do that kind of music, it wouldn't be true. That's not who we are. We have a lot of fun in our band, and the bands we look up to have a lot of fun as well. AC/DC - You Shook Me All Night Long I don't know where it was shot, but it's all in black and white. It looks like it's [set in] old England. Angus, Malcolm and the singer Brian are walking down a road and there's a really hot chick in the video and they're looking up at her in the window. You see another side to Angus. You don't see him rocking out and playing "Thunderstruck" or "Hell's Bells" or whatever. You see him actually just being an actor in a video. I think with any band, if you see another side to their personalities, you feel like you know them more. That's why I think DVDs are going to become a really big part of music culture, because you get to learn a lot more about a band by seeing what they do backstage and what they do on the tour bus or whatever. Roots Manuva - Witness the Fitness He's an English hip-hop guy. Have you seen the video? It's so funny. It's obvious that he didn't win any [athletics] prizes in school. But he becomes this big hip-hop star, and he goes back, showing up in a Ferrari at his elementary school - he wants to compete on Fitness Day. Now he's like totally athletic. He beats all these little kids and wins all the awards. The kids all get pissed off at him. It's so funny. I think I'm kind of over the whole booties and bitches and hoes rap videos, where they're riding big rims and showing us how much they got. I like videos with a story. Even the new Ludacris video ["Southern Fried"] shows how he is as an artist. In the video, there's a guy talking crap about him, then Ludacris comes out, and he's like, "Hey Luda, what's up?" It shows the two faces of the music industry so perfectly. Some people will backstab you, and then they will lie to your face. Jay-Z - 99 Problems I hadn't gotten into Jay-Z that much, but then I watched the making of "99 Problems" [on TV]. That could even be my favorite video right now. Rick Rubin's in it, because he did the beats for that song. [The song seems to] to have the early Beastie Boys [sound]. It's like the closing of Jay-Z's career. But it's such a cool video because it goes back to the start, in 1994, when he used to live in his apartment. I got to see how hard he's worked over the last 10 years to become who he is. It gave me a lot more respect for what he does. I think that [when he killed himself in the end, it] was a metaphorical thing. It's almost like he's signing out of his career, in a way. The only bad thing will be if he does a Michael Jordan and keeps coming back. If you sign out like Jay-Z did, it would be kind of gay to come back with, "Hey, whassup, I'm Jay-Z again!" |
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