As one of the most memorable summers of my life was creeping towards it's end, that didn't mean the epic-ness would end with it. Wiggaz continued to play any and every show we could get and we carried forth with the peddling of our new demo tape. We were receiving a lot of great feedback which was reassuring, and we'd made a lot of new friends that summer, some in bands, some not. The same went for Black Belt Jones, we were performing whenever the opportunity presented itself, we were still moving units of our first demo tape, and we too had made a lot of new connections in the music world.
Wiggaz had also finally started filming our music video with Owen Roberts. We headed out to the same area as the infamous barn bash to film some basic stuff; us walking through fields, burnt out barns, tossing a ball around etc. all while I swigged on my 32 oz bottle of Schlitz malt liquor from a brown paper bag. We eventually headed north towards Caledon so we could get a shot of us by the street sign for Oldschool Road. While in the vicinity we also captured some random tractors and incorporated Knuckles and his legendary white van into the shoot, with our new manager and longtime friend Noel riding shotgun.
A week or two later the culmination of the filming was now upon us, as we were scheduled to shoot more footage for our music video at a pool party. Our good friends Gary & Sue were hospitable enough to host an afternoon hootenanny at their house, well their backyard specifically. I had slept at Pauly's the previous night, and as hungover as we were, we managed to get our asses in gear to arrive for noon or 1 I believe. The boys had already set the gear up in the backyard, Owen was there with his trusted cam, and surprisingly there was already an abundance of party goers.
Gary & Sue had a pool, which ended up being the "mosh pit" for the video shoot. I honestly can't remember if that was a premeditated idea or if someone came up with it on the fly, but it was brilliant. One by one the boys all jumped in the pool and began a pit in the shallow end. All of our old friends were there, as well as our new pals from Viciousphere, Tire Kickers, and Knuckles crew "The Chutzpah Posse".
We were all feeding off of each other's ideas, which just kept the creative juices flowing. Someone would throw out a suggestion, we'd agree and roll with it. Asides from the moshing, we shot some people diving, friend's tattoos, people busting skateboard tricks into the pool, whatever came to mind. Owen had an idea for me to crowd surf on a group of guys who would then launch me high in the air to perform some of the most metal dives & cannonballs in aquatic sports history. Others followed suit and the camera kept rolling. It was quite hilarious and gratifying to be splashing around in jam shorts and a devil mask to be perfectly honest.
Pooh from EBS had come with his brother Knuckles, which was an honour to me. I knew Pooh had a sick little trick where he could make his shoulder blade pop out, so I insisted Owen film it. Any and every random idea proposed was documented. It was one of the best times I'd ever had at a party, and amazingly I was sober the whole while.
Once dusk hit most of the people had returned home for dinner and whatever plans they had for the evening. We stuck around to film some additional footage of us performing "live" on our instruments, which was an acoustic/lip sync scenario, that was very odd and foreign to me even though I'd done it in Grasshopper for some college kids school project, after all how does one fake it when one is so real? Regardless of that, we got the footage we needed and the day was a wrap. We'd performed earlier in the day while filming the pool pit scenes but I can't remember if we actually played live or played along to a recording.
It had been one of the funnest and most memorable days of my life, and we were one step closer to completing our video...
