Money changes everything on Music Video Monday.
Memphis rockers Aktion Kat! are no slackers in their visual presence. Paul Garner’s group has been creatively stuck at home and animated. Now, our favorite felines are going political in their first video from their new album, Soft Power.
In this clip, directed by Garner, the band don the costumes of their animated avatars to cavort about the orb of power. So make like a good consumer, and do what you’re told: Watch this video now!
MonoNeon released a killer album earlier this year called Supermane, which is full of the insanely good grooves and goofy humor you’ve come to expect from the colorful bass master. If you’ve spent time on his YouTube channel, you know that he’s also a master of snack-sized clips combining sick riffs with found sound, like “KEEP ON YOU LIZARD!” (NSFW).
That’s how the low-end lunatic finally got to collaborate with Flea — although we can’t be sure the legendary Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist knew he was collaborating (also NSFW).
For something much safer for work, here’s Dywane Thomas Jr. jamming with his grandma.
The standout track on Supermane, an album filled with bangers, is “Invisible,” where MonoNeon wishes to hide from the eyes of the world. “You can be whoever you wanna/And no one’s gonna judge ya.”
The spectacular video for the song was directed by Kii Arens, who takes MonoNeon’s expansive color palette and just runs rampant with it. At one point, he even gets the artist to put on a black suit! Check out all the colors of the rainbow:
If you’d like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Memphis rockers Aktion Kat! released an album earlier this year called Toxoplasmik! The second video from the album celebrates the coming of a strange and wondrous creature: a girl from Louisiana. “Shreveport Girl” sees the band — who are, naturally, all cats, except the ones who are robots — following their feline lady love into space, with a cheeky interpretation of Georges Melies’ historic silent film “A Trip to the Moon.” Blast off to kicksville!
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
MVM fav Daz Rinko just dropped a new song and video from his upcoming EP. “Ladies Night” is another future house-tinged collaboration between Daz and Arnold Francis (aka SPRILL). The beat says party all night, but the lyrics tell a different story.
“‘Ladies Night’ is really a record about me reflecting over my family’s upbringing, and me coming to the realization that the struggles they went through shaped me as a person,” Rinko says. “The paranoia of struggling, living paycheck to paycheck my entire life, the struggles of having a child without being able to support them emotionally, and the feeling of being alone in the present because I’m always working to be stable are things I touch on and continue to think about.”
The car-centric video was shot on South Main by Morgan Bell and edited by Andrew McGinnis. Get funky!
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com
Today on MVM, we have a world premiere video from two of Memphis’ most exciting women artists. Chamber pop chanteuse Louise Page says she has spent most of the last 18 months locked in with her keyboard. “‘Mirage’ was a song that I wrote early in the pandemic. It began as a poem about feeling let down by another person, and turned into a song about feeling let down in general, and about battling with my sense of self in a pandemic-isolated world,” Page says.
“The song can be interpreted both as a scorned lover telling off her ex for lying. Or, alternatively, my true-blue, behind-closed-doors, sad self singing to my performance persona and questioning if she in fact exists at all or is ‘just a mirage.’”
“Mirage” was recorded at Young Avenue Sound with engineer Calvin Lauber for Page’s upcoming “Play Nice” EP. The video was directed by Laura Jean Hocking. “This track along with the rest of the EP are completely solo, featuring just me singing and playing a grand piano, and reflecting on the solitude of 2020. My main goal with this song, video, and upcoming album is to make something beautiful and something honest,” Page says. “I’m so pleased with how Laura Jean interpreted my music into visual art, she is a dream to work with and always understands where I’m trying to take the viewer. This video is all about color — the golden mask and the blue truth.”
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Music Video Monday is keeping it clean.
Avon Park is a new indie rock band from Memphis who got together on the house show circuit. Connor Bankey, Will Buehler, Will Crowe, and Alex Haggard released their first album, Watson, on the University of Memphis’ campus label BlueTOM. Liz Butler, Kayla Snuggs, and Cole Fite created this colorful video that sees the band donning clean suits and then getting them super dirty.
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Music Video Monday is loving America.
It’s Tuesday, but that doesn’t stop Music Video Monday from celebrating Independence Day in uniquely Memphis style. Bluff City bluesman Bobby Rush has been partnering with the Curb Institute at Rhodes College since he was the music and culture program’s first visiting scholar in 2014. Rush has continued to mentor and teach ever since, even after surviving COVID-19 last year. At the liberal arts school’s 2021 commencement ceremonies, the Beale Street legend was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humanities degree.
Rush teamed up with some of his mentees at Royal Studios to record a bluesy arrangement of “America The Beautiful” for the 4th. Joining them were Eddie Cotton on organ, Fuzzie Jeffries on guitar, and a horn line featuring Hope Clayburn, Jim Spake, and Victor Sawyer. Capturing the action on camera was Ethan Van Drimmelen and Jackson Hendrix. “Oh beautiful for spacious skies!”
If you would like to see your music video on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Music Video Monday is doing it for a good cause.
Memphis guitar hero Joey Killingsworth’s Joecephus and the George Jonestown Massacre has been laying down the heavy sound for years. In addition to a prolific output of original material, Killingsworth has a long-running side project of doing tribute albums for charity, beginning with Mutants of the Monster: A Tribute to Black Oak Arkansas. The latest album benefits the FSHD Society, dedicated to finding a cure for facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, which took the life of beloved Memphis music supporter and FSHD poster girl Jonelle Spicer in 2018. Heirs of the Dog is a recreation of Nazareth’s 1975 Brit metal classic Hair of the Dog, featuring an amazing lineup of guest performers, including J.D. Pinkus of the Butthole Surfers, Luther Dickinson, and Nazareth’s own Manny Charlton.
For “Please Don’t Judas Me”, Neil Fallon of stoner rock legends Clutch takes the lead vocal duties. The video is another spectacular creation by Memphis animator and tattoo artist Nathan Parten, whose work for Louise Page earned him Music Video Monday’s Best Music Video of 2019. This one takes an appropriately gothic tone, and incorporates live action into the mix to send his menacing creatures stalking the streets of the Bluff City.
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Music Video Monday is running on a slight delay.
We hope you had a fun Memorial Day weekend. Like most of America, Music Video Monday took the day off yesterday. But we’re committed to our mission of bringing you the freshest music videos from Memphis artists, so we’re treating this Tuesday as a Monday. And we have the perfect post-long weekend for you: “Hangover Funk.”
Paul Taylor is one of Memphis’ favorite musical sons. After starting out with Cody and Luther Dickinson as the “T” in punk legends DDT, he has played with everyone from Ann Peebles to Amy LaVere, earning Grammy and Emmy nominations along the way. During the pandemic, he recorded a new album “It Is What It Isn’t” under his new solo project handle New Memphis Colorways. Listening to “Hangover Funk,” you won’t believe that he played literally every instrument. But if you ever saw him play live as his one-man band Interrobang, you know that he can play all those instruments at the same time.
You can see Paul’s hands at work in the soothingly psychedelic video for “Hangover Funk”, but they’re attached to a visible man. Talk about a transparent process! Take a look:
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Music Video Monday is just between us.
Jesse James Davis is not the editor of the Memphis Flyer. That’s the other Jesse Davis (hi boss!). Jesse James Davis is a singular singer, guitarist, drummer, and all-around musician who has played with the likes of Jack Oblivian, The Sheiks, The Tennessee Screamers, Model Zero, and my own band, 1000 Lights. Yesse Yavis (Bandcamp link) is the name he uses for his solo act, where he dispenses songs that veer from four-on-the-floor garage punk to poppy love songs.
The instrumental tracks that would become the song “Secret Lover” was recorded in 2017, and finished later with the addition of The New Mood Basement Singers. “The whole idea for these Yesse Yavis songs was inspired by Sam Cooke’s Live at Harlem Square Club record,” he said. “The atmosphere on that album is just complete joy, and has the energy of the greatest house party of all time. I wanted to make music that evoked that same energy and took from that well of doo-wop, ’60s ‘girl groups’ like The Shirelles, The Ronettes, or The Shangri-Las, and pure party music of the late ’50s/early ’60s. The lyrics aren’t really important, the sound and the vibe are what’s on display here. It’s just a simple love song about someone sick of being just a secret side piece and wanting to be a full time lover, not a Secret Lover.”
Last year, the pandemic gave Davis a chance to learn video production and create the 40-minute Yesse Yavis Extravaganza Spectacular Record Release Show, a mix of comedy and live performances taped at B-Side in Midtown. I promise you will not be disappointed with either element. Davis also directed and edited “Secret Lover,” so prepare for liftoff — you don’t have to be the side piece no more.
If you would like to see your music video featured on Music Video Monday, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.