In order to commemorate the 2nd anniversary of FNV, I’m doing a double-length episode featuring ten of my favorite music videos I’ve featured. They’re not really in rank order as I decided to place those others shot first and then my own stuff later. At the end I throw in something a little different.
Let’s begin with a group that’s a regular on FNV, and hopefully they’re advancing their musical careers outside the Delmarva region soon. While they do the occasional cover, one reason I like Not My Own is their reliance on original music. The other is that they play hard rock, which is a little unusual for a Christian band. This is a pairing called ‘Bleed/Believer.’
Another original hard rock staple coming from Ocean City is the band Lower Class Citizens, a band where you immediately hear the influence of Led Zeppelin. (Yes, they play a few Zeppelin covers in some shows.) While I have taped their songs in the past, I chose to use a more slickly produced version of ‘The Dark Midnight’ because it’s a longer song and the sound quality is excellent.
The quartet of hard rockers known as Order 6D-6 is no longer around, sadly – they called it quits earlier this year. They always seemed to be that band that just couldn’t quite break through to a higher level, but they put together some good original songs with strange videos, like this one for “Holeshot.”
To succeed in getting gigs, though, a band out of Delmarva likely has to know a number of cover songs, and I’ve featured those too. Maybe my favorite among those isn’t necessarily from a band which plays around the area but just some guys getting together. Bob Daigle got some friends in the studio and cranked out a heavier version of ‘The Legend of Wooley Swamp,’ an old Charlie Daniels classic.
There’s just something that I like about how Amy Walls of Petting Hendrix sings this song. It’s actually not a song I heard on the radio that much (nor am I that crazy about the song lyrically) but then again I’m not a big pop music fan, either. In this case, Petting Hendrix takes it up a notch.
Anymore when I go see a local band I have my camera in tow – if not, I feel like I’m missing something. I’ll grant to you that my videos aren’t the most spectacular in quality but what’s more important to me is spreading the word about the talent we have here, whether they’re playing covers or originals.
My YouTube channel has nearly three dozen different music videos on it, and I’ve featured the bulk of them on FNV. Strangely enough, the most-viewed music video comes from a band which doesn’t play around here a lot but when they do they tear the place up. Smokin’ Gunnz comes down from Pennsylvania a couple a times a year to play Southern classics like this one.
Another well-played video is a song I’m adding for my sweetie – this is one of her favorite songs, done by the classic cover artists of Agent 99.
Yep, it’s sort of a long intro. I think that’s one of the first shows I took full-length video at for inclusion in FNV. That was recorded at the 12 Bands of Christmas show in 2009.
I like multi-band shows because I can get a bunch of different videos, and every once in awhile I’ll get an original song. To me, songs like this one – ‘Bookshelf’ by Crookedfinger – are gold.
The same goes for my friends in Semiblind. You had to know they would be represented here, and I chose their original ‘Take Control’ for inclusion.
Sometimes I like to do something a little different. Having seen Semiblind enough times, I knew if I did a video of guitarist Jim Hogsett on this song it would turn out well. He shreds up ‘Seven Nation Army.’
This song isn’t as heavy as most of the others I featured, and it’s not by a local artist. But sometimes I need to send a message. I don’t recall who introduced me to it, but it’s a staple of FNV at particular times when a reminder is needed. This is Ava Aston doing ‘We The People.’
Now, I promised you something different at the bottom.
I grew up in northwest Ohio, which like Delmarva is a rural area (except for the city of Toledo and its suburbs.) So there wasn’t a lot of local music to be easily found in the pre-internet age – you had to have at least some sort of record contract to be heard. I liked hard rock from my mid-teens but also enjoyed ‘borrowing’ my brother’s 8-track of this band called The Other Half.
Their biggest claim to fame was having one of their songs (‘Smut’) featured on the ‘Doctor Demento’ radio show, since many of their tunes featured humorous lyrics with a number of double entendres.
The Glass City also had their own hair metal band as one of those ‘almost was’ groups. This video was shot around Toledo in 1988 and I still have this album on cassette from Damien, which like the song is called ‘Every Dog Has Its Day.’
So I’ve always been a fan of those bands who toil around my local area. Alas, Toledo wasn’t L.A. in 1983 and Delmarva isn’t Seattle circa 1990 so a lot of bands I like are undiscovered.
But I’ll keep doing my little part to change that!
