STALL // by Mediocore
STALL CREDITS: BASS// Lukas West VOX and GUITAR // girlwolf DRUMS // JOEY D'ALFONSO PRODUCED BY DAVE SWANSON OF LOVE JUICE LABS
When you listen to the song it’s an adventure really. Making it wasn’t really like hearing it. Actually maybe it was. I don’t know I thought the structure should be somewhat impossible and awkward given the content matter. It’s about the rugged road of getting someone to open up to you. The push and pull and the mistrust and persuasion involved in getting to know someone closely.
I know it irritated Lukas when I first tried to get us to play this song because it’s one of the first ones I worked on with him. So here we are getting to know each other musically and I’m basically like “heeeeeyyy let’s play this song of a bunch of shit I strung together with time signature and tempo changes that I know are there but am not educated enough to explain”. Its funny because when I first played instruments with him I was so fucking nervous. I was sweaty. I hadn’t played guitars with anyone but myself. I was shy. It took him a lot of patience to have me come around to even playing with someone else. And he’s talented and been in a ton of bands and can do anything on the spot and I’m inexperienced and rigid when it comes to guitar. I was surprised he would even play with me.
But I can get very adamant about stuff I write and I WANTED THIS FUCKING SONG. There were actually a lot of tears shed and doubt surrounding this song, suitably so for me, considering the topic. I find closeness treacherous and threatening. It’s easy to doubt, scary but invigorating, twisting, changing all the time. Like this fucked up structure. Especially when you’re two talented musicians listening to some crazy girl on this one who has never even recorded any guitar before. Lukas and Joey made it groovy somehow. They always do. Still none of us prefer to play it live. Haha, so I guess it is annoying. I admit.
We tracked it with Dave Swanson in Riverside, CA, his studio is called Love Juice Labs.
He heard the song and got it immediately. He laid the whole damn thing out when tracking and told me what the hell I was actually doing and when I changed tempos and signatures, so that was fun. He got it so fast it’s funny. He just heard me play it once when Joey was tracking drums and then he knew exactly as it should be, more so than I myself did. I had the gut of it but he brought it to science. That was cool.
I guess it’s like a love song. It is. Normally I hate those. I’m even kind of embarrassed of this one because I know the very situation it’s inspired by. My life. As everything I say is. Someone asked me why my art was so egotistical/ about me. I asked them what the fuck am I supposed to write about? I am me. I don’t know anything else. Hell, I’m lucky if I even know me. My best English teacher always said “write about what you know.” This love song can be applied differently when I look at it. It’s about loving anyone or anything. Like a flickering flame, the balance of things, push and pull. Soooo naturally in the video I tried to make it a little bit about my relationship with my dog Polar :) Because human love is mUsHy. Dogs are cuter.
Habitually underestimated.
Now they are everything you hated.
You don’t respect those who leave you jaded.
Their boring lives are overrated.
Scars make stars.
We know who we are.
The whole ep SCARS MAKE STARS and then SCARS MAKE STARS II were titled from this line of STALL. I chose that title because the whole thing is about the human ability to overcome adversity. It fit so much of my and a lot of things I know my band members have been through, and not just us, everyone. Humans. The human condition is weird. We are pretty resilient.
Anyway, the video. The video came about because of a major block. I’ve spent a lot of years on the side lines either helping out much bigger crews of people shoot videos. I’ve done anything from model, PA, Direct, shoot, edit video for various artists/ commercial purposes. For a long time really. I know what a great cinema camera is. That’s not my 5D mk III. I think it’s OKAY. It’s OK but it’s not great. I didn’t want to shoot my videos on that camera because I had the opportunity to work with what I consider real DPs and I don’t consider myself one of them. I can’t use a RED or an ALEXA and I value their output. I was hung up collecting money trying to fund something bigger. It just hasn’t been really practical. It just means so much to me to have started this band after being kicked out of my other, building this from the ground up. It matters so much to me to have gotten this far, and I want it to be rad, so it’s just personal pressure because of the weight of what it is to me.
Finally, after years of waiting on people for various things, to make music and make fucking videos, I just was like,,,, what the hell am I doing? I always do everything myself. It just ends up that way. I’ve directed and shot other people’s videos that I am proud of. Why am I refusing to do mine?
So, I chose, the unlikely STALL. And the guys are like “wait why are we doing stall”. And I’m like ‘gotta get my feet wet low expectations’. Lol. It’s true. I didn’t really imagine a video for this song before. We had elaborate ideas for other songs. I just wanted to start. Do something. Anything. I don’t feel like I was telling the guys how paralyzed with fear I was to start our videos. I thought about it every day all the time. I life a life full of dread really. It fluctuates from playfulness and dread.
So, casually while on another shoot with my friend Jay Kantor [ kungfubreakfast] we generally explore places and shoot stills, but he often shoots a small 60 second video. We shot a few takes of STALL at Redondo Beach and that was the beginning of shooting the footage. I incorporated some other footage from our other shoots. All these shots were extremely fast. I’m not used to shooting a music video this way, I usually over shoot. So the whole thing spiraled into a scavenger hunt for me and I began shooting the rest of the footage. Jay has the exact camera I do. So that worked well in matching. I also incorporated vhs footage I’ve shot, as well as some show footage at the end [thanks Chaos Reaper].
When I began to edit, to me the visual began to take meaning. At least I scraped whatever meaning I found out of it. I sifted hard. I felt like I didn’t have anything to make this video from. I was underwhelmed. I was sad even. I was like waiting for the moments all my life I can make music videos and I had to just start? With this? How the fuck am I gonna do that?
And then I proceeded to carve away something that meant something to me. I can actually say I’m proud. And that’s the point. That’s the point of the band name. The point of the EP. The point of SCARS MAKE STARS. The point of my life. It’s just to be resourceful. To make something out of what you have.
So, I shot all the band performance footage in separate rooms at separate times. I kinda wanted to highlight the isolation that exists in the meaning of this song. How separate we are really but trying to connect. So you never see the band together in this video except the end. And I don’t know. The lightbulb I’m playing with it’s like the bubbles. I think of it as the invisible barrier we all have. Our defense. Our shield. Protection. Sometimes being human is so lonely. It really is. It feels detached. But we can break that. We can. And it’s rocky or awkward. But it’s quite beautiful and interesting and vital. And that’s what all the fun in this video is about. All that matters is we try to connect, to reach out, to take the first steps. I am happy to take this step.
Thank you, if you’re listening.
over n out.
girlwolf
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