Here's a fabulous curio from my past.
I have edited many music videos for my local musical heroes over the years, but The Sunday Cannons were the first group to call upon my acting skills in this video for their 1988 album Red to the Rind.
The Sunday Cannons featured two old friends of mine, Mike Lane and Ed Neenan. I knew Mike from high school. We were both eccentrics from Archbishop Curley High School. I met Ed Neenan later in the film program at Towson University, then called Towson State University. I had no idea they knew each other or that either of them were in a band until I saw Mike Lane loading some amps into the studio at Towson's radio station with Ed. They told me they were in a band called The Click. They were going to record in the studio that evening.
Running across them proved very fortuitous. As I relate in my memoir, The Promise, or the Pros and Cons of Talking with God, I was at perhaps the low ebb of my life at the time after my break-up with my high school/college sweetheart. I was in a genuine suicidal funk. Soon after seeing them outside the station, I was invited to a party thrown by Tom Brandau, another fellow student in the film program. Mike and Ed both attended the party. Near the end of the party, Mike and Ed took out their guitars and started playing Beatles songs. Every girl in the place gathered around them. Wow. I was impressed.
The guys invited to a gig they had at a bar in Towson the following week. The place was mostly empty but I was really impressed with The Click. They scattered some tasty originals in a mix of college radio hits. I was a movie guy. I did not follow contemporary music, aside from the Top 40 songs I picked up via osmosis. They gave me my first exposure to folks like Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe.
At the break, I approached Mike to discuss the affect he and Ed had on the girls at the party once they took out their guitars. I asked Mike if any guy could get any girl if he played the guitar. He looked around the empty bar before turning back to me and said, "I'm alone now, ain't I?"
That comment notwithstanding, I went home and dug my mother's acoustic guitar out of a closet and started playing obsessively -- despite the fact that the neck was a little bent so it was very difficult to keep in tune. Soon I was writing songs which proved to be emotionally therapeutic. Playing and writing definitely helped pull me out of my funk. In fact, I soon started my own band, The Atomic Enema, with my friends Jim Jackson, Mike Mazziott and, the true talent of the organization -- Nick Mazziott. We never rivaled The Click, but we all had a blast bashing our instruments and assaulting ear drums.
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| Director Tom Brandau with the band |
The Sunday Cannons was a follow-up band to The Click. It featured Mike and Ed, and Click drummer Matt Maschal. Dean Morekas, the bass player for The Click, was the odd man out in the new group. Don't know why.
The music video below was not actually intended to be a music video. The band brought in Tom Brandau to shoot a commercial for their album Red To The Rind to run on late night television. However, they shot enough footage of the song Friends Become Flowers to actually make a music video afterwards. In the commercial, and the video, I play Mr. Melon Head. For some reason, the music of the band inspires me to tear off my head and throw it to the ground, revealing that I was also Red to the Rind.
Tom Brandau directed the video. He was assisted by other Towson alums. Chris New shot it and Wayne Hipley edited it. Stewart Stack kindly provided the studio and the resources of Serious Grip and Electric to the production. It was a lot of fun. I was delighted they invited me to participate, and I am happy to see it resurface again.
Everyone is still playing and working. Mike Lane followed his musical muse to Minnesota where he now plays jangly guitar pop with his talented wife Kiki in The Lanes. Ed plays post-punk pop rock with his band E. Joseph and the Phantom Heart. I am happy to hear that Matt Maschal, the veteran drummer of The Click and The Sunday Cannons, has been gigging with Ed too. Director Tom Brandau is now the head of the film department at the Minnesota State University, Morehead. And me, well, I'm still red to the rind. Just don't ask me to take off my head to prove it.
I miss the 80s.
And I wish I appreciated them more at the time!
See more of my acting here: Sean Paul Murphy: Master Thespian
Music Videos:
And here's my own music videos:
Here are some sample chapters of The Promise:
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