A short music video that we made featuring the Austin-based garage punk band The Ritchie Whites. The Ritchies also starred in one of our short films, The Creepees vs. Robot Monster Number Two. The video is a little combination of them rockin' it out in the practice space and some shots from the film.
Here's the really interesting part. Remember when Dick Cheney shot that guy in the face? He owned the building that the practice space was located in. The space was right in the middle of downtown and a pretty sweet piece of real estate.
Here's the location on Google maps. If you check it out in street view, you can see the foundation of the building.
Yep, the foundations. Because, mysteriously enough, not too long after the shooting incident, the building BURNED DOWN.
Hmmmm.....
It used to be an office building back in the 1950s or 1960s and looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic episode of Mad Men. It had been a practice space for as long as I could remember. There were a couple of loan type places on the first floor that looked like they had been used until about the 1990s or so.
I'd been in two of the rooms. We used to share one on the upper floor with these guys. It was pretty big, had a couch and even an air conditioner. The cover photo on that Hard Feelings album was taken up there.
But then there were the downstairs rooms.....
The one where we shot the video was shared by at least three or four bands. I think the rent that each band played was like $100 or so a month. The walls of the room were all covered with carpet, in a vain attempt at soundproofing and there was garbage everywhere. Because this was a band room, naturally, the entire place smelled like stale beer. There was all sorts of broken equipment scattered everywhere and the inevitable tattered couch.
Chris, the lead singer from the Ritchie Whites, worked at Emo's during SXSW, which was right down the street. Because that week is so crazy and he didn't get out of work until 4am or so, he would just camp out in the practice space for that weekend.
Memories....
Anyway, here's the vid: