I hate to overuse the word, but yesterday was truly an epic day. The Whippersnappers and I recently recorded a batch of new hot-rod-themed songs for an upcoming EP, and yesterday we shot a video for a song I wrote called “Ridin’ with the Devil (Goin’ Fast as I Can Go).” Chris Magee from Bopflix was in Los Angeles for a few days, and we were lucky to corral him for an afternoon of shooting down in the Los Angeles riverbed.
It never rains in Los Angeles, but when it does, it comes in torrential downpours. In the old days, these rare rain events would cause massive flooding throughout the valleys and other low-ground areas, so in the late 1930s they built cement channels for all the creeks and rivers to route the floodwater quickly to the ocean. (As a side note, it was this cement river floodwater control that enabled areas like the San Fernando Valley to be built up, en masse, for better or for worse. This is the system that enables eighteen-plus million people to live in the LA metropolitan area without their homes washing away in floods every ten years).
The downtown LA riverbed, the widest point of the LA river, is a massive area at the confluence of several rivers and creeks. The city built beautiful Art Deco–influenced bridges over the river at the same time, most of which still exist. The whole area has become an iconic location in film, television, and popular culture. Kids used to drag race their hot rods down here in the 1950s, as parodied in the movie Grease, and the riverbed has been seen in countless other productions like Repo Man, Terminator 2, Drive, and Chinatown.
It’s not exactly legal to go down in the riverbed with your automobile or to shoot photography or video down there, but it has become such an iconic location in the hearts and minds of Angelenos, at some point the police just quit caring (and law enforcement officials probably have way more important things to deal with). If you know where it is (and of course Bert from the Whippersnappers knew exactly where it was), you can make your way past the homeless camps down a steep ramp that drops you right into the shallow waters of the riverbed (it used to be almost entirely dry, but in recent years they’ve rerouted more runoff water in this direction, so there is an area of super-toxic and mossy three-inch-deep water you have to forge through to get to the dry parts). That was where we planned to film our new video.
We were incredibly lucky to snag Pinup Palmer on super-short notice to appear in the film as the “bad girl / devil on the shoulder / visual allusion to bad life choices” character in the video. She’s done tons of great pinup photography (especially with our friend Spike Marble, who recommended her—thanks Spike!), and many of you may know her as Gwengoolie on the Svengoolie horror host show on MeTV. She was great and really got into the role, a total pro with tons of personality. I told her that her character motivation was “the type of woman who is so bad and mean that she scares men, but turns them on in a way they can’t explain at the same time.” She nailed it! Half the time she was expertly cracking a bullwhip in the background of the scenes, wearing tight leather capri pants. I think she did an excellent job, and we were lucky to snag her on such short notice.
I drove my 1960 Cadillac convertible (after surviving the “Wild Wild Thing” video shoot, I promised I would never subject this majestic chariot to such punishment ever again, but alas, showbiz is a cruel bitch), Bert brought both his 1959 Ford Fairlane and his panel truck, and our pal Abe Lugo (from Finicky Fox clothing) brought his 1957 Ford Kustom. Each of us in the band had our own car that we’d be racing down in the riverbed. It was pretty great! We got footage with Chris riding in a car in front of us, with him shooting from up above on the side of the riverbed, and inside the cars. I can tick that one off the bucket list now: drag racing in the LA riverbed—check!
We set up our instruments behind an array of our cars and shot a bunch of takes of us performing our new song. There are train tracks on each side of the river, and it was pretty great to have the train conductors blowing their horns at us and waving as they went by.
No one hassled us or told us to move along, and we got a ton of footage for the video. The light was perfect in the afternoon as the sun started to go down. We’ll have to see what Chris comes up with in the editing room, but I think it’s going to be pretty great. And if nothing else, the day before my birthday, I remember looking around at the guys in my excellent band, the cool cars, the iconic setting, the perfect lighting, and Pinup Palmer walking around in her leather outfit cracking the bullwhip, thinking to myself—this is an excellent day.
Special thanks go to Chris Magee for making time in his busy schedule to shoot the video; to Pinup Palmer for taking off half a day on short notice to come in and be our bad girl; to Michelle LaValley for helping Bert drive the cars down and helping on the set; to Abe Lugo for stepping in and helping with driving the chase camera car, working the light reflector, and staging the scenes; to Sally Jo for helping me with makeup before she had to go to work; and to Pinup Palmer’s stylist, Liz Garza.
After the video shoot, we all went out to eat at Phillipe’s, the place credited with inventing the French dip sandwich. Phillipe’s has been serving them up since 1908, the oldest continually operating restaurant in the city. The whole gang sang “Happy Birthday” to me. It was a good way to end the day. Just a bunch of great people having a good time doing something creative and fun. Does it get any better than that?
Stay tuned for our new release, and for the video! We are excited to have new music to share with you very soon!
See more photos and videos at Deke’s original Facebook post!
