Curb your Glenthusiasm
My good friend Glen is a historian, a documentarian, a music enthusiast and simply easy on the eyes. He’s spent the last two decades documenting music especially the weekly party scene here in LA. DJ AM’s famous LAX, Steve Aoki’s Cinespace to name a few all fall into Glen’s archives. The genesis of his work began like many (myself included) witnessing Daft Punk’s iconic Coachella set in 2006. This sparked the ALIVE tour and inspired many to do something with their (until then) meaningless lives.
His latest show “Low Res Hi Def” examines the Bloghouse years (2006-2011). Again starting with that fateful night in Indio California then following the progression through LA, French people, famous people and even the robots unmasked from time to time. Over 600 pictures from the scene covering one wall, ephemera and cameras from the era and even a weird teenage internet workstation replica. He also brought me into the fold…I couldn’t have been more excited.
Glen employed me to take over 60 hours of his footage spanning those five years and build four unique string outs. One would feature club nights and shows he attended. The second was all things Daft Punk (shows, homages, fanboy stuff). The third would center around the scene of that era and the people that occupied it. The fourth was a secret hidden video of his bestie Thee Mike B and the adventures that find themselves in tow.
Glen and friends built three wooden housings to hold TVs and vinyl wrapped each to look like a lovable archaic device. I rigged and wired video loopers into each housing. Maxed out thumb drives drove each of the montage and fed sound to an amplifier so that viewers could watch and listen together through crappy knockoff iPhone headphones to magically transport you back to the golden age where you actually had to attend something to ingest it.
Of course there were backups…
Forever immortalized in vinyl. Thank you for spelling my name correctly Glen <3
On the actual post side, simplicity seemed to be key. I kept Glen’s folder structure just in case we needed to reference it down the line. The goal was to let things breathe so the viewers could take them in. Also some of the content had been removed by watchful copyright overlords so again, how nice for the world to see. I quickly found opportunities to find little pods within the footage. Artists playing the same songs, cuts from one show to another, multiple birthdays, a Brodinski section narrated by a mega fan, lots of drunk people… I couldn’t resist cutting everything musically. Ignorant fans would think whatever, fan fans would get the idea and ultra nerds like me would maybe give a smile.
Finally I got to write quippy little captions for each video so an outside viewer would know where the hell they were or who the hell they were looking at. I used type to match the myspace vomit type era. You’re gonna have to go to HVW8 to see them with your own peepers.
Go see Glen’s show, buy a shirt and buy a book. Go experience things with your flesh eyes and ears.
