The longtime residents of Boston usually have a love/hate relationship with the city. The downsides of our town are usually magnified by both its transient student population and those who can’t seem to connect with what we have going on here. But there’s something that keeps a few select folks tied to the deliberate evolution of Allston, Cambridge, and elsewhere, tied to the bizarre wonder of this often cruel town, and tied to the feeling that this is actually the best place in the fucking world.
Longtime music scene veteran Cameron Keiber is one of those lifers, and today projects his feeling for our town in Eldridge Rodriguez‘s new video for his new video for “Giving Myself Over to Boston,” the latest track off their upcoming LP, The Castrati Menace, out October 9 via Midriff Records with a record release party at Wonderbar in Allston later that night.
Keiber describes “Giving Myself Over to Boston” as “just a good-natured jab at the city.” He tells Vanyaland: “Every city has problems but sometimes it seems Boston has more than the average city its size, historically, currently, and institutionally. There is a lot of misguided boot-and-rally pride in this town and I don’t think that attitude represents every one’s experience here. That mentality gets exhausting to be around. Boston has a lot going on that people outside the city don’t normally associate with it. So we were having a bit of fun with that, I guess. It’s all tongue-in-cheek. But you are always more critical of the things you love and most endeared to. I felt like Boston deserved a Randy Newman-esq anthem and could have some fun with itself.”
The video was directed by Keiber and Michael Cimpher, and shows the band projected on buildings around Allston Village with visual scenes in Back Bay, Cambridge’s Central Square, and downtown. There’s even someone getting pulled over, probably for driving like a maniac or blowing through a right-turn-on-red.
“I had the concept and [Cimpher] shot all the stuff that looks good and edited it,” Keiber tells us. “We drove around the city a few months off and on and projected these huge images of the band playing on walls, bridges, etc. Anytime people asked what we were doing we told them ‘mayonnaise commercial’ which killed any further conversation. We avoided any iconic Boston sites because that’s not the Boston we know, its been done ad nauseam and we couldn’t get the permits.”
Well, except for the now-gone T.T. The Bear’s Place, and the sketchy dark corner a block away from O’Brien’s off Braintree Street towards the Mass Pike in Allston where you buy drugs so no one can see what you’re up to. Watch “Giving Myself Over to Boston” below, and check out the artwork for The Castrati Menace after the jump…
