For those of you who haven’t seen this yet, this is the latest creation from Your Basic Tune & Lube. It started off as a spur-of-the-moment project (one my favorite kinds of projects), took about 6 hours to shoot and about 30 to edit. The multi-talented and my odd-ball best friend, Brandon Mullan, gives a riveting performance throughout. For more information on the quirky songs I write with my friends, please visit www.yourbasictuneandlube.com. Enjoy~
Wow. It’s been over seven years since me and my friends made Hobos in Space: A Musical Tragedy our junior year of high school.
“What is it?” you ask? Well, let me tell you! Hobos in Space is a 50-minute movie musical about a hobo who falls in love in a somewhat Shakespearean way (that is, they die). Somehow, we managed to reserve our high school auditorium on a Saturday night back in the simpler days of 2003, paid a tech friend under the table to let us in and turn some stuff on, and invited our entire student body to attend for free by running trailers on the school’s video announcements. Over 600 people attended the screening — that was more than any single band, orchestra, or choir concert.
It’s one of the projects that I’m most proud of, still to this day, because it was about some really good friends (3 of the 4 hobos who are still best friends) getting together and being creative without any outside influences. And by “outside influences” I don’t mean drugs; I mean that I’ve noticed lately that a lot of my creative friends, both in film and in music, are coming up with ideas based solely on desires to “get noticed” or make a movie that is “film festival material” or develop something that is going to “make money.” There’s not necessarily anything bad about wanting to make something that has high commercial value or a marketable appeal. However, it saddens me that these thoughts often cloud our creativity to the point that our creative voices get somewhat lost, or at least, trampled on. I’d rather be a broke and living on the streets than make something that I wasn’t passionate about.
Let’s go back to 2003. Let’s go back to when things were just “for fun.”
Per one of my graduation requirements for ASU, I had to produce a 8 - 10 minute documentary on a subject of my choice. Since I worked with my friend Dan (who recorded the concerts) and the Arizona Musicfest back in February, I asked them if I could do a piece on their composer in-residence for the week, Mason Bates. I could be boring and just type a bunch of information about him and his music, or I could invite you to watch the 9-minute piece on YouTube. I suggest YouTube.
