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August 3, 2007

Tour Blog: “Two Berries on a Twig” Music Video

Written by Girth McDürchstein on August 3, 2007 12:01 PM
Permalink |  Splitcock Tour -- Europe & Japan '07  | Digg It

It wasn’t the sound of glass shattering that woke us up—no, after a week in a French EconoLodge, you’re pretty much used to the noise of brawls, guns, and whores and can sleep through World War III. Maybe it stirred us a bit, but it was the shouting of “Kaplan! Kaplan!” over and over again that drew our attention.

Margo and I seemed to awaken simultaneously. Our eyes opened and we stared at each other for a quiet moment until the name “Kaplan” registered. We both got up and looked out the window at the bright blue light of the pool. As usual, Little Riffs Nicky was taking a nude night swim. He paid no attention to the man shrieking his last name.

Silently, we stepped out onto the breezeway and found Carl and Mikey already out there, in their boxer shorts, baffled.

“Who is that?” Mikey asked me.

“How the fuck should I know?” I said.

Mikey shrugged.

I stepped out into the concrete courtyard and looked up at the balcony above us. There stood a man with a long face, a cigarette in desperate need of ashing hanging from his lips. He wore a thin goatee, a black beret, a tight red-and-white-striped sailing shirt, and gray short-shorts. He didn’t notice me at first. He also didn’t notice when the rest of the band stepped out onto the courtyard and stared up at him. The man was fixated on Little Riffs Nicky.

With the help of a skimmer, Mikey rousted Riffs out of the pool and, for the first time, our rhythm guitarist took notice of the Frenchman shouting at him.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked.

“I need no introduction other than, I am Henri Cocteau,” the man said with a heavy French accent, raising one arm in the air proudly.

Riffs glanced at me. “Who?”

Before I could give an obscene answer, Henri clapped his hands together—inadvertently turning the hanging ash of his cigarette into a fine mist of gray powder—and shrieked, “I am a performance artist of legends. Surely you have heard of me.”

The whole of Abysmal Crucifix looked at every other member, searching faces for recognition, but we came up short.

“Nonetheless,” Henri Cocteau continued, “I am a fan the biggest of yours, Nicholas H. Kaplan. I have read your book of stories and wish greatly to adapt one into a short film.”

“Yes!” I snapped. “A music video!”

“What—?”

“We can find one of Riffs’ stories that sort of has the same vibe as one of my songs, and put them together like magic—”

“Mr. Kaplan, who is this American roughneck?”

“My name is legendary rock star Girth McDürchstein,” I said.

“He’s the leader of my band,” Riffs said, and if I didn’t know him better I would have thought he sounded a touch embarrassed. “So, you read my book?”

It’s true: during our hiatus from 1999 to 2001, Riffs had a book of short stories published in Japan and Holland. The title varies depending on the region, but each roughly translates to Gilded Horse Memories, taken from a story about the American dream gone horribly awry.

After discussing it with Margo and Riffs for an hour, we agreed that his story “Cigarette Burns” had a very similar feel to our song, “Two Berries on a Twig,” the title track of our 1996 album of the same name. Each deals with loss, sadness, insanity, and obsession. In fact, one could argue that the story “Cigarette Burns” was inspired directly by “Two Berries on a Twig,” which Riffs said on multiple occasions was his favorite song in the Abysmal canon—“It’s so true to my life experience,” he often said.

We took the proposal to Henri Cocteau, who declared “Cigarette Burns” the finest American short story he had ever read (kind of ironic since the version he read was English translated into Japanese translated into Dutch, which he had to mentally translate into French). He knew exactly what to do, too. Henri Cocteau smiled and said, “This will be the greatest film I ever make. It will finally get me out of this hole of a motel!”

Three days later, he did it: we received the final edit for our first music video since the disastrous, abandoned video shoot for “Rolling in It” in 1998. Our publicist, Lacey Greenwood, uploaded it to YouTube so you all can see it. It should pop up below. Enjoy!