NoMeansNo - The River

What can I say about NoMeansNo? They're one of those bands that I still need to explore much more deeply, but I have really liked everything I've heard. One article I read stated it very nicely: "When uttering the words 'Best Canadian Power Trio,' most plebian Canucks would primarily envisage Rush. For my money, however, the throaty bellows, funky distorted bass lines and battle-axe guitar choppings of Nomeansno slay Geddy's cat-in-in-a-lawnmower vocals, cheesy magniloquent synthesizers, sci-fi dungeon and dragon ramblings any day of the week." So, when NoMeansNo came to DC on a very rare East Coast tour, I was there with my camera. I had a friend who helped organize this tour and we had a bit of a falling out after this show, but that was a long time ago and there are certainly no hard feelings, so if she's reading this she should contact me about getting another copy of the show. This is from the Black Cat in DC on 11/18/00. Enjoy.

Sleater Kinney - The Fox

Over Halloween weekend, I had the amazing opportunity to go to the Vegoose Festival. I was there to shoot in the Vau De Vire Society's Twisted Cabaret Tent. It was quite an incredible experience and I have over 8 hours of footage from the festival which I will be posting here. I didn't get to see too many of the bands since most of my time was spent in the amazing cabaret tent, but I did make sure to see two of my absolute favorites, Sleater Kinney and Ween. And with my all access pass, I was able to see them from backstage! I shot Sleater Kinney's entire set. The audio from my camera wasn't so great, but I was able to download a really good audience recording and synch it to my video. Unfortunately, YouTube knocked it slightly off sync. Here's the first song, The Fox.

Let's Rage, Shall We

OK, the overwealming response from the audience is for Rage Against the Convention. By overwealming response, I mean the one guy in Blog Explosion's shoutbox who could be bothered to answer this poll. So this one's for you, dude.

In the year leading up to the 2000 elections, I was working at the Democratic National Committee as a web producer. I was not all that keen on Al Gore, but I was extra fired up against the republicans after the whole impeachment that I wanted to do whatever I could to lead to their crushing and embarassing defeat in the next elections. That obviously didn't work out too well, but that's for another blog as I really try not to get into political rants here. As the campaign wore on, I started liking our candidates even less, and by the time the convention rolled around, I was very disgruntled with the democratic party and ready to join the protest outside. The video quality is not that great as this is one of my earliest pieces.

What do you want to see next?

I have an assortment of videos that I could show next, but I figured I'd make things a bit more democratic and ask you, the audience, what you'd like to see next. I have a bunch of clips ready to go, and lots more that still needs to be captured and encoded, so I'll give you a few choices here...
Legendary Canadian post-punk power trio NoMeansNo live in DC, my behind the scenes mini-documentary of the 2000 Democratic Convention (with special guest stars Rage Against the Machine), a 30 second ad I did for the Bush in 30 Seconds contest... or a random video from the Vegoose Festival. Polls are open for an arbitrary amount of time, so vote early and vote often.

The Czech's in the Mail

Here's a 30 second short that I made for a new site called Accidental Moron. They're running a contest for short comedies and needed a few samples for their launch. If you've seen A Guy Walks Into a Bar, you will recognize Carlo. I met this guy at a party and thought he'd be great for comedy, and this is the second piece I've used him in.

Happy Thanksgiving - With Ween!

Today is a day to reflect upon things for which you are thankful. I am thankful for a lot of things. First and foremost I am thankful to have a wonderful wife with our wonderful little baby in her tummy. I'm thankful to have a great family and the best group of friends a guy could ask for. As much as I may complain about my day job sometimes, I am thankful to be employed. I'm thankful that I live in a wonderful and vibrant city. I'm thankful to live in a time where anybody can just pick up a camera and have their own TV show on the internet, and I'm thankful to be in a positition that allows me to do that.

But for the purposes of this video post, I would like to give thanks to Ween. For over 10 years, this band has lifted my spirits and rocked my world. The 7 or 8 times I've seen them have been like rock and roll therapy. Two of those shows, I've caught on video. This is Voodoo Lady from the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC, 4/6/01.

Battle o' the Blogs

OK, so I've had this blog up for a few days now, posted a few videos, and hit Blog Explosion to pimp for some traffic. I'm getting s respectable number of hits both on the page and on the videos. But the 5 times I've entered into Battle of the Blogs, I've gotten a sound beating. I'm not dissing on the blogs that I've battled against. They've all been worthy adversaries. But I would think that a blog offering original video content would do a little bit better.

So if you're coming here from Battle of the Blogs, would you please take a moment to comment and let me know why you're either voting for or against this blog? Thanks.

Billy Bragg - The Price of Oil

Washington, DC 10/22/02 - The night before, Billy Bragg played at the 9:30 Club, and the following day he came to the AFL-CIO to do a free show in their lobby for a get out the vote rally. One of my first jobs in DC was at the AFL-CIO, and for our project they had set up a cubicle farm right there in the lobby, so it was sort of like having Billy Bragg playing in my old office. I was introduced to him by a drag cheerleader friend of mine (you'll see him waving the pom poms when I post "There is Power in a Union"). Although this song was written before we attacked Iraq, the lyrics are just as poignant 3 years later.

A Taste of What's to Come

So why should you be checking out this blog, anyway? So far all you've seen has been one little 3 minute comedy, and a bunch of mindless destruction set to the Beastie Boys. But you must be wondering what else I could possibly have to offer to keep you folks coming back. So here's my demo reel to give you an idea of the range of material that I have ready for posting. Think of it as a trailer of sorts for this blog.

Welcome new Blog tenant and X-tra bonus video

Yes, it's this blog's first day out and I've already rented it out on Blog Explosion. Our very first blog tenant is Irreverent Codex. Please click that link to the right and give him a visit. From the bit I've read so far, this blog seems to live up well to it's quickie description: "Ted's (expat Brit in the US) website for his opinionated skewed look on the world. He says is like he sees it, love him, hate him want to punch him, he couldn't be arsed to care." It's a series of observations about day to day interactions with an interesting cast of characters. It's well written and nicely designed. Please give him some blog love.

Since I'd hate to rent him space on a video blog that only has one video, here's another one for you. My buddy Russ worked in the IT department at an old job of mine. One day he told me that he was going to be tossing some old computer monitors in the dumpster. I had just gotten my camera and was gung ho to shoot anything I could. Having recently watched Office Space, we knew what we had to do with these monitors. This was the very first video I put together after getting my camera. Scott worked in research and was captain of the softball team, so he supplied the bat and a busted VCR that he had a personal vendetta against, something to do with several eaten tapes. This was before I knew how to do firewire captures and was originally encoded to windows media so the quality is not the greatest. So without further ado, I give you Monitor Smackdown 2000.

A Guy Walks Into a Bar

This is my first short comedy. It was done for the Radio Alice 3 Minute Film Festival, a short film competition put on by San Francisco's premier wuss-rock radio station. It was written and shot over the course of 1 week last February. The entire cast and crew were folks that I met on Tribe.net, which is a social networking site with the bulk of its membership in the Bay Area. While it did not get into the Alice contest, it did play at the Zeitgeist Festival and the Rough Cut Festival. Here it is:

Welcome and About

Welcome to my brand new Video Blog. As the URL suggests, my name is Jason Buckley. By day, I'm an office manager and a graphic artist for a small window treatment subcontractor. In my free time, I'm a filmmaker and videographer. While my educational background is in broadcasting, I had never explored that field professionally. Instead, I followed a career of political activism and graphic arts. It was activism that led me back to video. During the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, I got to see the birth of the Independent Media movement, reading reports and watching videos from these protests as they were going on, told from the point of view of those protesting and without the sensationalist pro-corporate spin of the mainstream media. A year later, the anti-globalization movement came to Washington, DC where I was living at the time, this time to protest the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. I got to see these citizen reporters in action. Shortly thereafter, I bought my first camera and got my hands on a copy of Adobe Premiere. My first videos pretty much all were coverage of protests and other political events. I also shot a few concerts. In 2002, I decided to make a movie. It was a trashy, no budget political comedy called Washington Interns Gone Bad. Everything I know about filmmaking I learned from the mistakes I made making that film. Since then, I've moved to San Francisco, got married, got a job outside of politics, made a couple of short comedies, and captured lots of footage of various events and places. The aim of this blog is to share some of that footage with my friends, family, and anyone else interested enough to tune in.

Vlog Trailer

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