Wa Wa Wa

Let me tell you about my good friends' band, October Babies. The lead singer is Toko, an amazing, multi-talented woman from Japan. She and her husband, Erik, formed October Babies a few years ago (if I have my facts straight) to share their mutual interest in music. Erik is a really talented musician and together they have written some really interesting music that draws influence from multiple and varied sources. You might call the music Japanese pop or Japanese rock, but I think that it is much more than that.

Yes, most of the lyrics are in Japanese (though not all), but that is only one of the many musical influences you will find in their music. Later, they invited my friend Ben to drum for them as well as another guitar player, Dale, from their circle of musicians. The four of them make up the October Babies today, but the name came from the fact that both Toko and Erik were born in October. An interesting coincidence is the band in it's current form was also founded in October.

I've had the pleasure to watch them play a number of times, their music is on my iPod, and last year, I got to help them make a music video, of which I'm very proud. I realized today that I never shared that video on my blog, and I have no idea why.

From one of the venues that the October Babies used to play regularly (TC's Speakeasy which is now, unfortunately, closed), they met someone that had a connection with the Detroit Derby Girls. I don't know if she was actually one of the Derby Girls or if she just knew them, but they agreed to appear in the October Babies video for a song called Wa Wa Wa. This song really rocks, and it's one of my favorite October Babies songs, but I'm probably a little biased.

We showed up at the Detroit Masonic Lodge, which is home base for the Derby Girls, for several hours of filming. I can't take any credit for the camera work, which was all Mike Ouellette, but I directed and edited the video. I knew Mike would be way better on camera than me, so I just turned that over to him. I told him the shots I wanted and encouraged him to get anything that he thought was interesting. He gave me a lot of great footage to work with!

The video was finished last July, and the October Babies have moved on to a lot of other new and interesting songs, but I wanted to share this video that I helped to create. I really enjoyed the process of making this video and hope to have more opportunities in the future to work on more videos, especially if I can have Mike working camera!