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Here Come The Tears
12/06/10 01:16, by Paul Bourgeois, Categories: BFMN Exclusive, Monday Morning Musical Musings, Paul Bourgeois , Tags: concert, judas priest, monday, paul bourgeois, van morrison, video, weekend 
Hey, people. This week has been crazy. I have been running back and forth and editing and negotiating… I’m going mad, I tell you, quite mad! My mind is crumbling. My heart is dying. But while I write Van Morrison sings “It Ain’t Easy Being Green.” So it ain’t so bad as I unstring with Van. Maybe I can talk about that.
Follow up:
Eric and I recently got a gig at the big concert hall on December 11th. Lots of people. We will be one of many bands. It will be a black shirt white tie affair. I may shave.
Well, this was immediately on the heels of us finishing our filming for our Revenge video. But wouldn’t it be nice for us to get some live footage, if I can manage to film and perform at the same time? And it has just snowed, so in a few days we can stage a snowball fight. Some nice conceptual images relating to conflict and hell there. Things are shaping up, people. Rock and roll.
But they have a camera and projector so I get to design some background psychedelia to our music and maybe some others. So editing for our video is on the back burner suddenly.
But the most emotionally taxing moment of the past week was something I thought would be fairly easy. Six years ago I began a career as a filmmaker. I got funding for a documentary. Went to the United States and began filming. Well I got a lot of really nice footage. But one of the people I filmed ended up being my wife and I moved to Finland and started a family, and thus ended my career as a filmmaker.
Well, over the years I have edited the material together into a nice little documentary video. Something close to my heart and a part of me. A document about empowerment, about being and expressing in a cold hard world, my first film, an expression of self. And last week I decided I should make it available to the world. So I contacted the people involved and found that that was not an option. This is the equivalent of my life’s work, wrenched from my hands and smashed on the ground. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s how it felt.
So I haven’t had a nice week. I end this little note with Judas Priest screaming in my ears “Here Come the Tears.” Nevertheless, I had better get back to work. I will have some blues to sing on the 11th for sure. Thanks for listening. I hope everyone else is having a happy holiday season.
1 comment
So many times you shoot stuff and get yourself emotionally invested in a project and then, for one reason or another, you can’t release it. It feels like getting punched in the face. Thirty years ago I was shooting a doc on carnivals and Tanya Tucker was playing at the Fresno Big Fair. We conned our way into the stage area and were shooting with three cameras. She and Glen Campbell were a hot item at the time and their version of “Dream Lover” had just had a video release. Glenn was visiting Tanya and had broken his wrist playing tennis that morning so in the middle of her performance he comes striding out on stage, cast on wrist and grinning at her reaction. Tanya seemed totally surprised, his appearance wasn’t planned. They started to do “Dream Lover,” and it was a great performance. They were just at the peak of their relationship and that all came through as they sang and looked into each other’s eyes. I had a camera at the front of the stage which was shooting up, into their faces. They were inches apart. These were two seasoned veterans performing as much for each other as for the crowd. It was really magical, massively better than the video that they had on the air. Well, lots of egos were involved, plus two different record companies and then Tanya and Glen broke up. The end result? This classic, true performance is sitting out in my warehouse. It’s under the old Bar BQ if I remember correctly. Good luck with your gig on the 11th. 
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