Brian Slattery Photos
On the set at Cafe Nine for the filming of a new music video.
Why make a music video in 2020?
“For one thing,” Robinson said, “I want to make a music video because I think it would be fun…. I’ve been wanting to do a music video since I was 12, and here we are.”
When Robinson was 12, MTV was still playing music videos. But in a lot of ways, the form has never been stronger. Beyoncé and Janelle Monáe have made nearly full-length films to accompany their latest releases. And even without the benefit of fame and a massive marketing budget, with a music industry unsteadily adjusting to the age of YouTube and streaming, the question of how to market yourself is wide open. Rapper Tierra Whack rose to a Grammy nomination with a combination of boundary-pushing music and arresting visuals. “You can reach your audience in whatever way you think is best,” Robinson said.
Even locally, New Haven bands have expanded their reach by making videos set in the Elm City. Ceschi used Cafe Nine, Edgewood Park, Wooster Street, and other locations for “Elm City Ballad.” Snowprah rocked the Hill in “Yank Riddim.” Perhaps most memorably, Laundry Day’s “Seven Seas” was an exhilarating tour of New Haven that had something for everyone.
“‘I’ve been there, I’ve been there, I haven’t been there, I want to go there,’” Robinson recalled of watching the Laundry Day video. “I think it gave you a little local pride. And if that video ever blows up, other people will see it, too.”
Robinson’s own recent artistic experiences also pointed toward the possibility of making a video to support The New Chastity. “I just did an opera last week, and I’m remembering what it’s like to be an actor. The music video lets me do that,” he said.
The New Chastity is an unflinching look at the breakup of a marriage, but in the music and even the title of the album, Robinson’s humor and flair for the theatrical makes the album more richly emotional than simply sad — and he is quick to make himself the butt of the joke. The specific song, “Our Friends Don’t Know,” “is about putting on airs while you go home miserable,” he said.
The scenario he imagined for the video was in keeping with that tone. He cast himself as a sloppy, way-too-oversharing-and-overbearing lounge singer in a club sometime in the late 1970s, singing in front of a disaffected, incompetent band and playing for an audience whose opinion of him moves from skepticism to near-revulsion — all played for laughs. “He’s supposed to be entertaining people, but winds up being way too personal,” Robinson said. “It’s an inflation of my self-consciousness.”
Robinson rented a suit from Fashionista to get the look he wanted and did a little modification to his face. “I shaved my beard and left the mustache because Vechel texted and said, ‘we’re doing mustaches, right?’” Robinson said. Sporting only a mustache, it turned out, was new for Robinson. “I’m looking at myself in the mirror and thinking about how my mouth works,” he said.
Robinson scouted locations in search of his lounge. He found one in Hamden, but the owner demurred; he was worried about ASCAP violations. Cafe Nine owner Paul Mayer, however, was game. They settled on Saturday afternoon from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. The bar would be open, but it would be quiet enough to do what was needed. Robinson enlisted musician and artist Chris Carlone to handle the lighting, camerawork, and other technical aspects of making the video. Then he set about turning a corner of Cafe Nine into the lounge he needed.
“I bought ashtrays and burgundy tablecloths, and I had a lot of fun doing it,” Robinson said. He also found packs of cigarettes of period-specific brands he could distribute among the audience.
Cafe Nine officially opened at noon, and a few bar patrons took their seats at the bar while Robinson and Carlone quickly got to work, dressing the club’s stage in velvet and the first few tables in front of the bar in tablecloths.
Perhaps the most transformative element, however, was the lighting. The daylight streaming through the windows muted many of the colors inside the club. Carlone’s lights and gels brought them back to life, bathing the stage and the immediate seating nearby in vibrant yellows and fiery reds. Carlone’s first footage, started just before 1 p.m., was of Horsley-Parker’s hands working the keys.
Readjusting the lighting, Carlone then got ready to shoot the footage that would become the spine of the video, of Robinson and the band “performing” the song.
Carlone checked the time. “We have an hour and 40 minutes,” he said.
“That’s not a lot of time,” Robinson said. They got to work.
Even from the first take, Robinson was in character; as soon as the camera was rolling, he lost his affable demeanor and became a man who started off kind of nervous, very drunk (which Robinson himself was not) and utterly theatrical. Carlone had the band do two full takes of the song.
In between takes, Robinson motioned to the Bloody Mary that Jaymes had perched on a stool next to him. “I love that you have that right next to you,” Robinson said.
“It’s my escape,” Jaymes said. “My escape from your ego.” Robinson laughed.
On the third take, all the musicians were in character along with Robinson. Jaymes was confused but committed. Horsley-Parker stuck to her job, detached. Anthony became a hilariously incompetent mess.
Carlone then donned a pair of roller skates, and took a final shot of the band onstage, which he acquired by swooping in through the bar and stopping on Robinson’s face — a cheap but effective dolly system. He declared that he had what he needed to edit together a good stage performance.
It was now time to film the parts that would let Robinson and Carlone tell the story they wanted to tell, of a lounge singer who loses his audience, awkwardly, spectacularly, catastrophically. He turned to the audience members who had come dressed for the shoot — this reporter and Karen Ponzio at one table, Jaymes (now, incongruously but funnily, at a table) and Haley Copes at another, and Liz Richards and a friend of Copes’s seated at the counter running along the wall. First Carlone filmed an opening shot of us on the stage, looking skeptical. Then it was time for Robinson to interact with us.
We talked about how outrageous the video should get — how much Robinson was willing to do, how much we were willing to tolerate. Robinson was a gentlemen; he didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable. But it turned out the audience was game to make things awkward, to make the video as funny as it could be.
So Robinson’s interrupting the first couple — Jaymes and Copes — started merely with him getting in their faces, and them shooing him away. Someone then thought maybe it would be better if Robinson gave Copes a thoroughly unwanted shoulder massage that, it would be clear, was beyond the pale. Everyone agreed, and so it was that Robinson’s character could be chased away.
Next was our table. I agreed to be the target of Robinson’s unwanted affection. “Is it okay if I caress you a bit?” Robinson said. “Sure,” I said, “let’s go for it.” We did three takes. With each take Robinson pushed it a little farther, and I thought only about making sure I could keep a straight, if fake-disgusted, face. After that, Robinson then drank our drinks and took a (small, fake) puff of the cigarette in the ashtray — the least ingratiating singer ever.
At the counter, it was agreed, Robinson would get his final comeuppance. “I want you to slap me,” Robinson said to Richards. Richards agreed. They did three takes, getting the slap as timed up with the music as they could.
We did a few other small takes — packing smokes to the beat, everyone in the audience lip-synching a couple of the background vocals.
“What else do we need?” Carlone said.
“I’d like to do one more take of me harassing people,” Robinson said.
“You want to do that?” Carlone said.
“Yes!” we responded.
Robinson decided that the end of the video should involve his character being roughly escorted from the bar by a couple people who have had enough. Problem was, we had run out of audience members. It was 2:15 p.m. — just 45 minutes to finish up.
Robinson approached the people who had been at the bar all afternoon, chatting with each other and watching the video shoot.
“Can one of you drag me?” Robinson asked.
“Ask the big guy,” the bar patron said. “That’s his specialty.”
It was decided, in the end, that two of them should drag Robinson out of the bar, which they did with some gusto. Carlone had them do a couple takes of it.
“It’s a wrap!” he announced. There were cheers and some applause. It was almost 3 p.m. The musicians were beginning to arrive for Cafe Nine’s jazz jam session at 4 p.m. The video shoot was disassembled fast. Then the editing would begin.
The video for “Our Friends Don’t Know” is slated to appear in a few weeks. Check Brian Ember’s website and social media presence.