Ahoy YBHers,
for those of you who have purchased a physical CD, either at a show or online, you may have noticed a picture lurking beneathe the CD itself. It looks a little something like this:
There are a few things I’d like to specify in reference to this image.
#1. You may notice the sole person occupying this photo is myself, frontman Brendan McCreary. Around the time we were taking these photos, the CD design was well under way, this was around August of 2010, but the personell of the band hadn’t yet matured to its current touring capacity. We (Bryan Taylor [drums]) and myself were going through bass players left and right, trying to find the perfect fit, eventually very comfortably settling on Sam Beumier for bass, and Merrick Mosst on keys. I didn’t want a photo of an incomplete band on the record, so we decided to stick my ugly mug on there for the first pressing, and for the 2nd, get a bonafied band photo ready to go.
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#2. That is REAL FIRE. Not photoshop fire. The original concept I cooked up was to have a bouquet of poppies in one hand, and both my feet be ablaze. These things would represent two of my favorite lyrics off the record (if you listen, its not hard to figure which ones) At the time, poppies were out of season, so that fell through, but when photographer Andrew Craig said he knew of several ways of lighting shoes on fire for real without permanently damaging the wearer, I leapt at the chance. I wanted to do something legit for my debut record, and what could be more legit then lighting yourself on fire. I will spare you the details as to how we did it, because that would ruin the magic, but I will say, that trying to model and look super cool for the camera is extremely difficult when your shoes are lit up. Here are some highlights:
I drove around town trying to find some dingy/gritty places and I found two excellent spots. The first was in east LA underneath the 7th street bridge.
The second was an aquaduct in the LA river…
What you can’t see clearly is all the overhanging vines obscuring the entrance to the tunnel, nor all the graffiti on the walls. Also, it doesn’t look like it, but the jump to get down there was about 8-10 feet. So we had to scramble like crazy to get back up.
We only used the one photo for the inside of the record but here are a few more highlights:
I really loved this location. But it was just too brite out, and the sun kept obscuring the fire!
This is inside the tunnel. Check out all the awesome graffiti.
As you can see the flames are quite small on this take. We would light the shoes up, and get a pretty decent fire going, but after a few seconds the flames would start to die out. This was a relief but made for a lot of wasted photos. Sometimes the wind would blow the fire straight at my shoe and it would burn like hell.
At the end of the shoot I decided to prance around the tunnel with my shirt off, mercifully without any pyrotechnics involved. This was a very candid and honest smile Andrew grabbed, I also love the contrast in colors behind me.
So you may also have noticed the super glam makeup adorning my beautiful mug in these shots, and that was concocted by this lovely lady:
One miss Wendy Jean. She came over that morning and asked me what I wanted to do, and I probably said, “I dunno…something with glitter,” or words to that effect and BLAMMO! That’s what I got. It was pretty incredible walking around town with all that glitter on my face. I love glitter, mainly because of Tom Cruise in Legend…
Its not clear from this picture, but he is super glittery throughout the entire movie. Okay…moving right along.
Other behind the scenes highlights include:
As the picture suggests, dear Wendy and a good friend Matthew were charged with the grotesque responsibility of actually lighting me on fire for each take. This was extraordinarily challenging because something (naturally) would go wrong. One of the lighters wouldn’t work, or someone would light the wick while the other didn’t. Sometimes too much lighter fluid would have been applied and all of a sudden my feet would blow up. It was madness. The set up per take was like 10-20 minutes for maybe 2-3 minutes of fire. Here’s another:
Myself and photographer Andrew Craig exchanging ideas while Albert (who frequently plays acoustic guitar and sings backup with us) readied the moving blankets in case I caught fire. After a few takes it became obvious just how absurdly flammable I was, and Albert would douse my shoes and pants in water before we lit them on fire again. That helped a lot. Like so:
A pensive moment. Barbara our merch maestro and eventual road manager was the one sneaking all these behind the scenes shots.
Everyone had their job. Matthew’s (at left) was to light me up, Andrew’s was to photograph, and Albert was our “in-case-of-emergency” man.
Scoping out the graffiti.
I just really like Albert’s face in this photo.
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And that just about wraps it up.
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you haven’t done so already, please check out the Young Beautiful in a Hurry debut record. Its available on iTunes amongst many other online retailers, but you can listen to full length previews here:
http://youngbeautifulinahurry.bandcamp.com/
Physical CDs and merch are also available. I have received word from many satisfied customers, that the t-shirts are super comfy, and look effin’ sexy as all get out. Would you believe me if I said we grew the cotton ourselves? Alright fine…its American Apparell. Sheesh.
Until next time my friends, stay YBH.
Love,
Brendan
Amen my friend,
don’t you lose your desire.
Crossin’ that bridge,
with both feet on fire…
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PS. As a final note, I would like to give a shout out and special thanks in memorium to Jenny, who had met her tragic end at our first location:
It kind of felt a little strange doing our glammy glam photo shoot where someone (Jenny) had died, so I thought we should photograph her sign and pay tribute, but that was all. But when Jenny decided to visit us at our second location…
Eerily coincidental, I knew we had to give her a special place on the record. So for those of you lucky enough to own a physical CD, perhaps you can find our little tribute to dearly departed Jenny Martinez. Rest in peace Jenny!
