The Slew, The Making Of, The Video

The Slew is a project that Seattle's Dynomite D and I started in the early 2000s.  

I had met Dylan through Money Mark, Mario C and the Beastie Boys channels.  

We would hang out whenever I toured through Seattle. We'd go to swap meets and dig for mics and guitar pedals and talk music all day. 

I did some guest turntables on his album "By The Way" and we worked on a few remixes together including "Third World Lover" on the Bombay The Hard Way Series and a Free Design remix for Light In The Attic Records.  

We always had fun working and thought it would be great to do a full album project together. And that's when The Slew was born. We wanted to make a RAWK record out of turntables.  Something our skatedboard buddies in Seattle would dig.  Something dusted.  

A Rock record that Turntable kids would dig.  A Turntable record that Rock kids would dig.  

We had 2 music goal posts in mind vibe-wise when making the album. We wanted the feel to land somewhere between a Black Sabbath and a Public Enemy record.  

At the time the media was using the term "Turntablism" a lot. It reminded us of the time everyone used the term "Grunge" to encompass the whole Seattle scene. So we put it together and said this would be the first "Grungelism" record.  LOL!  It was mainly recorded in Seattle. I would stay a few extra days whenever I had a gig in the Northwest to work on it.  

Vid Cousins (engineer), Dylan and I all went to Los Angeles to do the final mix with Mario Caldato Jr. aka Mario C. (producer/engineer for the Beastie Boys). Then I went to New York to do the final mastering of the album with Howie Weinberg!  who incidentally, also mastered Nirvana's Nevermind and several of my favorite Public Enemy albums!  

Above is the official video for the track "It's All Over" from The Slew's debut album 100%.

To keep it... er, "grunge-lism-y"  we shot the video using a Fisher Price PXL 2000 camera.  This was technology from the 80s. You'd find it at department stores. They made toys for babies and toddlers and A/V devices like durable plastic turntables and cassette players.

The PXL records video NOT on to a VHS tape but rather, onto a standard audio cassette!  SAY WHAT? Yeah I said it... It records video onto an audio cassette! Hey magnetic information is magnetic information, right? 

This video was directed by my friend Paul Labonte. It was shot in the garage connected to my studio at the time which was in an old corner neighborhood hardware store. I had just moved my studio there and needed to renovate the garage but I thought it's crumbling, deteriorated state would be perfect for The Slew video. It made sence since the whole concept of the project was to be kind of a  turntable garage band anyway. 

Update! A few of you have asked if there is ever going to be another Slew record. And the answer is DEFINITELY! We've already started working on it. As you know it's one of my stretch goals here on Patreon to eventually save up enough to bring the band back together! This includes all the Slew extended family, Vid Cousins and The Slew's live extended family DJ P-Love, Chris Ross and Myles Heskett (formerly of the band Wolfmother). We all live in different cities, countries and continents (Canada, USA, Australia) so it's been difficult to get everyone back in the same studio at once. But we will make it happen someday!

In the meantime enjoy the video!  

Enjoy! 

E