The Gateway Drug "Babylon" Music Video Project

I recently re-found my “Babylon” music video project I completed for The Gateway Drug in the summer of 2010 and thought it needed a bit of a facelift. So after a bit of re-mastering and re-rendering – here it is [again]!

Here's the story behind the video as well:

Always on the verge of some progress while hanging out, Gateway Drug vocalist “The Top Civilian” Eric Osterholm and I came to the consensus one summer afternoon that The Gateway Drug needed some music videos to contaminate YouTube. A novel idea indeed! Well…maybe in the time of 480p resolution it was. But, the hope was that pairing audio with some intense visuals would give any average listener more incentive to actively pay attention to the entire product being presented. And eventhough video killed the radio star, we wanted to further spread the GwD message with a simple to share multimedia package that could more easily illustrate and explain the meanings behind the sometimes dense songs in the GwD catalog. After deciding that “Babylon” - the first track off the first official album - would be the best jumping-off point for a music video, we went to work.

Ideas began to swirl around as an impromptu brainstorm swept over the room. We figured why not let a needle dropping on a record be the world-at-large’s introduction to the ‘times new roman.’ album. Fair and simple enough notion, no? For nearly 75 years, the phonograph – record player – had been the preferred method of listening to music and a great symbol for organic and authentic tunes in today’s digital era. I had a pair of nice Tec 12’s and a crate full of indiscreet records as to fain the illusion that we actually pressed “Babylon” to wax.

(*Did you know?* The record actually playing throughout the video is 1984’s ‘Digital Big Band Hits’ with a rendition of “In the Mood” - made famous by Iowan Glenn Miller - as the exact groove being spun. I’m pretty sure I got this record for a quarter from the basement at Uncle John’s as it went out of business in 2007.)

We wanted to keep this first joint as straight-forward as possible and wait for a bigger budget (this one rang up at $0) to expound the crazy concepts we have buried in our mental banks. But we needed more than a spinning record to capture the essence and beauty of “Babylon”.

So from there I took the reins, turning inward to the lyrical content delivered by The Top Civilian and Corey “MC Brew” Brubaker to find my extra layer of inspiration for making the song an engaging period.

At the beginning of the second verse MC Brew declared, ”Babylon is here, eventhough it may seem see-thru.”

Boom! This declaration would be the central theme of the video. The turntable arm and spinning record would always remain the ‘home image’ throughout the song, but the focal point would be a series of flashing, transparent images relating to “Babylon” in all its meanings and senses. So then I went exploring for such depictions. To Google Images!

When I thought of “Babylon” and the ‘times new roman’ hypothesis as a whole, I instantly imagined the end of the world. In the Rasta culture, Babylon is a manifestation of Western society and the fall of civilization. It happened to the Roman Empire, and with the way things are going, the United States looks to be the new Rome…heading for its end times.

The pivotal and frequently-chanted hook is where I first began to construct end times scenario visuals. The apex of the track deserved the most powerful pictures, so I dug up several artists’ interpretations of the legendary Tower of Babel and of Babylonian architecture. These illustrations would appear when the emcees would forcefully repeated ‘Babylon’.

The surrounding pictures contained references to modern man-made disasters, ancient natural disasters, acts of GOD, the forces of earthly evil and Biblical allegories. Some pretty heady stuff. Do you’re a favor and research any of the interesting images you may be unfamiliar with.

…But the video is bookended by the words ‘faith’ and ‘hope’ (in Times New Roman font of course) to represent the Eternal Light that still shines through the darkest of trying times. Even as personal and professional Babylons crumble all around us, we must find the balance to walk the mortal path between the righteous and the wicked. A thin line indeed.

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Index of Babylon Video Images:

INTRO
Tower of Babel

VERSE ONE - The Top Civilian
House fire
Melting ice cap
Hurricane
Dust Bowl
Lightning (at Devil’s Tower)
Erupting volcano
Tornado
Flood
Forest fire
Plague of locusts

CHORUS (x2)
Tower of Babel
‘Fire from the sky’ destruction // Atomic bomb
Tower of Babel II
Aftermath of atomic bomb on Hiroshima
Babylonian empire
Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans
Tower of Babel
Aftermath of earthquake in Honduras // ‘Wrath of God’

VERSE TWO - MC Brew
Burglar in the night
USA: money & guns
Hindenburg explosion
Titanic sinking
Columbine school shooters
Bloody chalk outline
Books burning
Cortez tricks Montezuma
Brutus kills Julius Caesar
Malnourished African youth
Whipped American slave
9/11 Twin Tower attacks
Columbus ‘discovers’ West Indies
KKK rally and cross burning
Catholics crusaders killing
Starving Indians in poverty
Prescription pills
Duck caught in oil spill
Working man’s hands
President John F. Kennedy just before assassination
Nero
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just before assassination
Charles Manson
Tupac Shakur just before assassination
Elderly homeless lady

CHORUS (x2)
Tower of Babel
‘Fire from the sky’ destruction // Atomic bomb
Tower of Babel II
Aftermath of atomic bomb on Hiroshima
Babylonian empire
Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans
Tower of Babel
Aftermath of 9/11 at Ground Zero // Whore of Babylon

VERSE THREE
Roman Coliseum
Moses and the burning bush
Judgment Day rapture
Jerusalem
Rastafarian Lion of Zion
Moses parting the Red Sea
Angels in Heaven
Michelangelo’s Creation from the Sistine Chapel
Ten Commandments
Four Horsemen of Apocalypse
David slays Goliath
Egyptian pyramids and Sphinx
Da Vinci’s The Last Supper
Judas’ kiss of death
Light shines through onto Church steeple

CHORUS
Tower of Babel
‘Fire from the sky’ destruction
Tower of Babel II
Aftermath of atomic bomb on Hiroshima
Babylonian empire
Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans
Tower of Babel
Atomic Bomb
New Jerusalem
Earth