Back in June of 1997 my band Summercamp was on tour and in the process of making the music video for Drawer for MTV. The director Tamra Davis mailed us VHS tapes of rough cuts over the course of a couple of weeks. There were three rough cuts (that I’m aware of). This is Rough Cut #3:
My father, Dan McCue, designed and built this beautiful and powerful hybrid car on the chassis of a 1973 Opel GT in Santa Barbara, California. The body has been masterfully re-imagined with the idea of form following function: Flared fenders to accommodate wide wheels and tires. Air intakes and outlets for brake cooling. Massive air intake for radiator and oil cooling heat exchangers. The hood has a gracefully sculpted NACA scoop to feed cool air to the naturally aspirated Weber carburetor, bolted to a ported Mazda RX-7 13B rotary engine. The driveline, brakes and suspension have been completely replaced with custom fabricated parts and RX-7 suspension elements. The custom free-flow exhaust makes quite a throaty roar.
Photos taken in the hills of Santa Barbara, California.
My sister, Dana Lawton, asked me to compose music for a modern dance piece she choreographed centered around the idea of holding space.
Audio only here:
To learn more about the choreographer visit Dana Lawton Dances.
I had the pleasure of participating in the “Keep the Beat” Radiothon to help raise money and encourage the donation of musical instruments for kids in the unified school district of Santa Barbara. Michelle Beauchesne and I went down to KTYD 99.9 and visited with the wonderful Lin Aubuchon & Bill Pesso who were hosting the Radiothon. There was a brief interview and we played an acoustic version of the Summercamp hit “Should I Walk Away” and our spin on the U2 song “Beautiful Day“.
Well over a decade ago I was asked to record a version of Eddie Money’s Two Tickets to Paradise for a film. As a lark I got together with some from friends one day at my house and recorded this: https://seanmccue.bandcamp.com/track/two-tickets-to-paradise
Two Tickets to Paradise by Sean McCue
It didn’t make it into the final cut of the film, and as a result has been sitting on the shelf for years. I figure now is an appropriate time to share the fun time that was had that day. Thank you Eddie… Rest in Peace.
A band from Moscow, Russia called “Pompeya” is on tour in the states and came through Santa Barbara August 18th, 2019. They played a show at Fox Winery for a Red Wagon Music event. My daughter Nina shot the video and I made a mix of the (somewhat) individually tracked audio. Warning: Catchy song. Get your eighties on!
A film by Eric Keltner. Music by Sean McCue. © 2019 McCusic Publishing. Produced at Coyote Road Studios in Santa Barbara, CA.
“My cousin Eric Keltner sent me an old Super 8 movie he shot and cut together back between 1978 and 1981. He was part of that whole skateboarding craze back then in Los Angeles. Pretty cool. I saw the footage, looked at the length of it and saw that it was about 5:20. On a whim I sorted through songs I’ve been working on by length and I found one called “Chasing Yesterday”. It lined up with the film perfectly! No splicing, no editing. This is a real time capsule.” – S. McCue
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A word from the filmmaker, Eric Keltner:
From 1978 thru 1981 a group of friends and I set out on a mission with one thing in mind— To find empty swimming pools. And when we came across one, it was a rush like no other – especially for the first guy over the wall. I was that guy at the pacific pool in Glendale. The pool was painted blue and had a quick transition that shot straight up to about 6 feet of vertical. I got a few front side rides in, and was just about at the vert line, when two other dudes climbed over and started to shred. We were just getting warmed up when the cops rolled up. We were so quick in those days by the time they got out of the car, we were already over the fence and scattered in all different directions. But that wasn’t the case in another pool in Pasadena. A home owner saw a couple dudes shredding his newly plastered pool and ended up tying up one of the dudes with rope and left him in the deep end until the cops came. Both of them ended up getting in trouble. There were some amazing wooden ramps and halfpipes throughout our hometown of Los Angeles as well. One was at the top of someone’s driveway off Colorado Blvd over looking the newly built Trader Joe’s market in Eagle rock. Another was the Kona Gold ramp on Effie street in Silverlake. There was a great halfpipe someone built right in the front yard in Atwater. There was a fast-little black pool at the top of fletcher called Dead Man’s pool in Silverlake. And then one day we came across a beautiful pool that was half empty on a lot with a boarded-up house. So, I brought some empty 5-gallon buckets from my grandfather’s paint shop and began the arduous journey to drain the pool five gallons at a time. After two days of heaving buckets and an invasion of mosquito bites, we quit. Then there was the Duck Bowl – a pool nestled up in the Hollywood Hills that was always packed with a host of really skilled shredders. This was all filmed with my Super-8 camera which I took with me everywhere I went. I bought the Kodachrome 40 film from Save-On in Silverlake. I had it developed there as well. Then began the painstaking hours of hand-splicing with my Kodak Super-8 film splicer. When it was all done, we set up the projector and found the biggest wall in the house, pushed the play button and sat in amazement watching ourselves skate throughout our hometown of Los Angeles. We all had our own style of skating, and pushed each other to the extreme. It was a great time in our lives with good friends and influences like Tony Alva, Stacy Peralta, Jay Adams, and many more.
– Eric Keltner
