2nd music video with danish group The Defectors

Shot over 100hrs video footage and a bit 8 & 16mm in Denmark at Roskilde Festival 2000 and during the bands tour in Germany 2001

Shared effort as Piko Bros with Dr. Schwartz

After the success, relatively speaking, of Alright Girl, The Defectors and their record company, Kick Music were, of course, more than ready to follow up with another music video. The trouble was, Kick Music claimed that no sale had come of the video and the first album and hence could not afford to invest in this one either. Needless to say, the band was broke too and with that in mind, Schwartz and I mbarked on the project of Darlin'. We had met as projectionists at the Nordisk Film cinemas in Copenhagen had pretty much the same idea of rock'n'roll and of the potential of The Defectors and at Roskilde Festival 2000 I shot the first material for the video. The concert was held outside the festival grounds on the Tuesday afternoon and it was legendary. Working with the Sony 900 cameras for the first time the material shot is most probably the poorest I have ever shot... But at least I was there next to Ekstra Bladets photographer when he shot that wonderful homoerotic nude for the front page...

At any rate, Schwartz and I filmed the band on tour through Germany, a time of which I am absolutely certain none of us have the slightest recollection. True rock'n'roll venture through the whole of which we were far more hell-bent than the band itself. Also, on this tour, I realized for the very first time the true power of camera & recording "in front of a live audience". We could - through our presence alone - tease the audience at first, then, in perfect synchronicity with the band, set the audience, however small, on full-on Farfisa fire. And this could be achieved by using only tiny handycams. And, granted, a great deal of rock'n'roll attitude...

In the editing room, beloved Final Cut Pro, we were faced with over a 100 hours of video footage and an hour and a bit on 8 & 16. I never want to do that again. It took us over 6 months to cut "Darlin´". It is possible that our decision as Piko Bros´ - "to cut it only high" - may have had something to do with it...

It is very pure and fresh though and when we presented it to Allan from Kick Music who called it "A Rock´n roll Testament", we were both very proud, I remember...

We then signed contracts giving each of us a percentage of the album Baby Gimme Love´s unlikely profit, and moved on to our ongoing film, Mit Out Sound...Søren Henner, editor of Patricide & Alright Girl whose judgement and views I deeply respect, said of Darlin´: "heavy-arsed to say it mildly!". He was referring to the editing which - apparently - ignored the track’s "Waltzy 1/8th´s". Very musical, our Uncle Henner is, and probably very right too. For a ballad, the video undoubtedly has an awful lot of cuts.

Upon receiving Darlin´, MTV had the ITC censoring board write the following:

The music video Darlin´ is banned and can only be shown late night due to the following:

1. Smoking

2. Female Breasts (and touching of)

3. Full male frontal

It was never shown. Somehow, I thought, the very last image would upset the most. Fraser Brocklehurst, my good friend from the Prague Film School days in front of an actual wall in the Czech capitol saying; "Sting is Dead".

But who knows? And who cares, really? About what & why commercial TV put on the stuff they do? As with all the other signicant "waves" - from rock´n´roll thru Punk to Techno - nothing will happen unless the works are visible - or in this case also - audible to the so-inclined public. Big shame really as Darlin´ is a formidable track, by all means.