John S. Hall is This Fuckin’ Guy. So we’re guessing wife-and-husband duo Azalia Snail and Dan West (both of LoveyDove) are You and Me. Before that, Hall, Snail and West went by the moniker King Missile IV—i.e. the fourth incarnation of Hall’s ongoing band King Missile, which had college-radio hits “Detachable Penis,” “Jesus Was Way Cool” and “Martin Scorsese” back when people were shorter and lived near the water.
Garden Variety Fuckers (Dromedary) is the debut album from You, Me, And This Fuckin’ Guy. We’re huge fans of the word “fuck” and its various derivatives, so we were very curious about why and how Hall chose to assume the role of This Fuckin’ Guy.
“I was on Governors Island, being interviewed for a feature in Vice, and I was in a kind of silly mood,” he says. “A dragonfly flew by, and I said, ‘Look at that fucking dragonfly,’ using that silly, Long Island accent. And later that day, I wrote a poem, ‘Dragonfly,’ in that voice. I wrote more and more poems in that voice and named the character This Fuckin’ Guy. I grew up in an Italian neighborhood in New York, and I wrote in the voice of my classmates or Long Island Italians. The accent isn’t authentic, although I’m half Italian. I only ever talk like that in jest. But I thought it was funny to have a guy who was flabbergasted by nature but cursed all the time as part of his natural language. I thought of This Fuckin’ Guy as a nature poet. The album reflects that.”
It’s only natural, then, that This Fuckin’ Guy, along with You and Me, would want to make a video for Garden Variety Fuckers track “Owl” and set it in the wonderful world of the wild. So they called filmmaker Steve Hanft, best known in music circles for his videos for Beck’s “Loser” and “Where It’s At.”
“Both Dan West and myself have admired the artistry and vision of Steve Hanft for many years,” says Snail. “We definitely feel like he is our spirit animal, as he loves and is inspired by all the great surrealists that inspire us: Maya Deren, Luis Bunuel, Bruce Connor and the like. We feel like he was the best possible visual artist to capture this project. We are super excited to share this, and we hope that the audience finds it both captivating and hilarious. I’d also like to add that I’ve known John for my entire musical career, and he has been a major inspiration and still makes Dan and I laugh —and ponder life in all its scintillating details.”
In these corona days, things that used to be relatively easy—like shooting a music video—now require more creativity. But since You, Me, This Fuckin’ Guy and Steve Hanft are total pros, they stepped up their game and made this classic clip for “Owl.”
“With a minuscule crew, we were able to film this video quite easily,” says Snail. “Steve and Ashley, who helped with camera, were able to be more than six feet apart from us the entire shoot. We were lucky to shoot on an isolated hillside with nobody around. It’s actually been a really prosperous time for us creatively since we are homebound and have used our time for nonstop musical and video projects.”
We’re proud to premiere the video for “Owl” today on magnetmagazine.com. Watch it right fuckin’ here, right fuckin’ now.
