This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Homegrown Music Festival and 10 years of the Homegrown Music Video Festival. Participants in the video fest are assigned a random song by a local band and usually have a few weeks to put together a video. Over the past ten years, there have been videos with found footage, lip-synced performances, dolls, puppets, pets, animation, just about anything goes.
High-definition videos of people surfing Lake Superior have become a fairly regular thing on Perfect Duluth Day in recent years. The short and fuzzy one above lacks the quality we’re used to these days, but is featured today because it’s ten years old and might be the first Lake Superior surf video published on PDD — or maybe anywhere else. (Prove that assertion wrong and find an older one.)
Barrett Chase posted this clip on April 10, 2008. He noted winds were at 40 m.p.h.
“Check out this short video snippet of some crazies surfing on Lake Insanity near Lester River today just before the onset of the blizzard,” he wrote.
Released today: The music video for Duluth native Al Church’s song “Night Games.” It’s the title track to Church’s next album, scheduled for release April 27.
It’s been mentioned a few times in “Duluth reference” posts on PDD, but the clip has never been featured. So here it is, the cold open from season 2, episode 20 of Cheers.
Denfeld High School’s Maroon 16 choir sings “I Want to Know What Love Is” with Foreigner at Symphony Hall in the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center.
From April 5, 2008, comes perhaps the weirdest video ever posted on Perfect Duluth Day.
It was originally published by the user “-berv” under the headline “Best watched while drunk, if at all,” and with the description “my sessile cephalopod friend gets drunk and vomits in the microwave.”
Thursday, April 5, 5 p.m.
UMD vs. Ohio State
Ten years ago today — April 4, 2008 — the trailer was released for the Duluth-made mockumentary … and on the 7th Day, God Rocked.
The teaser text reads:
“Who will you root for in this laugh-out-loud rockumentary about a Christian Battle of the Bands? Wrathful Old Testament hip-hoppers the Sons of Abraham or born-again hard-rockers Savior? Lapsed Catholic Angie Hynes, who’s gone from punk to country in search of success, or the folksy love-fest of harmony-laden trio Glory Authority?
A recording contract awaits the winner. Who that will be, only God (and perhaps the promoter) knows …”
Nearly a half-hour of circular-aspect iPhone video of Duluth skateboarding action featuring Carter Nguyen, Kaden Lindvall, Lloyd Fisher, Twan Brown, Jesse Ayers, Wyatt Lindberg, Josh Kuno, Simon Walters and friends. Shot and edited by Wyatt Lindberg.
This video was uploaded to YouTube ten years ago today — April 1, 2008. It landed on Perfect Duluth Day two days later, posted by someone using the screen name “Repur.”
A group of cool people, including drummer Bill Gibson of Huey Lewis and the News, got together last week to flex their musical muscles and play the music of the Specials as part of the Ides of March Bacchanalia Festival of 2018. Here is one of the songs they played.
Jacob Mahon releases his debut album, Llamaless, during a concert Saturday night, March 31, at Beaner’s Central.
Video by Boston-based marketing firm Swiftkurrent.
