Everyone has to start somewhere and the early to mid 80s North Carolina music scene was the beginning of it all for me. I showed up fresh from the 1970s NYC Punk scene and wanted to go further as a music video director. Since I had directed one music video for my Punk band in 1977, I used that video to talk my way into working with The Fabulous Knobs. After that I was quickly accepted into the music community and from there, we all grew as many of these videos wound up airing on HBO and MTV.
As for the music scene, it’s considered the Golden Age of North Carolina Rock music. 1981 thru 1984 brought together a group of extraordinary music and recording artists that reverberated around the world and beyond their time. North Carolina artists such as Arrogance, the dB's, the Fabulous Knobs, Glass Moon, The Spongetones and others would directly influence R.E.M., Hootie and the Blowfish, the Georgia Satellites and more. The scene would later be christened "Comboland" and I was lucky enough to have shot many hours of video of the scene.
As explosive as the scene was in the early 80s, by 1984 it was devolving. Almost all of the bands I had worked with were breaking up and so by the summer of 1984 I broke up with the scene too and moved to Nashville. For me, this was graduation and on to more major label music videos. But looking back at these videos today, the images are fun to watch and the music is even more fun to hear. After all these years, they still hold up.
Make sure to check out the bottom of this page. Since many of these NC artists continue to perform, you'll find a few current NC music videos as well, with two of those videos winning an amazing number of international film festival honors!
THE FABULOUS KNOBS
"Please You No More" (1981)
My first music video was created for my NYC Punk band EARS in 1977. But that was a performance video. The Fabulous Knobs was my first concept music video - meaning there is a performance and some sort of storyline going on in the video. The production location is The Pier nightclub in Raleigh. It had a stage, a bar, tables, a video game and it was free - all of which fit the budget. To show how early this video is in the history of music videos, “Please You No More” was edited six days before the launch of MTV. This video is way ahead of it’s time. The Classic early 80s look just adds charm to its 40+ years.
the dB's
"Ups & Downs" LIVE (1981)
As luck would have it, I was shooting the music video “Like A Revolver” for Luky Owen & Revolver at the Cafe Déjà vu and across the hall, loading in to The Pier nightclub, were the dB’s. Peter Holsapple from the dB’s dropped by to see what was going on and checked in with Robert Kirkland (Arrogance) who was with me at the video shoot. Robert introduced Peter to me and I asked to shoot the dB’s that night, since I had the video gear. Peter sent me to Chris Stamey who said “yes” and so I shot a portion of the dB’s performance that Monday night, October 19, 1981. I quickly turned one of the songs into a live performance music video. This video had found some notoriety. Chris left the band a few months after this performance so, for a while this was the only live performance of the original dB’s line-up. As the years have gone on, additional performances were found of the original line-up. But, for the longest time, this was consider it. This video is a wonderful document of the original dB’s line-up performing in their prime.
LUKY OWENS & REVOLVER
"It’s Not Forever" (1981)
I was a fan of Luky Owens. He had an intensity I hadn’t seen since my NYC Punk days. "It’s Not Forever" is my first lip sync performance music video. My two previous performance videos were Live. With this video, I had control of the images, lights and band. I was commissioned to create a concept video for “Like A Revolver,” but I wanted a rocker under my belt and threw in this performance video along with the concept video. I figured that since I had the theater for the performance portion of the “Like A Revolver,” I might as well shoot a second video too. You see a lot of running from far to near, straight on to low angle shots along with running in between band members in this video. These days, this sort of shooting is common, but in 1981, it was unheard of. Note that there was no real direction from me on this video. I just had the band perform. As I was shooting I was amazed at Luky’s ability to play to the camera - looking at the camera, looking away, running through shots and diving at the lens. He was a natural!
LUKY OWENS & REVOLVER
"Like A Revolver" (1981)
This was as story-song about the pressures of stardom and so I created a concept video. Locations for the video were diverse. Throughout the 1970's and into the early 80's New York's Time Square was best known for porn theaters, strip clubs and peep shows. I wanted that same gaudy glitz for Luky. Thanks to the entertainment needs of the troops from Fort Bragg and Pope Air Force Base, Fayetteville's Hay Street was suggested as the local debauchery row. The interior club scenes were shot at Cafe Déjà vu in Raleigh. Take a good look at "the in-crowd." The first bar scene reveals Don Dixon (Arrogance), Debra DeMilo (The Fabulous Knobs) and Terry Anderson (The Fabulous Knobs) standing behind Luky. Later in the club scenes, you can also see Robert Kirkland (Arrogance) and David Enloe (The Fabulous Knobs). While shooting this portion of the video, the dB's were loading in to The Pier. Peter Holsapple dropped by to see what was going on and Robert Kirkland introduced Peter to me. I then talked my way into shooting the dB's performance later that night. From that performance I created the dB’s video “Ups & Downs.” It turned out to be a busy day for shooting music videos.
THE FABULOUS KNOBS
"Don’t Stop" (1982)
My day job in 1982 was working in the videotape and engineering department at WPTF-TV (NBC). They had a very popular after school kids show called Barney’s Army. Barney was a live-action cartoon show host. The show also had a sound actuated video game kids could play called “TV Pow.” The show also became very popular with the local college crowd to the point where “TV Pow” became a drinking game. Since it had a local hip audience, partner Tony Madejczk and I talked the show’s producer into having some of the local bands on as special guests. The Fabulous Knobs were the first of a handful of bands to be chroma keyed into Barney’s dollhouse set. My contribution to this video was running videotape while the show was in production. After the session was over, the show's director would quickly edit the band’s performance. I stayed late that night and edited out Barney and tightened up edits for sync and timing as well as adding more band shots to create a unique performance video that was never broadcast on the show, but is seen here.
GLASS MOON
"On A Carousel" (1982)
So here I am directing my first music video in Raleigh for The Fabulous Knobs and the keyboard player comes up to me and says that he is in another band and might need a music video. I was astonished. The bands that I knew in New York protected their turf like feral beasts. But Raleigh wasn't like that. Everyone seemed very happy to see everyone else succeed. I politely said, "I'd love to" and forgot about the whole thing. Three months later, Dave Adams was telling me about his band, Glass Moon and their new album and next single, “On A Carousel” (Atlantic Records). This music video looks typical 80's MTV, but that didn't say much at the time since MTV was only cablecasting into parts of Long Island and Northern New Jersey. HBO was the only national venue for a music video and this clip played on HBO's Video Jukebox throughout the summer of 1982. The song became a bona fide hit. I actually heard Casey Kasem introduce the song on his American Top 40 syndicated radio show. This was my first major label music video and it was a national hit!
X-TEENS
"Anyone Can" (1982)
As with the other Barney's Army music segments, I would come in late at night, after the show's director had edited the performance for the show and cut Barney out and also re-edit the video so that shots were in sync and in time to the music. In this case the show's director was angry at me after he discovered that I was re-cutting his work. He scheduled himself to edit the performance the night after the performance, so that I couldn't get to the tapes until the next day. The next morning, to my horror, he told me that he bulk erased the raw footage so that I couldn't re-edit his version of the song. I re-edited that night anyway. I was able to tighten up the edits and to exclude shots of Barney by using quick repetitive shots and freeze frames. Had the original footage survived, I would have added additional shots of the band so that it was not so focused on the lead singer, Kitty. Otherwise, it's a fun video and great song!
GLASS MOON
"Telegram Song" (1982)
While shooting “On A Carousel” I also shot two other music videos at the same time, “Simon” and “Telegram Song.” The production for this video fit perfectly into the February weather, and so a day flight was booked for New York, figuring we could fly in that morning and "steal" some shots on the cold city streets and then fly home that night. What I didn't expect was a storm dropping nearly two-feet of snow. After a slippery landing at Laguardia, we took a quick cab to downtown Manhattan and on to the abandoned portion of the West Side Highway. It was absolutely beautiful. The highway was covered in untouched new fallen snow, and in the background, the Twin Towers were shrouded in steel blue clouds. And there was Dave Adams, standing in the middle of it all. I set up the shot, turned on the camera and called for the music. At that point you can hear my assistant Glen Mazzone on the tape, shouting that there was smoke. The video then goes black. The tape keeps recording with only audio and the sound of Glen throwing snow on the camera. It was on fire. So thanks to the extreme cold, I have less than a minute of this shot as a souvenir. The rest of the day was spent with Dave showing us around Electric Lady Studios (which is where the Growing In The Dark album was recorded) and then back on a flight to Raleigh. Since there was no hurry to complete the video, we shot “Telegram Song” in downtown Raleigh during the rainy summer of 1982. BTW - the hat you see Dave wearing is the 1950 Cavanagh hat I wore in my 70's NYC Punk band, EARS. And yes, I still have the hat. It's currently on a book shelf sitting on top of Maureen O'Hara's 1963 leather bound script for The Jimmy Dean Show.
GLASS MOON
"Simon" (1982)
Early 1980's chroma key technology was employed in “Simon,” along with it's nasty jagged edges, but that was the best we had. The analog video feedback is fun in the beginning and end of the video. Also of note is Sara Lynn Moore as Albert's girlfriend and Ira David Wood as an excellent Albert Einstein. Both were the best actors in town and I felt lucky to have them. The two of them, by 1987 would produce a Hollywood production of their own, as parents of Evan Rachel Wood. Sara also plays a part in Glass Moon “On A Carousel” as well as a true leading role in The Accelerators “Stiletto.” "Simon" received airplay on HBO and MTV but the audience for music videos in summer of 1982 was small and so this became the last of the chart action for Glass Moon.
MARSHALL CRENSHAW
Record Bar Presentation • The Pier (1982)
Here’s a fun find from my archive. I was commissioned to shoot footage of Record Bar’s Barrie Bergman presenting Marshall Crenshaw a plaque as honorary Record Bar Vice President of Entertainment. This was presented at The Pier, Raleigh, NC, October 7, 1982 and the video was produced for MTV News. My orders were to shoot the presentation and the first song, “I’ll Do Anything” and then stop recording so, this is a short video. And I believe that’s WQDR’s Bob Walton offering a quick introduction. • This is a VHS review copy of the master video, so it’s a bit blurry, but I thought it was still worth posting. When the master footage is found, I’ll repost the updated video.
ARROGANCE
"Southside Girl" (1982)
I was employed by WPTF-TV to handled engineering and videotape for for their prime time programming, including the kids show, Barney's Army. The Barney show Director, directed the shots and edited the Arrogance performance. When he left, I took the raw footage (late at night, after Tom Snyder's Tomorrow Show) and corrected his mistimed and poorly synced edits. I also created an alternate version of the clip by taking out shots of Barney and a jumping toy kangaroo and replacing them with more shots of Arrogance, so that the clip played as a complete Arrogance performance music video. There was talk of me directing a concept music video for “Southside Girl” but sadly, it never happened. Instead, I created a music video for the flip side of the single, “Where Are You?” which has yet to be restored. Look for that video coming later this year.
ARROGANCE
"Here Comes Santa Claus" (1982)
A bonus track from Barney's Army. Tony Madejczyk and I were the usual suspects in this production. This song was originally released as an Arrogance special 45 RPM single. Besides being a fun take on an old Christmas classic, keep watching for a Barney / Arrogance promo at the end, as well as a slightly naughty outtake!
THE SPONGETONES
"She Goes Out With Everybody" (1983)
For this video I took a left turn just past Richard Lester's (director of A Hard Day's Night) jump-cut style of cinema and went with still frame jump-cuts. It’s a unique looking music video, even today. In casting The Girl in this video, I was going to go back to Sara Lynn Moore, who had worked on Glass Moon's “On A Carousel” and “Simon,” but I ran across a girl who had a Patti Boyd hair cut and a vintage 1967 Mary Quant Sgt. Pepper's dress (and I was dating her at the time). Hired! The 1966 Mustang was the car I bought after graduating High School and drove from New York to Raleigh. It’s also featured in Son of Sam crime scene photos - which is a scary story for another time. The daylight apartment is Joanie's. The nighttime apartment is mine. The dog is hers. The B&W TV was bought with my paper route money in 1968. And the kids were rented. Let's not forget The Spongetones’ Jamie Hoover, playing The Guy and looking dapper in his skinny tie. The Pier is the nightclub location. And the North Carolina State University cafeteria is the location for the first full motion portion of the video. And yes, this music video played on MTV and HBO.
THE SPONGETONES
"Here I Go Again" (1983)
This video was a little something extra I threw in to the production day. We were shooting a concept video for “She Goes Out With Everybody” with the performance segment shot at The Pier. I thought that since I had the camera and the lights and the crew and the location and the band, hey why not shoot a second video. The Jib shots were totally unique at the time. "Fast" Eddie Barber was a news videographer for WTVD-TV in Durham. I rented his camera for a number of my music videos. He came to this shoot with an idea he was tinkering with at home. He brought out a camera tripod with an eight-foot swinging arm attached it. At one end of the arm was the camera and at the other end stood the camera operator. I was totally blown away by the rig! Eddie set the boom up for me to shoot, but I couldn't get the hang of it. Since we were tight on time, I directed Eddie as he ran through the Ed Sullivan inspired shots. I'm telling this story because within three years, every television network and Hollywood studio were frantically buying these things from Eddie. He called it the Barber "Baby" Boom. I remember David Letterman telling his audience that NBC just bought three of these Barber Booms from a guy who was making them in his garage in Durham, North Carolina. “Here I Go Again” was the first time a Barber Boom was ever used in a television production. It's a simple video, but historic. And, hey, the music is great too!
DOC HOLLIDAY
"You Like To Rock" (1983)
I was commissioned to create a concept video for “City Nights” (A&M Records) but since I had a theater for the performance part of the video, I threw in this full performance video. As a performance video, “You Like To Rock” still holds up. By 1983, the editing was on better equipment, offering a sharper cut to the music. I had learned a lot since my first controlled performance video in 1981. I ran non-stop to shoot this music video but it was fun and it shows in the band’s rollicking performance.
DOC HOLLIDAY
"City Nights" (1983)
This was to be my big deal break of a music video. It was my second major label video (A&M Records) and had a budget big enough to shoot on film with a crew and in NYC. But a couple of weeks before production was to start, the label and management cut the budget and so, I was back to shooting on videotape and with a crew of just me and a ghetto blaster for audio playback. The video has a lot of fun images and some surreal images typical for the early 80s. I watched MTV give this video some great promotion before it aired, but by the time the video was done, so was the band. The label pulled support for the album and so, the video never aired on MTV.
THE ACCELERATORS
"Leave My Heart" (1984)
There used to be a thing called “Record Stores” where you could buy the latest popular music recordings. Record Bar was one of the biggest retail record store chains in the country. They were based in Durham, NC and had a record label called Dolphin Records. I was commissioned by the label to create two music videos for the band The Accelerators. One video was to be a psychodrama for the slasher song, “Stiletto.” And the other was a quickie performance video for the semi-rockabilly song, “Leave My Heart.” Since a record store chain owned the label, I thought it would be fun to shoot the performance in their record warehouse. So, on Friday, February 10th, 1984 “Leave My Heart” was shot in one day at Record Bar warehouse RMA-2, starting at 10am and done not long after lunch. The people you see around the band are the actual employees of the warehouse and record label. This was a fun, fast and furious video to produce, which was the total opposite of “Stiletto,” which was treated as something just short of a major motion picture.
THE ACCELERATORS
"Stiletto" (1984)
The Accelerators lead singer Gerald Duncan wrote “Stiletto,” a 1984 slasher psychodrama song. He wanted the video to be a mini movie which gave me a chance to create something beyond the standard music video. Actors were hired and a hellish scheduled was put together to create what was described in the original script as "a flashback in a photo, in a news story, on TV (in a livingroom), in a movie, on TV." Yep, that describes it! To get the image inside an image meant that I had to shoot a scene in the evening, edit it that night, and then play it back to include it in the shoot later that night or the next day. And I shot a second video for The Accelerators, “Leave My Heart” as a performance video a week earlier as part of the deal. I also produced and directed a PKM concert a week after “Stiletto.” It was a crazy schedule. The Accelerators were great about wanting to stretch the music video format beyond pretty girls and a band performance. Looking at it today, the storyline has some really fun twists and the video has some nice acting from a few of Raleigh’s Theatre In The Park actors, in particular Sara Lynn Moore as the victim. She worked with me on Glass Moon “On A Carousel" and “Simon.” • “Stiletto” was my last concept music video for this era of artists. My next 80s concept music video would not be until 1988 for Nashville Country artist Jo-El Sonnier "Rainin' In My Heart" (RCA Records).
PKM
"Breakdown" LIVE (1984)
The one thing you will notice about this video production is how the camera work is "in your face." I had sort of trained the two stage videographers in my early days as production crew chief at WRAL-TV. Art Howard and Robert Newton had arrived fresh from the media school at NC State University and were willing to listen to my rants on how to shoot video. They quickly became the premiere videographers at WRAL - thanks to their skills and talents. So here comes the PKM concert nearly six years later, giving me a chance to hire them both as the stage videographers for this concert. Their up-close and angular shots are standard videography for today's concerts, but in 1984 in was unseen. This was breaking all of the rules, especially having the stage camera guys seen on as part of the production. I didn't care. I wanted the shots! And Art and Robert delivered beautifully. As a performance and video production, this PKM concert rocks as hard today as it did in 1984. It’s a concert that was shot and never finished. A concert I would like to present in its entirety someday. . . soon.
PKM
"Play It Cool" LIVE (1984)
I usually direct film style, meaning I give direction to everyone while I run one camera and then take all the shots and edit everything together. But in this case, I was in a truck in the back parking lot. There I sat in front of a switcher and live switched the concert, while talking to the camera crew in their headsets about the shots. Of course, they couldn’t hear much. If you look at some of the shots, you’ll see these horizontal lines come and go. The volume was so loud from the band that it was vibrating the tubes in the cameras. Thankfully, I had given orders for area coverage of each camera and a routine on how to shoot, so whether anyone could hear me or not, the show went on without a problem. Please see PKM “Breakdown” for more background on this production.
THE SPONGETONES
"World News Polka" (2008)
The Spongetones were featured on the ABC network overnight daily news show World News Now. The Jamie Hoover song, “Skinny” was the theme for their entertainment news segment. The show also had a Polka theme song called, “World News Polka” which would play every Friday over the show’s credits. Their theme song became popular enough that in 2008, they asked celebrities to do their rendition of the song (such as William Shatner, Weird Al Yankovic, and Kermit the Frog). They also asked The Spongetones for their version. So, the band put me in contact with ABC News in New York, who then commissioned me to create a ninety-second music video. Since the video was just me running around with a camera in Jamie Hoover’s studio in Charlotte, and I knew the guys well, I figured I could abuse them a bit and shot a little over 50 takes of the song! The overkill for the extra footage paid off. The video was scheduled to air for six-weeks but due to audience demand, it aired every Friday for over six-months!
BRUCE BROOKSHIRE
"Southern. Rock. Gospel." (2019)
Bruce Brookshire, lead singer, songwriter and guitarist for Doc Holliday released a Gospel EP in 2019. Bruce asked me to create a promo for the record release so I tossed it back to the 60s, merging a K-Tel commercial with some DC Comics visuals. The promo was fun to create and the EP was even more fun to listen to!
THE SPONGETONES
“Too Clever By Half” (2008/2019)
I shot this music video in 2008 to be included in a documentary I had plans to produce called Return To Comboland. I no sooner wrapped production when the economy totally tanked and I was also mopping up a divorce. So I shelved it. After 11 years and 8 months, I finally sat down and finished this music video! The video is a fun mix of performance and storyline with an updated visual take on 1966 Pop Art, along with a touch of 1967 Psychedelia in the middle - plus the brilliant Power Pop of The Spongetones. Released at the very end of December 2019, this pre-pandemic music video has won 4 international film festival awards, 4 international film festival screenings and 1 international television award, all in 2020! Not bad for a 3-minute tribute to 60s Pop Art!
TERRY ANDERSON & THE OLYMPIC ASS-KICKIN TEAM
“Had Me At Get Lost” (2009/2020)
When The Fabulous Knobs split, Terry Anderson and Jack Cornell continued to work together and eventually evolved into TA & The OAK Team. Like The Spongetones “Too Clever By Half” this music video was to be included in my documentary about the North Carolina music scene of the 1980s. But the economy and a divorce put the project on hold. I finally completed “Had Me At Get Lost” in January 2020. This quirky, odd and comically brutal concept music video of love and passion gone way too far, did well with international film festivals receiving five select screenings ranging from Florence, Italy to Los Angeles, California. It’s nice to know people enjoy this offbeat ode to love with a violent nature.
JACK CORNELL
"Sho' Nuff" (2020)
An animated lyric music video with an play on a rainy back alley. This was a fun and different video I had the pleasure of creating for old pal Jack Cornell. Jack was a member of The Fabulous Knobs and currently with Terry Anderson and The Olympic Ass Kickin Team. This track was an advance from Jack’s 2021 solo album. This particular track has four of the six members of The Fabulous Knobs performing together, which makes this performance a fan favorite.
GARDNERS OF SOULE
"I Don't Want To Go Back" (2020)
This six-minute animated lyric music video offers a bunch of fun and quirky eye candy. No real storyline here, just fun visuals. Gardners of Soule were a late 80s / early 90s spin-off of PKM. There’s been some current buzz about the band and so I was commissioned to create a series of videos to promote the back catalog. To keep with the era of the band, I used a lot of images that related to the late 80s and the early 90s in the music video.
GARDNERS OF SOULE
"Face To Fall On" (2020)
I was commissioned to create a Track Video for GOS which usually consists of some text information and album cover as the song plays. For me, staring at a graphic was boring, so I added a fun bit of sound actuated animation. If you stare at it long enough it becomes hypnotic. And it gives the viewer a reason to stay with the song until the end.
GARDNERS OF SOULE
"Put Your Mouth Where Your Mouth Is" (2021)
Boy did I have fun making this lyric video! It has to be the most frantic music video I’ve ever created! I had a lot of fun baking all of this eye candy. Just stare at it. It’s mesmerizing! It’s sort of a 21st Century psychedelic video with a bunch of Grunge tossed on top. • GOS are two members of North Carolina’s favorite power trio PKM (Mike Gardner & Kenny Soule), along with PKM’s songwriter (Phillip Gardner) and two members of another favorite Raleigh band, Sidewinder (Audley Freed & Robert Kearns) who are now in Nashville with Sheryl Crow. You gotta see this video! PLAY IT LOUD!!