Gigantic.42
The Kenneth Wilson Mystery
In the video, Jonathan, Grasshopper, and I are camping in the woods. Basically science fiction from the get-go.
Arriving at the campsite, as I’m taking off my gear, my sleeping bag clocks me in the head (unscripted, but there it remains, 32 seconds into the video.)
The rest of the plot goes something like this:
We carry a canoe to the water, Jonathan paddles onto the lake, fishes, and listlessly lip syncs: I know it ain’t gonna last. Grasshopper and I meanwhile set up a tent and cook beans over an open fire.
Suddenly, Grasshopper takes off his sunglasses and walks to the edge of the lake, I join him. The boat is still floating out there, but it’s empty. Grasshopper and I are left scratching our heads, where has Jonathan gone?
It’s a wrap, that’s the story!
We hear from the record company, the video will be on 120 Minutes on MTV. Back in Syracuse, we’d all stay up late watching 120 Minutes on Sunday nights. I always made like the show was lame, but there I was watching it in Bill’s apartment, and here I was ten years later, watching it again, this time to see our video.
The whole show came and went. No video.
Next day the record company told us there’d been a mistake, it’d be on next week. So the next week I stayed up watching again, and there it was, the very last video at 2:55am in the morning. There we were, camping in the woods, there was my sleeping bag, hitting me in the back of the head.
It wasn’t so much this show in particular that held significance, I realized. It was television itself.
In my generation growing up, television existed on another plane of reality. The Apollo astronauts. Evel Knievel. The Brady Bunch. People who were on television were different from you and me, they were on Mount Olympus. But here I was, watching myself on television. What did that mean?
My subconscious immediately began reorganizing itself based on this new information, but not in a way I expected.
For the next several days as I walked around town, everything I looked at, it’s like I was watching it on television. Every person I saw, it’s like they were on television. My breakthrough experience had not rendered me special, rather, it broke down a wall between realities, and now we all were on television.
Beyond being mentally healthier than letting something like this go to my head, the truth is that I’ve never met a single person who said, “Hey, I saw you on 120 Minutes!” It’s like the tree in the forest. If I was the only one who saw it, did it even happen?
There have been some ardent Mercury Rev fans who’ve tried to read deeper meaning into the video as if there’s some kind of Strawberry Fields level mystery going on here. What happened to Jonathan? And why is the name Kenneth Wilson printed on the side of the boat?
For folks who don’t live hereabouts, Kenneth Wilson is the name of the state park where we filmed the video. Twenty-five years later, Jen, Elliot, and I went camping there for real, with our dog Pepe.
The park ranger told us there was going to be some weather rolling in, we decided to chance it anyway. We cooked our supper over an open fire, and climbed into our tents just around nightfall.
A couple of hours later, the worst storm in three years was suddenly upon us. Thunder exploded, lightning directly overhead cast menacing shadows of overhanging branches, sure to come crashing onto our tents at any moment.
Elliot and I, in the relatively newer tent, managed to get only slightly wet. Jen and Pepe, in the older army surplus model, took one for the team and got completely drenched.
When we climbed out in the morning, the sun was shining, we’d made it. But, sort of parallel to what happened in the video, all the other campers had disappeared. They’d gotten into their cars and fled in the middle of the night.
It seemed we had the whole park to ourselves. We’d planned to take a canoe onto the lake, but we’d had enough adventure at that point. We packed the car, drove back toward town on Wittenberg Road, and treated ourselves to lunch.
Watch video here:
youtube.com/watch?v=Nj39W-AoThs
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I know the song well, but I've never seen the video. It's weird how my memory of the song is 180 degrees away from the camping trip you filmed. Yet, the clip works in its own way. Maybe it's your charisma :)
120 Minutes was a guiding light in high school. I didn't know it was lame, just that it was 2 hours where MTV wasn't playing Huey Lewis or Starship or whatever. As much as college radio, the show turned me on to dozens of bands I still listen to today. Or at least they were gateway drugs to "cooler" music: Depeche Mode begat Skinny Puppy begat Throbbing Gristle and so on.
A big regret from my early 20s: I was walking around drunk one night with a friend, on a very deserted 1st Avenue. A leather-clad Dave Kendall comes walking towards us and my friend says "Hey Dave, I love the show."
"Thanks, mate," Dave says (he was English; I assume he still is), and he passes by with a nod and a smile.
I was so annoyed by my friend's uncool suck-up that I yelled back at poor Dave, "You're a dick and your show sucks!"
Not only uncalled for but I didn't even mean it... Kill Your Idols, I guess, a band I never would have heard of if 120 Minutes hadn't shown me a band that was two levels closer to the mainstream first. Maybe I should send him an email.