Look, 1985 isn’t the oldest record in this competition – we all know that. But it’s older than me, and my oldest record for sure.
Eleven years ago, one innocent Summer’s eve, my friends and I had the idea to make a Tears for Fears tribute video. The reasons are lost to history, but ‘Head Over Heels’ was our certified banger of 2010.
This ill-inspired project, a night’s laugh, turned into a four day recording marathon. It involved every costume in our wardrobe, every prop we could find, and every trick we’d learned in our years of high-school video production class. Plus a bucket of glow sticks, all our Guitar Hero instruments, and a very large water bill.
You can watch our ‘Tears for Fears – Head Over Heels’ tribute here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV8YAjRmpJs
By the end, we couldn’t bear to listen to the song even one more time. It made a small but significant imprint in the YouTube musical tribute scene. Beat Lab Productions never did another tribute video, but it did spawn a backyard hip hop sensation, ‘The Beat Lab’.
As congratulations and punishment for hitting 10,000 views shortly after its launch, my brother, a certified audiophile and vinyl nerd, bought me a pristine copy of ‘Songs From The Big Chair’ – pictured here.
The irony is, I never had a record player to listen to it. Nor have I wanted to for the 11 years since making the video. But, that mint record is sitting there waiting for its first play. And after all these years, there’s enough water under the bridge, that I think I’d love to plug in a Yamaha Hi-Fi system and give it a spin.