Breakfast in Bed is the everyday adventures of Rowan, aka @Rowstar, writing about adoptive parenthood, outdoor adventures, food, live music and other favourite pursuits.
Back in January I wrote about a rather peculiar Sunday at the end of the Christmas holidays when Ant,James and I were involved in a zombie music video shoot with Thomas Truax at the Under Ground Theatre in Eastbourne. I've been eagerly awaiting the outcome ever since and was thrilled when last week, the video was finally released onto YouTube. Unfortunately Ant's sterling zombie performance didn't make it into the final cut, but I am clearly visible as one of the dancing magpies and you can spot James in a blink-or-you'll-miss-it moment around 3:10.
The video was timed to coincide with the release of Truax's new album, Sonic Dreamer, described in this Drowned in Sound review as "different...knowingly funny, and...very very special". I have yet to get hold of a copy myself, but am very much looking forward to giving it a spin and wish the lovely Thomas all the best with his current album tour and promotional junket - do catch him at one of these live dates if you can.
What better way to relieve the end of holiday blues than by being a zombie in a music video? That's exactly what we felt last weekend when the call went out on Twitter for extras to appear in Thomas Truax's latest video shoot on Sunday. Best of all the shoot was happening just down the road from us in Eastbourne, at a venue close to my heart - the Under Ground theatre. Once just the plain old Library Theatre, the Under Ground was the setting for many amdram adventures of my youth, most notably Godspell and the Pajama Game which both hold extremely happy memories. The place hasn't changed a bit and walking in there was like walking straight back into my mis-spent youth.
Since discovering him at the Freebutt last year along with all his wacky homemade instruments, Thomas Truax has fast become one of my favourite artists (so much so that he made it into my new blog header) and I was delighted to have the chance to star alongside him. Despite all the dressing up over the years, I've never been a zombie before, and thought it would be a fun experience. As it turned out, I still haven't been a zombie because I unwittingly volunteered myself to be a magpie instead. This involved wearing a big magpie head, out of which I could see very little, and dancing in step (not very easy with a big magpie head on) with a fellow magpie called Robin (was I the only one to see the humour there?) who had been 'volunteered' by his girlfriend for the part. Ant and James enjoyed being the tallest zombies on stage and milking their roles - as you can see from this snap of them barbecuing a (fake) human heart. Everyone involved was jolly nice and we even went for a pint with some other zombies in the Dewdrop afterwards.
The video won't be ready for another couple of months, but in the meantime I strongly recommend that you have a look at one of Thomas Truax's previous (and also very brilliantly odd) videos here on YouTube, or even better, buy one of his excellent albums. You can see more photos of the zombie video shoot on my Flickr page.
