Wyoming punk band Teenage Bottlerocket have been kicking immense amounts of ass for close to twenty years now, and their music and iconic logo are ubiquitous in the punk and pop punk scenes. They’ve been holding it down for a long time and haven’t lost a step, but for their latest album, they’re taking a break from their own tunes to give back to the scene in a very creative way.
Stealing The Covers, which drops on July 14, is (as the name would suggest) a cover album, but the covers are all of smaller bands that most people have never heard of nationally. It’s an amazing idea, and a great nod to everyone who watched their own local scene and thought, “God, why isn’t [insert band here] the biggest band in the world?” Which I think has happened to pretty much everyone at one time or another.
The final track on the album is “Why The Big Pause,” which is probably the greatest Ramones-core version of a dad joke you’ve ever heard. Miguel Chen from TBR told us about the song, which was originally by — you’ll never guess this — the Punchlines, and the video TBR made for it.
“The Punchlines from Minneapolis are fronted by our buddy Chris Johnson,” Chen explained. “He used to live above Matt’s Bar, home of the Jucy Lucy (if it’s spelled right, it’s wrong). It’s this burger stuffed with a boiling hot liquid cheese core. You have to wait to take a bite or you’re gonna burn the shit out of yourself. He said two to three times a week the ambulance would show up, because someone did just that. Ray called me one day to talk about shooting a video… ‘I found a bear suit on Amazon,’ he said. Duh. The video wrote itself. We headed to the Buckhorn Bar at 1 PM and started drinking. Fat offered to pay our tab, but the bar was so stoked we were filming there they paid for all our drinks. I think Chewka was in the bear costume, but I can’t remember. At some point filming ended, so Kody and I kept stumbling around Laramie drinking. My wife picked us up and said I was asleep trying to eat pizza.”
And that, my friends, is how you shoot a video. Check out the resulting clip for “Why The Big Pause,” which we’re premiering below.
