Collecting MadVideos -- Surfing the twin peaks

Surf punk quartet The Pistols at Dawn took a recent trip to the Red Room (the interstitial netherworld in David Lynch's Twin Peaks) in their latest music video. This features instrumental surf-rock covers of two themes from the early '90s cultural touchstone.

This video follows below.

"A lot of people love the Twin Peaks cover, it always seems to get the kids dancing," says Alex Smith, the drummer for The Pistols at Dawn. "I wanted to try and get a clip out for those people and Twin Peaks fans in general [online]. Everyone in the band is a big fan of David Lynch, Twin Peaks and the soundtrack, which has some surf and old-school influences." The music for the television program and 1992 film was composed by Angelo Badalamenti, who is well known for his regular collaborations with Lynch.

The video was shot on Sep. 1, 2006, at the UW's "New Student Music Festival," in anticipation of their live DVD. Smith describes the production of the clip:

We shot the video with five cameras: a very old video camera running to an external deck in the back, an old VHS-C camcorder (also used on 'Surf Monster') run by James Sanford, two DV cams run by Ashlei Miller and Emma Laedlein, and a Hi-8 cam run by Jack Anderson. The sound was a mix straight off the sound board to CD, that I later synched with the rest of the footage. The audio recording and rear tripod cam were all set up by our organist Tim Schuetz before the show.

Smith subsequently remained busy editing the clip and producing the DVD, titled "Live at Club 770." Many more of the group's videos, including other segments of the live DVD, can be found here.

The Pistols at Dawn have been busy lately, adding multi-instrumentalist Matt Leverton on bass last November, joining Smith, Alexei Broner on guitar and Tim Consequence on organ. Their next public show in Madison is on Sunday, Jan. 28, when they will be playing with The Window Smashers and The Kites at Mr. Roberts.

If you wish to let us know about more videos by, of, and about Madison and Madisonians, please consider adding them to the Isthmus YouTube group or send a message.