{"id":250,"date":"2022-10-03T09:24:20","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T09:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/sevcom\/?page_id=250"},"modified":"2022-10-03T09:24:20","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T09:24:20","slug":"a-bizarre-approach-to-video-art-october-1987","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nilamox.com\/sevcom\/a-bizarre-approach-to-video-art-october-1987\/","title":{"rendered":"A Bizarre Approach to Video Art – October 1987"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BY LORETTA HALL
IN HIS next video clip for the Severed Heads. Tom Ellard will mud wrestle a piano. First, however, he must figure out how to build the piano costume and find an elevator shaft on which, for reasons that remain obscure, the piano can be perilously perched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sydney-based Severed Heads approach the music industry a little differently to most. Although they release records and make videos, they do not see themselves as a rock band. The main feature of their live show is a video featuring often bizarre and complex images woven together with electronic music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellard, who is “chief noise maker” for the Heads, accompanies the video soundtrack with his keyboard, playing main melody or bass lines, while Stephen Jones feeds the video projector from the other side of the stage. “I improvise a fair bit.” he says. “The music soundtrack is already synchronised with the video so I just add things from my big library of noises – like somebody falling down a flight of stairs.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellard also talks to the audience, distracting them from staring at the screen with his banter. However. he admits that most audiences are confused by the very concept of watching a video instead of a band performing. “Audiences are perhaps a little too serious – not that we’re a barrel of monkeys” he says. “I suppose people don’t usually go to chat during a film.” But reaction does vary according to where the Heads play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In Belgium they were slam dancing, whereas in Sydney audiences treat what we do as an art form and they’re respectful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Melbourne hasn’t been kind to us in the past. A third know us, a third don’t know us and a third
don’t want to know us”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although eight people contribute to the Heads’ videos, Ellard says only two of them are “game enough” to tour with it. He says the outfit will eventually follow Talking Heads’ lead and release their videos for cinema screening only. The latest video is a compilation of seven-minute clips which runs for about an hour. Each individual clip can take a couple of months to complete
because they are animated and riddled with time-consuming details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, one forthcoming clip, Milking the Axe, will feature a paper mache woolly mammoth that Ellard will axe while other cast members throw milk at it. (“The milk throwers are willing helpers who don’t mind looking silly as long as they are rewarded for their troubles with beer”). In another, which Ellard isn’t too keen about, he models an octopus on his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellard’s partner, Stephen Jones, is the video technician who puts the clips together in his professional video studio. He also makes clips for other bands. Ellard has his own 16-track studio at home, although he has no technological training. “Just a degree in psychology for chopping up rats,” he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His naivety recently cost the Heads several thousands of dollars in damaged equipment when he turned one show into a fireworks display. “I plugged in something I shouldn’t have,” he admits. More equipment was destroyed and stolen during an overseas tour. “We’re not big enough to tour through Europe by coach and be looked after.” says Ellard. “We had to look after ourselves, hire our equipment and drive around in an old bomb.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ellard believes Severed Heads sell more records in Canada than they do in Australia. “We get quite a lot of mail from America from a couple of hundred bastards asking things like what was the 37th noise on the seventh track.
“There’s not a huge market for what we do” he says. “but enough people buy our stuff to keep us eating”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n