COME FI DI YOUTH - KING BLUES
The video is 'Come Fi Di Youth' by 'The King Blues'.
The song is anti racist , specifically the BNP and the video attempts to show this.
The video starts showing a street , the sun is setting as it becomes night. there is a man (singer in the band) looking around at the street. It then quickly changes to a shot of him walking into a room. a couple of other people are putting cans of spray paint into a bag. the walls are plain painted but covered in posters that are anti war and anti BNP , This gives the viewer a feeling of what the band are about and is a way to give the band a set image and reputation. Their are many guitars in the room , this shows the band is very musically orientated and not for glamour or show like many bands attempt to look in their videos. The singer is passionately singing the song while sitting on the sofa as the other people continue to pack up various objects like plastic bags and spray paint. The camera keeps showing posters and newspaper cuttings on the walls, They are all strongly political, for example one reads 'Anarchist Mob In Tesco Terror' and another 'Mayday Mayhem' . this again is giving and supporting the bands open politics and showing viewers exactly what their political views are. The room looks like an average flat and it is very beleivable that it is infact their real home as they seem very comfortable in their surroundings. The band hood up and leave the flat carrying their bags full of graff equipment. The band walk through london suburbs at night the singer still singing the words and the other two just walking behind.
They walk past a shop and the singer takes an apple from a rack outside, this looks at a glance like he has stole an apple but then he puts a coin down, this shows the band are relaxed and casual but also not bad people .They carry on walking past construction sites and scaffolding. For a short while the walk turns to a run as they go through a building site with some graffiti up in places , one is a non finished piece reading 'isreal st'... this again aligns the band with the leftist politics. They run past a building and their is large shadows of themselves projected up on the wall, maybe this is to give the impression that although there is only 3 of them that is enough to make a big change. so song slows and gets more minimal with only a up beat guitar strumming slowly and the singing, this is in contrast to the video where the people are now running through a feild.
The band stop and start unpacking their spraypaint. They also pull up bandana's over their faces. It is then that you see some graffiti on a wall , it is a swastika , the music basically stops when this happens.this again reafirms they are anti racist and the silence gives a sense of importance to the moment. The band then start lobbing paint bombs at the graffiti and the drums come in matching the throws and giving a powerful affect. The band then swiftly remove stencils and spray baint over the nazi graff. This shows that although the band are wiling to break the law and spray paint they are not bad people as it were. The band then run and you can see they sprayed a very colourfull artistic piece including both a dove and the earth.
The song ends and cuts to a CCTV style view of the graffiti as a jogger runs past and glances but pays little attention to the graffiti.
Unlike most music videos the band are not portrayed as glamourous or even particularily charasmatic. the flat at the start is very basic and in comparison to videos by other bands is very modest. They portray themselves as being very normal and nothing special. The actions and movements of the singer are very passionate and aggressive as if he is very serious about the song and this side of life. this contradicts other videos by the band that are very bright and happy with the singer being less aggressive and more bouncy.
The band also are very plainly dressed and mostly in black but not in a goth way but more in a black bloc way. They are wearing t-shirts of a few punk bands , 'Moral Dilema' and 'GBH' this gives an example of music that the band are into, also it may be similar to bands that fans are into creating a sort of unity between fans and band. Later on in the video when the band go out they pull up hoods, hoods are notorious in the media as being worn by young 'hooligans' the band seem to reject this stereotype as they , although are doing graffitti , are supporting racial unity and rejecting hatred and violence.
The camera angles in the video are all mid/close-mid/long shots. They dont use extreme close ups of the band. Various shots of the environment are cut in with shots of the band from usually the same level but sometimes slightly lower. At points the camera tracks them and follows them. The shot changes are very regular not showing one thing for very long, this matches the rush of the video as the band try to carry out something deemed illegal without getting caught.
Overall the video portrays the almost vigilante/robin hood style theme of people committing a crime for good. Also it carries across the idea of unity and that the band are just people.
Labels: chris
