The Song Force

Vic Thrill's "Hummingbird Pneumonia"

The Washington Post

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December 30, 2003 "... Heir to the kingdom abandoned by Devo, Thrill makes highly theatrical pop with a pseudo-scientific bent. Unlike his yellow-jumpsuited forefathers, however, Thrill hasn't found much of an audience (beyond a group of local admirers in his home town of Brooklyn), and "CE-5," his debut album, looks destined to be one of those cult productions adored by a few and ignored by the rest of the planet. Part of the problem was timing: "CE-5" was filed under "electro-clash," [sic] a style of gaudy, New Wave-inspired synthesizer rock that was spurned about 10 minutes after it was born. Fame, you fickle ho! There weren't many songs in 2003 as intriguing as the album's opener, "Hummingbird Pneumonia," a field holler sung by what sounds like a chorus of funk-loving robots. And that was just the beginning."

Vic Thrill in Hartford CT

Hartford Advocate

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Electrolunatics -- by Katie Vrabel - May 22, 2003

December 30, 2003 There's a new freak in town: Vic Thrill, formerly Billy Campion, lead singer of the Bogmen, and current ringmaster of the Brooklyn "electro-trash" outfit Vic Thrill, a group being lauded as everything from the next Devo to the next David Bowie (think Ziggy Stardust).

Vic Thrill rose from the ashes of the Bogmen, whose brush with a record contract failed to pan out. Former members Campion, Mark Wike and Derek Finan, along with Garden Variety guitarist Anthony Rizzo, picked up the pieces and moved on as Vic Thrill, and the result is just ... weird.

Vic Thrill combines punk rock riffs and attitude with a bizarre barrage of electronics, processed vocals, tripped- out lyrics, and an affinity for extraterrestrials. Their debut album, CE-5 (Circus Clone Records, Mayhem Records), takes its title from an initiative of Steven M. Greer, director of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Thrill volunteered the band's assistance to Greer as musical ambassadors, and says when the band plays, the music creates a psychic phenomenon enabling them to send and receive message across the universe, an experience akin to speaking in tongues. Weird!

According to the irresistible band mythos, this album just had to be made; after the Bogmen were dropped from their label, fans donated the funds, including an anonymous check for $6,780, without which the project would not have been possible.

Vic Thrill's intensity and insanity onstage may even surpass that of their recording. This performer, whose magnetic stage presence has been described as something like "Fred Astaire on crack" or "a pager on vibrate" is worth checking out.

Vic Thrill's "Nobody's Watching the Radar"

Video available for widespread release after winning "BEST MUSIC VIDEO" at the Coney Island Film Festival - Song is off Debut Album CE−5

(BROOKLYN, NEW YORK, January 8, 2003) -- Circus Clone Records announces the video release of Vic Thrill's "Nobody's Watching the Radar" from debut full-length album, CE−5 (www.victhrill.com). The Coney Island Film Festival selected "Nobody's Watching the Radar" as "Best Music Video" in September 2002.

The video was inspired from a conversation Vic had at a Christmas party with a friend of the family who also happened to be an employee of a well known US courier service. He said he found himself frequently delivering a suspicious sized box to Hasidic women in Williamsburg, Brooklyn - the same neighborhood Vic calls home. Eventually he and his cohorts figured out that these boxes were from a sex shop and contained dildos; an outlandish notion considering their ultra-orthodox belief system and (popularly perceived) sexually repressed lifestyles.

It became a ritual that they would always intercept him on his route, rather than letting him deliver it to their homes, lest their husbands were to receive it! The dildo theory became fact as the courier began to witness them transferring the contents of the boxes to their handbags at the speed of a magic trick, discarding the box into a sidewalk wastebasket. Director Chris Cassidy thought this was the perfect concept for "Nobody's Watching the Radar," a song about our selective attention span. The flipside of the song's message is being open to new perspectives on life and cosmology -- using your imagination and intuition (your radar) as a trusty guide to living. This is best demonstrated in the lines ".graffiti maps of a new dimension, follow the symbols that make no sense, graffiti maps of a new dimension, go through a hole in the fence."

Chris went out to local Hasidic stores and bought the wigs, hats, ultra-thick stockings and overcoats all donned by Hasidic women, while Vic was able to borrow a courier truck and uniform. The day of the shoot, female (and some male) Vic Thrill Salon members were transformed into Hasidic women, and pranced with strollers through Hasidic neighborhoods.

The animated look of 'Radar' was developed from an idea of using black and white vector artwork as used on some multimedia web sites. "I found that a similar but more detailed look could be achieved from video by using Photoshop filters instead of Flash graphics," describes editor Bert Moss. The entire video was shot on mini-DV, and edited on Final Cut Pro. Once happy with the final cut, the video was converted into still images and the color filters in Photoshop were applied. The frame rate was dropped to 10 frames per second to give it a more 'animated' look. The converted frames were then imported back into Final Cut for the finished edit. "Nobody's Watching the Radar" was directed by Chris Cassidy, a professional photographer-come-director in New York City. Since 1999, Chris has directed a dozen music videos for independent bands like Vic Thrill, Radio 4, The Bogmen, Knockout Drops, Trance Pop Loops and more. Chris directed the documentary short, "Dear Barbra" which was the grand prize winner of The 1999 MTV World AIDS Day Film Festival.

Contact: Victoria DeRose
Digital Video Magic Beam Entertainment
Director - Chris Cassidy (casspix@aol.com )
917-328-3571
Editor - Bert Moss (evilbert@mindspring.com )
v.derose@verizon.net
VIC THRILL'S "NOBODY'S WATCHING THE RADAR"