Filming Bands: Butterflies of Love

(fast-forward to the 1:30 mark if you'd like to skip Jeff Greene tuning his guitar - also we had a 2nd camera, not used in this rendition, so you see more of the wobbly repositioning that I'd typically replace with nice steady widecam angles)

So, at that point, I'm not sure if Mark (Mulcahy) was playing a show that night, but he did play a bunch of songs on a farewell tour for Miracle Legion. That Spring, there were a bunch of final shows I believe for both Butterflies of Love, who were touring on behalf of their longtime London record label finally closing its doors.

I had never seen the Butterflies of Love, although I had heard about them because I knew Scott Amore from the Daily Cafe, and they were actually a fairly popular local band in the late 1990's. Evidently they were even more famous in the U.K. for some strange reason? Maybe it was the thick accent Jeff sang "Rob a Bank" with that did it. Maybe it was due to other lines in that song, and what happened in the very early hours of the next century, just years from when "How To Know" was released.

I remember meeting Jeff Greene for the first time. It was the day that I filmed this concert, actually. He was being sort of dramatic about the fact that the venue didn't want them to bring their own beer in. Everyone sort of put up with it. Later when I spoke to him, he didn't seem very childish at all; when he calmed down, he spoke in a soothing tone, kind of like the way he sings. I remember talking to him and finding that he knew more about me than I did, right when he first met me. That's just what kind of personality he has. I remember driving back from a show later the same month where Mark played Miracle Legion songs at the Bowery Ballroom.

I've heard the studio version of this song, it's available on iTunes and many other places where you can buy music. This version however is truly my favorite. It didn't really catch my attention until when I started looking at the footage while I was editing. I listened to that song so much, I think I text messaged myself a version of just the audio so I could play it on my phone and listen on repeat. I thought a whole bunch about the words and what they meant.

I think that it's kind of a noble song, to boldly and without hesitation say that you volunteer to take on the responsibility of handling someone else's demons. I'm not sure what the rest of the words are about, I'm sure they're personal to Jeff. But the main part of the song - the idea of the song - really paints a picture of a rather inexpensive apartment in a run down town, with two people trying desperately to figure things out in a difficult situation, one in which the problems that they're facing are not self-imposed; perhaps; if I made the music video for it, that's what it would be about.