Do The Taylers Know It's Christmas?

Apparently so; if our latest effort is anything to go by.

This little festive jingle will only really be appreciated by the poor souls who have actually seen all of our previous musical production numbers. 

It's not just a compilation by the way.  No; I actually forced everyone to get dressed up, again, in all the original costumes, again, and reshoot the films, again, but this time to another song.

Well, I think it's fun.

Zoikes! Jinkies! It's Scooby Doo

For our Halloween presentation we donned chunky sweaters and mini skirts, orange cravats, purple dresses and matching headbands, big red flares and orange wigs.  Plus a full size cardboard cut out of Cracker.
This is Scooby Doo through the warped and twisted lens of a Tayler's short film.  Prepare to have all childhood memories thoroughly shattered.

And remember; we'd have gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you meddling' kids!

We've Got Some Fun For You Now...

No prizes for guessing what our upcoming film presentation will be.  Watch this space.

In the Beginning There Was....

Scary Movie.  In 1999, many years before any of the other vids of this blog were even a glint in my eye, there was this.
Back then, Mum and Dad were less keen on involvement, so I had to pretend to be them myself.  As well as my Nan and Auntie Pam.   Who share strange similarities with Ms Guppy and Admiral Ashbury in Space Chase.

The Music of the Night, Betty

Me and my Mum; we could swap heads.

Burning Like Fire

Monday 25th April 2011.

Eyewitness reports have come in of a strange, humanoid beast seen in the vicinity of the Crackley Woods area.  Police say that there  is no cause for alarm.

Down in the City

Bob Rivers (he of Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire fame) also produced as spoof version of Pet Clark's famous hit Downtown.

This is our little pastiche.

Space Chase

Days in the making!  Months in the editing!  Finally, the movie event of this blog is here.

Introducing; Captain Dave J Kipper, Lieutenant Anchovy and Commander Pike of the valiant starship HMS Old Trout.  United in their battle against the evil, cat-faced warlord Mog the Merciless.. and their general incompetence.

Have Yourself an Ozzy Little Christmas

What do Mariah Carey, multiple note singing diva and alternative gothic band My Chemical Romance have in common?

Us.  Mashing up two song styles with admittedly peculiar consequences.

And Ozzy?   Just wait until the end.

Working in the Lab, Late One Night...

Another Halloween rolled around.  This year we went all out on the Halloween costumes.
For once, this video was unplanned.  We figured, the clothes are on, the scene is set.
On Halloween, what else could we do.

 I am Dracula, and so am I

 They're freaky and they're kooky

A Cracker-pumpkin

Just Monkeying Around

Now that Space Chase was underway, we felt we couldn't disappoint our music fans.

I think fame went to our heads a little, as we stipulated that this video should involve as little movement on our part as possible.  No problem, and the choreography was duly done from one sofa.

Lovely.

The Dream Factory

Finally, preparations for Space Chase began to grind into motion.  First we held a script conference:-

Then we sourced some high quality props from Industrial Bootsale and Magic 

Then we did a bit of miniature model design.  That de-fluffer will never work again, but it was worth it.

This incidentally is the H.M.S Old Trout.

Finally, Mum got to work on the costume design.  Hat optional.

We Just Can't Get It. Enough, that is.

So, Space Chase was in what I believe is called pre-production.  This basically means I was thinking about making it, but hadn't in fact got round to doing anything yet.

Whilst I thought about it, another quiet weekend led inevitably to another video.  This little song was first performed by Depeche Mode; then covered by The Saturday's; and now us.

A case of diminishing returns?

It's a film, but not as we know it.

The question now arose; what next? Music videos were all very well, but I wanted to break out of the confines of the two minute slot and into the major league.  Bit like Ridley Scott did.

Yes, that's right, I wanted to make a movie.  Oddly, everyone else seemed reticent.

Being a nerdy sci-fi geek, I knew exactly the kind I wanted to do.  A space film.  Set in space, on a kind of space trek.  Or a quest; a voyage in Space.  Perhaps a chase.

A Space Chase?

Mix it up

Filming the psychedelic bits for Dream A Little Dream was fun, but they only appeared for a few seconds.  Hence my desire to re-edit them into their own video.

The starlit forest set was intended to look like a stage set, or perhaps like George Melies' famous film 'Le Voyage dans la Lune'.  That gave me an idea...

Strike A Pose

Twiggy modelling Mary Quant on Carnaby Street in the Summer of Love couldn't swing harder than this. 

Mama Cass Returns

We simply couldn't let all those 60's outfits lie unseen in our ever increasing dressing up box, never to be used again.

But what other psychedelic icon would lend themselves to a Tayler's music video treatment.  I racked my brain for months; then remembered something.

Allen had looked rather splendid in that Christmas wig.

It's Christmaaaaaaaaaaaaaas!!!

What came first?  The skimpy Mrs. Christmas outfits, or the idea of doing a video with them?

I'm obliged to state that it was the idea of doing a Christmas video.  It may be of interest to you, (it won't actually, but never mind) that on the day we mimed along to the Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews cover of this.

I'm not a Gleek, but I like this version better.

Duck and Cover

It's The End of the World.  The song by Skeeter Davies that is.

For those old enough to remember (or those unfortunate to have sat through one of those 6 hour 'best of British comedy' compilations that feature 5 hours, 45 minutes of people you only recognise from other 'best of' programs giving their vacuous opinions and 15 minutes of actual comedy) Morecambe and Wise doing their routine with Dame Shirley Bassey, I can only apologise.

I would like to point out we did this in one take, with no rehearsal, and no real idea of what we were going to do.

Here ends the argument for the defence.

We've gone totally Crackers.

Halloween is one of our favourite times of year.  Dressing up, parties, candy, vaguely sinister undertones of pagan ritual sacrifice.

Obviously, we wanted to make a video fit for the occasion.  A bad pun instigated this faux-trailer for 'Cracula:Hound of the Devil'.  Starring, in her only role, the late, great Cracker; our dog.

With some bits from The Wolfman thrown in.

The Taylers've Got You Babe

Okay.  It's tough being this good.  

The pressure to succeed, the constant need to make your next performance as good as the last is sometimes unbearable.  Ask John Barrowman.  How could we top our last video?    

Wigs!  That was the answer.  Wigs, and costumes and a touch of the old greasepaint.  The next one was going to be an all out tour de force of Busby Berkeley style choreography and set design. 

Well, kind of.  But once we decided on the song, success was guaranteed.  Sonny and Cher can make anybody look good.  So here we are; standing on the shoulders of giants.

In wigs.

HELP, they've made another one!

The story so far.

My parents and I now had a grand total of two music videos to our name.  Another one just had to erupt from this untapped wellspring of talent.  This time, I persuaded my partner to get involved too.  Still not quite sure how I did that.

This version of the Beatle's HELP is a cover by Lanananeenenoonoo.  For those unfamiliar with them, this was a one off supergroup formed by Bananarama and Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Kathy Burke; their cover of HELP was the official Comic Relief song in 1989.  Curiously the same year we did our original Locomotion skit which inspired all this.

I like this one.  It was filmed on a glorious July evening, after we'd come back from strawberry picking.  Somehow that sense of joie de vivre permeates the film.

Or it could be just very skilful editing to make it look like we enjoyed doing it.

Goodness Gracious Me, it's the Taylers.

Spurred on by the success of of our Locomotion resurrection, I wondered if we could repeat the magic.
What slice of musical pop culture could we plunder and mime badly to next?

I don't quite know how the Peter Sellers/Sophia Loren hit 'Goodness Gracious Me' suggested itself to me as a suitable vehicle for my parent's talents.  Much less why I envisioned that the final video could somehow be made to resemble a Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedy.

That was the plan.  Somehow, we rather overstretched ourselves.

The Locomotion - Twenty Years Later

In 1989, we bought our very first video camera.  For reasons unknown, one of the first things we filmed was us 'dancing' to Kylie Minogue's pop hit The Locomotion.   We thought it was hilarious.

We then proceeded to bore many, many people by insisting that they find it hilarious too.

Recently, I realised it was twenty, twenty! years since our little performance.  Which was, by now, looking a trifle dated.  Surely, I reasoned, after all this time, we could do it better, with a little more... je ne sais quoi.

So here it is.  Our revamped re-staging, this time set to Kylie's own remix of the song from her Showgirl tour.