Though the power-pop of Charlemagne is immediately recognizable in its new music video, the actual soundtrack to the shoot was something altogether different. Carl Johns, who moved from Madison to Philadelphia just over a year ago, explains what he and his bandmates Matt Ricchini and Michael Heizner were listening to as director Mike Zaleski shot the video one afternoon.
"We had just played a gig in Boston and had come back to Philly," he says. "We were going to shoot a live video in our downstairs rehearsal space, but another band was rehearsing in there." That band was Pissed Jeans, a hardcore quartet originally from Allentown, Pennsylvania that plays rock that's as caustic as Charlemagne's is tuneful. "So we played our song on a boom box while shooting our video with this hard rock blasting in the background," notes Johns.
Over the course of about three hours, Zaleski shot the video in the West Philly house. "We thought something up really quick," says Johns, who has since moved to Brooklyn. "Somehow I ended up in the shower. The fake blood was my idea, though."
