Photos by Jeff Schaer-Moses
Captain Squeegee lead singer Danny Torgersen leading his army of performers against the evil that is reality television on the set of their newest video “Dually Noted.”
Phoenix, Arizona’s Captain Squeegee may not be winning MTV VMAs, but the atomic jazz fusion act are in the video vanguard nonetheless. The seven-piece horn-led acid trip has spent the last two and a half years vigorously releasing videos from their outstanding 2014 album To The Bardos, and since their outrageous claymation epic “Inevitable,” the group’s multimedia work has only gotten weirder.
The fifth video off the aforementioned record finds its protagonists trapped in a world where an appearance on a reality TV show can land you in Hell. Their fearless lead singer Danny Torgersen and his stalwart trumpet are all that stand between Captain Squeegee and eternal damnation.
The redheaded trumpeter must marshal his bandmates and an army of enslaved performers (made up of a litany of well known Phoenix-based musicians, models, actors, and the like, including Cori Rios of The Hourglass Cats, Danger Paul Balazs of The Redemptions, Gabe Kubanda, Harrison Fjord, Chelsea Clair, and more) to combat zombification by way of reality TV.
“Basically I try to get famous on one of those stupid singing shows, but instead of finding fame I just find Satan. Because those shows and the current state of popular artistry all seem sorta evil,” says the ever skeptical and always adorable Torgersen. “The song is about making music and expressing yourself no matter what…so we wanted to take the modern-day version of musical success and completely turn it upside down and throw it in a trippy-ass volcano.”
Captain Squeegee did just that with the help of Electric Legends Productions and director Freddie Paull. This was by far the band’s biggest production to date, utilizing multiple locations, dozens of extras, and even a low-key celebrity cameo by 1980s rapper Candyman.
The Candyman catching a shock from Captain Squeegee during his cameo appearance in “Dually Noted.”
“We always knew we had to do a video for this song. It is consistently a fan favorite and we have always intended to make an epic, inspiring, heroic story for it,” says Torgersen. “I auditioned for American Idol years ago and had a terrible, pathetic experience, so when Freddie suggested this concept to me I was immediately into doing it.”
Torgersen and his cohorts may have been into the idea, but that didn’t stop “Dually Noted” from going through more than a year of production from the first day of shooting to the end. While Captain Squeegee had no problem acquiring permission to use The Mesa Community College Performing Arts Center in Mesa, Arizona for the first half of shooting, getting permission to use the area they needed for the second half was a bit trickier.
“Let’s just say the video would have dropped long ago if it were easier and safer to take a rock band into an abandoned mine shaft,” says Torgersen.
