Bob Bowersox, The News Journal, Wilmington, Del., Oct. 4, 1985
Bad Sneakers, Delaware’s premier pop-rock quartet from Newark, has made it into big-time television. Sort of.
Sept. 26, on the popular ABC daytime soap opera, “One Life to Live,” two of the show’s main characters were sitting in a bar discussing the political intrigues occurring in the show’s twisted plots. In the background could be heard the strains of “Caught in the Act,” a tune from Bad Sneakers’ second album, “Beat the Meter.”
In an upcoming segment of the program, the video of the song, shot in New York during the summer, probably will be beaming from the television in the bar frequented by the characters in the show.
This might not seem like much, but it’s only one facet of an interesting story that is bringing good fortune to the group.
“The guy that produced the video is a cameraman on the soap opera,” explained Shane Faber, guitarist and vocalist with Bad Sneakers. “He ran an ad in The Aquarian [a national rock newspaper] last summer asking that original bands submit their tapes or records to him, because he wanted to produce a video. We sent him part of ‘Beat the Meter’ [Bad Sneakers released the record nationally on its own label earlier this year], he liked it, and he put the video together.”
The cameraman, Howard Zeidman, wants to break into feature films, according to Faber, and he figured the best way to get his services and abilities known was to shoot a rock video, a form of film direction that is garnering very high profiles for directors. Faber said Zeidman spent more than $30,000 of his own money producing the video of the song.
“Our main involvement was the song,” Faber said, “but we appear on a soundstage during the choruses. The male lead in the story line is a guy named ‘Hollywood,’ the top DJ on Apple 100, the No. 1 contemporary rock station in New York. The female lead is one of the actresses from the soap opera, but I’m not sure which one it is.”
Zeidman will submit the video to MTV as an entry in the Nov. 11 edition of “Basement Tapes,” a program that airs videos from unknown acts and awards equipment and recording contract to the winners picked by a viewer poll. Faber said there will be a debut party at Private Eyes, a chic New York club, where the group and Zeidman will meet the press and members of the industry.