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Videos Make Music Sing
I wrote a song. It was a good song. It was a funny song with quirky lyrics,
illustrative language and a silly subtext. Weird Al Yankovich might have been proud,
if not a bit jealous. But I'm no Weird Al Yankovich, not by a long shot. I'm Jessica
Delfino, and I write dirty songs.
 I started writing dirty songs as a natural extension of my
stand-up comedy act. My "ribald" jokes were sometimes
a bit too hard on audience's sensibilities. But the same
jokes, turned into songs and sung to an audience in my
pretty alto / soprano voices, and from behind my
comforting, friendly face; well, that was a winning
combination, if I do say so myself. And I do.
One night at a show on a docked boat in the East River of NYC, a gentleman named
Nick Fox-Gieg happened to be in the audience who enjoyed one of my songs very much.
He heard the song and saw the picture I was illustrating. Lucky for me, he happened
to be a talented animator. He contacted me and said he wanted to animate my song. A
few months later, he sent me the finished project - a beautiful animation of my
song, "I Wanna Be Famous". Later that year, I took the short animation to the
Montreal Comedy Festival and received fan mail from all over the world associated
with it.
Watch "I Wanna Be Famous"
I sent the film to friends, relatives and showed the video live at various shows.
The song, which had been a fine song to begin with, only seemed to be enriched with
the video to go along with it. Audiences who had once enjoyed the song live,
laughing and applauding with genuine joy, now loudly cheered with delight when the
animated version was played.
A few months later, I wrote another song. It was another good song. This time, it
was a fast paced "rap" style song in which I sung about the magic qualities of my
"nether" regions. (I'm talking about my vagina.) Again, audiences received the song
with laughter and delight, but one random night, former director of Mad TV, Matt
Davis asked if he could decorate the song with his film stylings. Of course I said,
"Zzzzheah" and called all my homies to celebrate.
On location at his studio, there was a huge green screen wall, which I was filmed in
front of, singing my song and dancing around in a ridiculous red mariachi looking
outfit. Unfortunately, my fashion designer was out with the flu that day, and so was
my hair doer, so no one was around to tell me my bangs look like a bad moustache.
Using After Effects, Matt put miscellaneous fantasy images behind me, made me appear
to be riding on the wings of an airplane and did a multitude of other terrific sight
gags. He even placed my face so it actually became a singing vagina. (This might
have been the one section which caused it to be removed from youtube).
Watch "Jessica Delfino is Magic" aka "My Pussy Is Magic"
When the video was done, we put it onto youtube, and it received 20,000 views in
five days. It was taken down by youtube and then put back up again by the director,
at which time I sent out a massive press release stating, "Youtube removes music
video one day after announcing they are purchased by Google." The video has
remained posted since.
A "music" "video" has the magical ability to take a song on a one way trip to a new
place where it has never been before and might never have gotten to without the new
medium. Without the animation for "I Wanna Be Famous" or the video for "Jessica
Delfino is Magic", I doubt I would have been able to get those songs in front of the
size of audience that I had, at least not at this stage in my career. Someday, when
Universal is managing me, they will have the capability to make sure that my vagina
songs are the sound of every child's cry. But until then, I'll have to do my own
foot work. And from now on, every song I write will have an accompanying video. That
is my promise to myself, and to America.
Achieve fame the fast, free, today way!
http://www.dutchwest.tv/whitebox/delfino.html
Such a pretty face, such a dirty mouth.
http://jessydelfino.blogspot.com
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