I’ve Got the Hunger is the music video inspired by the last song on Bachelors Anonymous’ album, In a Viennese Vein, the second in a series of Bachelors Anonymous releases of music created for the stage (see Made in L.A. issued in 2023. Below, Bachelors Rob Berg and David Hughes explain the video’s genesis.
Forty years ago, on Halloween 1984, In a Viennese Vein was presented at The Lhasa Club as a one-off performance by John Fleck, the late Lance Loud, and Mary Lou Vozza (substituting for Charlotte McGuinness), with cameo appearances by the Bachelors-to-be Rob Berg and David Hughes. It was included in Donald Krieger and Kristian Hoffman’s first annual Zombie Jamboree, featuring Bruce Schwartz, Weba Garretson and Jerry Frankel, Tom Siegel, Tomata DuPlenty and Fayette Hauser, Donald Krieger, and Hoffman’s band The Swinging Madisons.
The Video
For forty years, we sat on the backing tracks for In a Viennese Vein; the vocals had been delivered live on stage—once—but never recorded. Having digitally issued all of the Bachelors Anonymous back catalog of songs, we now turned to the soundtracks.
In the late summer of 2024, the Bachelors and John Fleck recorded vocals for the In a Viennese Vein soundtrack album at Jeff Peters’s Studio F in South Pasadena, where John Lacques also contributed a new drum track. Jeff’s (and the Bachelors’) old friend Scott Fraser mixed the album in Pasadena. A few days later, at a Labor Day barbecue in Hollywood, we played “I’ve Got the Hunger” for a gathering of friends. Our perception that evening was that John hadn’t really considered the song’s full appeal. But when the playback finished, and after the ovation he received from this “informal focus group,” he quipped, “Well, now we need to make the video.”
In the meantime, Rob moved to Denver in March, and this summer he began talking about using “I’ve Got the Hunger” as inspiration for a new music video (rather than a recreation of the In a Viennese Vein staging). To keep options open, we agreed that John would film in L.A. via green screen and we’d do the same here in Denver. Coincidentally, Rob’s longtime collaborator in film, Armin Siljkovic, visited Denver on a cross-country documentary project. So Armin was the obvious first choice to direct, shoot, and edit the music video.
As fate would have it, our dear friend Milania Henley (who we’d known from the choir where we all met, also in 1984) passed away in August and her memorial was scheduled for September. We flew to L.A. for the memorial but also booked a green screen studio in Burbank. Rob enlisted enthusiastic friends as the “victims” that appear in the video: Deborah Rogers (actor), Mary Allen (actor and writer), Randy LaBorde (John Fleck’s husband), and Donald Nollar (who we also met years ago in the same choir). Rob’s friend Jeffrey Nelson was tapped as production assistant.
Except for the victim sequences, the video was largely unscripted, with Armin directing particular maneuvers and being given a free rein with the AI visuals.
Credits
Cast in Order of Appearance
John Fleck
Rob Berg
David Hughes
Deborah Rogers
Mary Allen
Randy LaBorde
Donald Nollar
Production Assistant
Jeffrey Nelson
Camera, Cinematographer, Editor, Director
Further Credits
See the Bachelor Blog for additional credits.
© ℗ 2024 Berg & Hughes, Celibataire Music (ASCAP)