comments

1. Josh Weichhand on May 31st, 2011 at 6:32 pm

   As you all probably know, Grace and I used to live here. The thing about Grand Rapids is this: they’re terribly, horribly, obnoxiously earnest. At first, my cynicism made me want to hate this video, but then I read about the Newsweek article denouncing the city (and prompting this video) and I decided that for Grand Rapids – hell, for the entire State of Michigan – this was a perfectly cheery little middle finger to those fuckers who said my former home-state had lost its chutzpah.

2. Josh Weichhand on May 31st, 2011 at 6:33 pm

   But yes, it is hopelessly dorky that such a large group of people turned out to push their city into a viral hit. Seems to have worked though.

3. Cindy Scroggins on May 31st, 2011 at 7:17 pm

   Hey, Deron. You thinking what I’m thinking?

4. Deron Bauman on May 31st, 2011 at 7:36 pm

   I’ll grab the camera. You talk to Dallas.

5. Deron Bauman on May 31st, 2011 at 7:42 pm

   But yes.

6. Renee on May 31st, 2011 at 8:58 pm

   “I don’t even know how they did this.”

   Probably just a steadicam and copious amounts of enthusiasm.

7. Amanda Mae Meyncke on May 31st, 2011 at 9:05 pm

   I know how they did it.

8. Renee on May 31st, 2011 at 9:12 pm

   Were you thinking permits?

   I got as far as the steadicam, but I wondered whether someone was walking behind the steadicam operator with a boombox playing that song, and how many tries it took. No one ever tells you if there was more than one try.

9. Deron Bauman on May 31st, 2011 at 9:14 pm

   Renee, I think she means how did they get the entire city of Grand Rapids to turn out to lip-dub “The Day The Music Died” all over town.

10. Renee on May 31st, 2011 at 9:28 pm

    Oh, I thought it was like a 500 people tops, not a full city worth of people. And also I worked in film a bit and so I tend to think of the behind the scenes part being the tricky part.

    This is how they advertised it when they did one for the University of Victoria here in Canada.

    Go Dallas?

11. Cindy Scroggins on June 1st, 2011 at 9:58 am

    They should do one of these in Edmonton.

12. Carole Corlew on June 1st, 2011 at 12:21 pm

    Oh my. This song. Mr. B. became obsessed at 5, a girl at school taught it to him. He would sing “drove my cheby to the leby but the leby was dry.” He was spooky quiet with the line “this’ll be the day that I die.” I would think okay, not playing Barney songs in the car, mistake. So I’d ramp up the Allmans about then. Something cheerful like “Whipping Post.”

13. Kayleigh on June 1st, 2011 at 12:36 pm

    @Renee – 5 takes (6 planned, but the 5th nailed it), and the camera rode around on a John Deere Gator, with the music blaring to alert the next dubbers when their part was coming

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