Sunday, July 2, 2006
Oregon folkies walk the Green Line online
By Sean L. McCarthy
Boston Herald Feature Writer
Sunday, July 2, 2006
The band Augustana is riding up the VH1 music video charts with its latest single, “Boston.”
But if you want to truly see Boston in a music video, go to YouTube.com, where a folk band from Oregon rides the MBTA Green Line from Park Street to Lechmere in its “Boston” song.
The Minor Thirds, a quintet from Portland, recorded “Boston” in 2003 as part of its “Saskatchewan” EP and released videos for each of its songs last year on DVD.
A sample lyric from the “Boston” song: “I am taking this train to the end of the line, but I am not getting off at Lechmere. No, I am taking this T to Saskatchewan.”
Songwriter Chris Piuma, 30, grew up in New York City, moving west in 1999. But Piuma said his job at the time involved trips back to Boston for training. On one such trip, he found himself riding the T’s Green Line.
“I thought, golly, wouldn’t it be nice if this just kept going north to Saskatchewan?” he said.
Why Saskatchewan?
“It had a big, long funny name, that had funny towns like Moose Jaw,” he said. “Places that nobody had heard about. So I could make up anything about it.”
Piuma filmed the footage three summers ago. He only uploaded the videos online at YouTube last week. “Somebody told me, ‘You just have to put them on there, and people will see it,’ ” he said.
It’s not the most popular Boston-related YouTube video. That would go to clips from the Red Sox 2004 American League Championship Series victories over the Yankees.
Augustana’s “Boston” music video - with a chorus of “Yeah, I think I’ll go to Boston, think I’ll start a new life, think I’ll start it over, where no one knows my name” - had almost 12,000 viewings on one version of the clip.
The Minor Thirds, meanwhile, had 122 views of its “Boston” song in its first three days.
