Music Videos
Two separate music videos were filmed for "Zoot Suit Riot". The first, directed by Isaac Camner, was produced by the Daddies and shot in October 1997 at the Café Du Nord nightclub in San Francisco, California. The video depicts the band and a zoot suited Steve Perry performing the song to a group of swing dancers and punk rockers in a smoky lounge, intercut with various shots of surrealist and occult imagery. Legendary disc jockey Al "Jazzbo" Collins has a brief cameo as one of the club's patrons, singing along to a verse from the song.
The original video received minimal exposure, having aired only once on MTV as part of 12 Angry Viewers, a program in which twelve music fans critique a series of music videos, where it received almost unanimous disapproval.
In early 1998, once "Zoot Suit Riot" had charted and the Daddies were gaining commercial notoriety, Mojo requested that a newer video be filmed. Directed by pornographic film director Gregory Dark and edited by Bob Murawski, the second video follows the same premise as the original, with the Daddies playing to a crowd of swing dancers and punk rockers, though the surrealist imagery is much more prominent. Throughout the video, there are shots of such visuals as evil clowns, a goat head being used as part of a ritual sacrifice, vampires, skulls and foot fetishism. According to the Perry, the video's surrealist theme stemmed from his love of avant-garde cinema, notably the films of Luis Buñuel.
Dark's video became the version most associated with the song, becoming one of MTV's most requested videos of the year and gaining a nomination for a "Best New Artist in a Video" award at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards, though losing out to Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn".
Read more about this topic: Zoot Suit Riot (song)
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