The Director had ideas for this video. It was called “Qwi Mai Yab”, or ‘Quit My Job’ as might be filtered through the thick Cuban accent of singer-songwriter Jem Marie’s extended familia. The Director was thinking of clever satirical scenarios: perhaps dull office work, or repetitive factory labor, or handling of toxic materials, something static to be upset by the burst of punk energy from the song and its players.
As has happened so many times with so many bands throughout history, the day before the shoot the band told the Director, “Nah, we don’t want to think about it. We just want to break shit.”
So a pile of household junk was once again purchased by the pound and hauled onto concrete in a desolate yard. Fires were set. Mass-produced implements of domestic drudgery were yet again turned into clubs for smashing the viewing screens that had disseminated advertisements for these same products a few years before. Like a snake eating its own tail, every screen that might play this video could be the next to be smashed: the inevitable dead-end of Punk convention.
But something happened on the way to the shoot. While the Director and his technicians prepared their gear, The Ghost Ease made a quick stop at a costume shop. With the simple addition of cheap capes, gold chains and toy disguises, they made up new heroes with deep, ancestral roots on the spot. (What is the source of that trilling vocal line after the verse?)
In the masquerade play and the stylized feminine breath, The Ghost Ease set up and cut through the Grunge barrage with cunning and ancient tactics.
I want to quit my job
I want to quit my job
I hate my mother-fucking job
Quit quit my job
I want to play my guitar…
RISE, a workday-morning social media product from AOL.COM recently offered an excerpt of QWI MAI YAB to its audience. Observe their curation of anti-capitalist sentiment here.
