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It’s a summer Friday night – that crackling Calgary combination of simmering air, warm breezes and approaching black clouds – and the windows are thrown wide open at the Mecca, a double-wide, down ‘n’ dirty rock ‘n’ roll roadhouse.
Billy Cowsill’s Co-Dependents infuse barbeque-smoked air with a Buddy Holly Tune.
Heat-flushed servers pick their way through the packed-in, joyfully rocking crown, mindful of snaking black cables that reveal the recording session under way.
Hanging through an open window oblivious to the lightning flashing over his shoulder, is a wiry Baja-surfer-looking guy, digital camera in hand, angular face intense and utterly focused.
He teeters on the edge of the sill, leaning in for an over-the-shoulder shot of Cowsill, then hops off, appearing now in a doorway, panning the mixed audience of leather-clad aging rockers and slummin’-it Gen Xers.
All they care about is the pulsating sound – nobody notices the silent, darting artist at work.
Tonight, as usual, Jeth Weinrich’s brilliance slips through pretty much uncelebrated.
For all his credits, the 40-year-old Weinrich should be the toast of the town: winner of three Juno awards, named Canada’s best music video director twice, recognized by Adweek Magazine as one of the 10 most up-and-coming directors in America (although he’s Calgarian), and creator of festival-award-winning films. In 1998 two of advertising’s 12 “hot spots” were his work.
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