Alt Rock Band Coheed and Cambria Film Music Video at Pali High

By MICHAEL AUSHENKER | Contributing Writer

When contemporary progressive rock band Coheed and Cambria decided to release the irreverent, high-energy rocker “You’ve Got Spirit, Kid” as the first single off of their just-released album “The Color Before the Sun,” they needed an irreverent, high-energy video to accompany it. Well, what’s more irreverent than high schoolers, right?

The New York-based band—which includes founding members Claudio Sanchez and Travis Stever—went with a nod to Amy Heckerling’s 1980 classic “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Director DJay Brawner shot their video at Palisades Charter High School.

“That’s a high school that they use for quite a few shoots for movies and TV,” lead guitarist Stever told the Palisadian-Post. Stever added that beyond the obvious nod to “Fast Times,” the “You Got Spirit, Kid” video was the band’s chance to parody and pay homage to the numerous 1980s movies of their youth, including “The Goonies,” “Explorers” and various John Hughes dramedies.

Essentially, the video’s premise revolves around band members, employed in various custodial roles at fictional Amory High, getting payback on the popular kids.

This includes the jocks, who early in the video steal a male student’s clothes from the locker room while he’s showering, forcing him to take a walk of shame naked through campus.

Hijinks ensue.

Anyone familiar with Pali High can clearly see that the video was filmed there, from the multi-hued blue mosaic tiles of the gymnasium building’s exterior to a peek at the trophies straight through the main doors as the band exits.

At the video’s very onset, we see the Bowdoin Street entrance, its sign digitally revised to read “Amory High.” (Amory High alludes to the Amory Wars, a ponderous science-fiction storyline created by front man Sanchez that Coheed and Cambria have conceptually and musically adhered to since forming in 1995.)

The video’s final moments show Coheed walking down the on-campus driveway that meets Bowdoin Street, with a northward view behind the band toward the rows of pine trees lining Sunset Boulevard.

The concept of these high school pranks and antics all originated with Coheed’s singer and chief songwriter.

“Claudio had a rough idea of what we wanted to do,” Stever said of Sanchez. “We’d all kind of throw out ideas for our characters and have fun with them.”

While in town for the shoot, the band largely remained on campus and had little time to enjoy their Palisades surroundings. Stever said they showed up at Pali High at about 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday. The band filmed Saturday and Sunday then immediately took a redeye flight home Sunday night back to the East Coast.

Coheed and Cambria, who will play an Oct. 28 concert at The Troubadour in West Hollywood, are looking forward to returning to Los Angeles.

“It was all-around fun,” Stever said of the video shoot. “It never felt like it was dragging. If a gag got a good reaction or made us laugh, it got in. That’s why it was so much fun. It was meant to be juvenile—like our own little movies we made when we were kids.”

To view the “You Got Spirit, Kid” video, visit: youtube.com/watch?v=8eklHJeB6mc.