Who is Rick Wilder? This is what I have been wondering while watching this moving and really sad new Ariel Pink video, starring the old rocker. The mini movie – because we really have a movie here – was made around Ariel Pink‘s ‘Dayzed Inn Daydreams’ from his latest album ‘Pom Pom’, and was directed by Grant Singer, who has worked with many artists (DIIV, Foxygen, Chief Keef, Kendrick Lamar, Little Dragon, Lo-Fang, Sky Ferreira, Sleigh Bells,…). He has also directed the two other videos for Pink’s ‘Put Your Number In My Phone’, and ‘Picture Me Gone’, and the trio of videos are said to be thematically linked together.
The film follows the eccentric old rocker Rick Wilder (the Mau Mau’s, The Berlin Brats), but this is no ordinary video, it takes you by the guts and doesn’t let you recover soon. The weird-looking and emaciated character looks totally lost while wandering in this cheap beat-down supermarket where he now has to work. His whole life seems to have been annihilated and reduced to this job in a supermarket downtown Bakersfield, but he hasn’t forgotten his dreams of glam rock ‘n’ roll. The story perfectly fits with Ariel Pink’s lyrics ‘I died unknown/Stillborn, one morning/Letters on paper/They remain/At last my work is done/The picture’s gone/But the memory lingers on/Farewell/This one’s for you/I used to dream/Dream awake/Hide in the dark/Fade into gray/I used to pray/But now I scream/Lord help me/No more daydreams’…. This combination gives so much poignancy and authenticity to the story,… Ariel Pink makes a cameo in the video as ‘a famous musician visiting a quiet, dismal town, having just played there the night’, and ends up smoking a cigarette with Wilder. I have to admit it, not only Pink writes damn catchy song but he also makes very deep ones. It’s not easy to contemplate his mortality and fallen dream in such vivid California light.
