Saturday, January 28, 2023

YouTube Channel Profile Series: Bert_ & Mike McCleary

Well that's not like me, I completely forgot to post our monthly YouTube Channel Profiles late last month! Blame the holiday season and my own forgetfulness, so let's try to make up for lost time! I hope to do two of these by the end of February to catch up to where we should be, for the record, and apologies for any inconvenience on my part. Last month's This month's YouTube Channel Profile again looks at randomly selected YouTube channels whose content is at least half devoted to local metal, hard rock, and/or punk musicians/concerts, and we have two this time, one with a single video and the other with only a handful of similar uploads. Here's what you should know on each!

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 Bert_ (http://youtube.com/atyourc3rvix)

Owner: Uncanny Valley bassist Brendan Bertrand

Channel Timeline: Launched on August 18th, 2012; Only video uploaded on July 20th, 2021

Channel Summary: Brendan's only video sees him performing with The Uncanny Valley at the drive-in, pandemic-restricted Rotaryfest on July 17th, 2021 outside of the former Zellers/Lowe's Plaza. The clip has Brendan, frontman Adrian Sullivan, guitarist Matt Ferlaino, and drummer Dylan Turner covering half of Led Zeppelin's "Good Times Bad Times". Despite the filmer's vertical angle and relative distance from the stage, they do zoom in a bit, and The Uncanny Valley do sound good on a song that fits their retro style very well! Click here to see them playing "Psychotic Reaction" at Rotaryfest last year, which was on the same stage but now back in its normal usage as Stage 2 at Clergue Park.


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Mike McCleary (http://youtube.com/@mikemccleary3123)  

Owner: Local hard rock solo musician Mike McCleary

Channel Timeline: Launched on October 16th, 2013; Current videos uploaded from January-June 2018

Channel Summary: Mike's official YouTube channel comprises of six uploads of his original songs, mostly accompanied by a video featuring external footage or lyrics, though none feature him on camera. This channel has featured more content in the past, including content from albums in Mike's discography, but much of it has since been deleted as Mike de-listed older and often more political albums and re-focused primarily on newer material.

Why You Should Watch: While obviously not comprehensive for Mike's entire catalog of music anymore, it does contain six songs that he's still proud of and happy to showcase to fans, and you get a good sense of his abilities as a guitarist, singer, and songwriter through them! Note that the channel does not contain any of his recent music since he returned from his last hiatus, namely his planned instrumental album "Fallout From Midnight Tides", but remember that his hard drive did crash last fall, which did set his progress back.

 Our Recommended Videos To Check Out:

Be The One: Two of Mike's videos primarily serve as lyric videos for the song in question, including "Aylan" and the longer & more visually driven "Be The One", which survived the mass changes to his 2018 (but revised-in-2021) album "Weight Of The Truth". One of my favourite songs on the original version, "Be The One" was about Mike hoping to be free from stress and mental illness, with the grungy base and bluesy guitar solo pairing well with the nicely edited stock footage and lyric track! Of the surviving songs on YouTube, only "What You've Done To Me" (which has no video accompaniment) is also on the "Weight Of The Truth" revision.


Double Dream Hands Get Out Remix: The last video (to date) on Mike's channel is also his most popular, and it is one of three uploads setting his song to a video without accompanying lyrics. In this case, Mike dubbed his song "Get Out" (from his de-listed album also named "What You've Done To Me") over the back half of the 2010 viral video Double Dream Hands. That video features music teacher John Jacobson performing the title dance to his own song "Planet Rock", which plays in the first 45 seconds before "Get Out" kicks in. Maybe this doesn't have a fully realized video from scratch to fit the song like with like "Snakes & Ladders" & "Childish Leaders" have, but it is amusing to see John dancing to a harder-edged alt rock song!


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I hope you guys liked this month's YouTube Channel Profiles! Again, to make up for last month, the next installment will come sooner than the days surrounding January 26th if I can help it. Whenever it comes, we have a single channel to look at, as I have randomly selected YouTube user mikelibs, featuring 12 mostly solo guitar videos from Sault Michigan metal guitarist Mike Libertoski, so look for that hopefully by mid-February, and for more news and notes next week! Thanks everyone!

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