American Wedding Video: The Cast

Now it's time to introduce the main players in this thing
(again, photos, except for #3, were taken by Nathan Jones).

The story of the video is thus: The worst of the worst in American wedding receptions. Boring company. God-awful music. People doing the chicken dance (few enough to make it feel pretty sad). Bad food--the cheese balls are congealed on the plates with the salad dressing and there are questionable finger sandwiches.

Enter gypsy punk catering company.

Enter Gogol Bordello to teach us what it means to celebrate the betrothed, Bordello-style:

Bartender and ringleader played by GB's frontman Eugene Hutz

Catering gals Elizabeth Sun (cymbal player) and Pamela Racine (drummer) carting out the drink and the replacement food, including best of all, the really thick, really phallic kielbasa (sausage).

Note: The food (real stuffed birds, roasted hocks of stuff, the truly aromatic sausage) sat out on the snack table (directly behind my table) for TWO DAYS without refrigeration. By the end of Day 2, us Table 2 residents had watery eyes and took leave in between takes to get away from the smell.

More of the catering staff

(L to R, Pedro Erazo, bongo player, general on-stage rabble-rouser, and enthusiastic stage-diver, from Ecuador; Oren Kaplan, guitar player, he's amazing on that thing!, from Israel; Yuri Lemeshev, resident clown and master accordionist, from Russia; Tommy Gobena, bass player who hales from Ethiopia, a sweet, sweet man; and Eliot Ferguson, drum-kit player, the one who Eugene says is "the only sane member of the band," from the wilds of California)


and, we can't forget ...


The guy who starts all the musical trouble at this particular reception (Sergey Rjabtzev, violinist and former theater director in Moscow)

Stay tuned for more....


photos by http://nathanjonesphoto.com.