by Andy Langer
Weird
politics and
weird sex may get Austin Community Television the headlines but for five
years Dave Prewitt has been quietly reigning
over a pair of programs that have become access’ real calling card:
CapZeyeZ and Raw Time. The former show features live footage from
local bands, while the latter runs videos from underplayed national acts.
Together these two programs, which air Saturday nights from midnight-4am, have
become the after-hours voice of Austin’s music community. Over the years, close
to 200 bands have played live in the access studio under Prewitt’s invitation
and direction, and at one point, CapZeyeZ was taping eight live shows a
week, as well as featuring an in-studio live set, and running an additional
band interview each show for a guaranteed exposure total of 10 new Austin bands
each week.
Years before the Internet, Prewitt’s infamous call-in breaks between videos
were an interactive forum for self-promotion by local bands with show
announcements, and local music biz gossip – not to mention audition time for
unintentional Beavis and Butt-head impersonators. And who hasn’t come
home from the clubs, turned on the TV, and marveled at Prewitt’s patience and
humility as one of the call-in Beavises tell him he’s a “fatass.” MTV’s Duff,
or even Kennedy, may be better looking, but at 27, Dave Prewitt’s managed to
return music television to the early days of MTV, before pretty faces and
expensive video-launch campaigns took over. On Raw Time and
CapZeyeZ, it’s the exposure that’s valuable.
“To me, it comes down to myself being on television each Saturday night and
them being at home with the free time it takes to [connect with] one of the
four telephone lines we have,” says Prewitt about the obnoxious callers. “That
they’re redialing all night to get their five seconds of gibberish on the air
is funny. They can say what they want; that’s not going to hurt me. And all the
while, I’m laughing because they’re watching and that’s half the battle.”
Prewitt started giving the callers a forum in November of 1989, three years
after he took one of ACTV’s camera-operator workshops. Because ACTV clears its
databases every three years of inactive participants, Prewitt found himself
rushed to take an editing class and throw together a couple of half-hour shows.
And because Prewitt was a music fan, so much of one that he’d begun crudely
videotaping local club shows with a VHS for his own amusement, his armful of
local live shows became the CapZeyeZ pilot.
“The tapes I had been making for my own personal pleasure, mostly so I didn’t
have to go to a club to see a band every time I had the urge to see them,
became the early shows,” says Prewitt. “At first, the show was mostly the bands
I was going to see a lot, like Near Dark, Oynxx, and The Band From Hell – 15
minutes at a time, wide shots with an occasional zoom.”
Six months later, Prewitt landed a regular weekend slot which would, at its
most hectic scheduling, eventually lead to shows on Tuesday, Friday, and
Saturday. Prewitt admits that the show, in its early stages, became somewhat of
a vanity project in which he was so caught up with being on television that he
started naming his hamsters on air simply because he could. But as Prewitt
became one of ACTV’s most recognizable hosts, alongside Livia of Ask Livia
Live
fame, he says he began to realize CapZeyeZ‘s potential was
a lot more than a chance to make Dave Prewitt a local celebrity.
“When people started coming up to me in clubs and suggesting bands and saying
they’d since gone out to see the one’s I’d been playing, the focus changed from
me having a television show to me having a vehicle to help local bands,”
explains Prewitt. “Originally, it was a buzz to goof off taking phone calls.
Now I’ve gone 180 degrees away from that to the point where, if it wasn’t that
viewers liked to hear themselves on television so much, I wouldn’t be taking
calls at all. Generally, people just want to make requests. That’s cool on
CapZeyeZ because I usually have the footage and it means people care
about the local music, but on Raw Time it’s usually stuff they can hear
on the radio or see on MTV ten times a day.”
Because Prewitt owns an unparalleled local music catalogue and has become a
favorite of the major-label promotions departments that send him videotapes and
the swag he routinely gives away on the air, Prewitt says he’s able to keep the
show’s inherently anti-commercial promise that no two videos in a row will be
from the same musical genre, and that no video will be repeated in consecutive
weeks. And in another unofficial ruling that serves as the best indicator that
Prewitt’s on community television, he says he generally stops playing new
videos from national artists that are available on other video outlets like MTV
or BET. On last week’s shows, CapZeyeZ featured unlikely set
combinations like the Shakin’ Apostles, Widgeon, John Cougar Rabinowitz, and
the Toadies, while Raw Time featured national acts like Victoria
Williams, Big Kap, Congo Norvell, and Garbage. And while Prewitt makes it clear
that he doesn’t necessarily like each video he airs, he does use the shows to
champion the national acts he likes such as current favorites Jewel, Whale, and
Green Apple Quickstep.
“By mixing genres and the familiar and the unfamiliar artists, the people who
channel surf, who are the nature of people who are up as late as I’m on, are,
at one point, going to flip by some kind of music they want to listen to. My
ability to play whatever I determine or what the callers like is unique to
access. I’ve had a few opportunities to put a version of the show on regular
television but they want to tell you how to do it, and I like calling the shots
and being able to expose bands that haven’t had commercial exposure yet.
“From taking so many calls, it’s always amazing to me how many people believe
that what they see on television and hear on radio is all that’s available to
them – all that exists,” Prewitt says. “I’m not playing Alice in Chains,
Silverchair, or Stone Temple Pilots, and although I originally thought that
this might decrease the number of people watching, it’s rewarding to see that
the viewers hang in there, even if they’re just sitting through five minutes of
something they hate to see if they recognize the next video.”
Prewitt’s most common genre-bender is the metal to rap segue, which he says
seems to aggravate metal fans far more than the rap fans. And ironically,
Prewitt says many viewers’ biggest misconception is that his long-hair and
T-shirt look makes him a metalhead when in fact he listens to far more hip-hop
than anything else. He also points out that it was mostly logistics and
necessity that made CapZeyeZ‘s early days look like Back Room
advertisements – the only club other than Steamboat and Liberty Lunch willing
to consistently sponsor the show by covering Prewitt’s tape costs and letting
him set-up ACTV’s bulky equipment in space otherwise reserved for ticket
holders. And although most of Prewitt’s footage these days comes primarily from
forays into those three usual clubs – Prewitt found out the hard way that Emo’s
wiring can’t support the electricity his equipment warrants – he’s recently
found that his late-night Saturday time slot prevents him from taping as much
as he once did.
“The only time I see bands now is when they’re opening for a roadshow band I’m
interviewing or when they’re in the studio for CapZeyeZ. I hated that
for a while, feeling a little out of touch with some of the new local bands
that are hip. I get demos in the mail every day, but that can’t really replace
it. The listings in the Chronicle help me see who’s doing well and a hot
band will inevitably get requested a lot.”
Although Prewitt says it’s reassuring that so many local bands have begun
realizing the value of video and begun making their own at the same time, it’s
ultimately Prewitt’s own library of Austin music that will outlive the show and
preserve today’s scene for future local music archivists. Even of late, his
tapes have been in unprecedented demand – filling the bulk of the Austin Music
Network’s programming, appearing on MTV as part of a Soul Asylum video that
features Prewitt’s footage of Lucinda Williams, and making the underground
rounds with the only footage yet of P (from 1993’s Austin Music Awards). And
yet even with the industry attention, overwhelming positive calls, and the
satisfaction of producing live videos that struggling local bands can use to
impress clubs or labels, the real shame is that, at least in terms of cold hard
cash, Prewitt’s efforts go unpaid.
“I’m working my day job six days a week, and every two weeks I’ll get an extra
day off,” Prewitt says. “This week it’s Monday and I’ll be up at ACTV
editing. It’s just time off from my getting-paid job to do my not-getting-paid
job. I do get offers from labels to buy time, like they could if I were to buy
time on a regular station and sell time to advertisers like Freedom Rock, but I
don’t want to get paid to play Aerosmith. I suppose I’m in a hard spot even
when it comes to doing the freelance video-producing thing because you can’t
make money and get started until you’ve started and have money.
“But even if I can’t go out and tape as much because I need to work, I know a
lot of people are watching the show and when you get down to it, that’s why
it’s on. I hope a lot of the CapZeyeZ crowd is the musicians, local
industry people, and clubgoers that can support the bands and help them. And
it’s definitely rewarding to get the calls from people that say they’ve
discovered something new on one of my shows, tape it and watch it Sundays, or
send it out to homesick friends in Jamaica. It’s still amazing how many people
recognize me out in public and tell me about shows years ago. Some of them even
remember when I was naming hamsters.” n
This article appears in September 1 • 1995 and September 1 • 1995 (Cover).