The Big Push- Ren- and Chinchilla- Great young musicians from the U.K.

The Big Push covering Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," last summer in Bristol.  This video just dropped last week on YouTube.  The Big Push formed in 2017, in the U.K., and is made up of Ren Gill, Romain Axisa, Gorran Kendall, and Glenn Chambers.  Ren, Romain, and Gorran switch off on lead vocals and backing vocals, depending on the song.  Most of the time, Romain plays lead guitar.  Ren plays lead guitar on occasion, as well as rhythm guitar and bass.  Gorran plays acoustic guitar, rhythm guitar, and bass.  These guys are best known for a whole bunch of great street performing videos playing a really wide variety of cover songs, with many millions of views among them.  Simply put, they rock.  This post will link a few of my favorite videos from The Big Push, as well as some of Ren's solo and duet work, mind blowing videos, and raps, and Chinchilla's work.  If you like any of these, there are many more videos on YouTube, and probably elsewhere, to check these amazing musicians out.  

And to all the salty, crusty, old geezers like me, The Big Push, Ren, and Chinchilla are proof that not all new music sucks.  

The Big Push- "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"- Bob Dylan cover

The Big Push- "I Shot the Sheriff/Road to Zion/Hip Hop" - Bob Marley & The Wailers cover

The Big Push- "Sympathy for the Devil"- Rolling Stones cover- Live at the Brighton Dome

The Big Push- "Passenger" - Souxsie & The Banshees cover

The Big Push- "Paint it Black"- Rolling Stones cover

The Big Push- "War Pigs"- Black Sabbath cover

The Big Push- "Heroes"- David Bowie cover

The Big Push- "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"- Cyndi Lauper cover

Ren

Ren- "Hi Ren" 

This mind blowing original song and video changed my life.  An old BMX freestyle friend in England, Alex Leech, shared this video on Facebook, shortly after it came out on YouTube.  I think it had less than 3 million views when I first watched it, about three years ago, this video has over 65 million views now.  After watching this video, and several other of Ren's videos that night, I started writing poetry again.  I had only written 3 or 4 poems between 2008 and 2022.  I managed to lose all copies of ten years worth of poetry, 165 of the best poems I've ever written, in 2008, when I got pushed out of California and wound up in living in North Carolina for ten years.  After losing that much work (and all my video master tapes and raw footage), the poetry in me just left.  I had no urge to write poems.  

The utter brilliance of "Hi Ren" motivated me to try and start writing poems again.  I haven't written that many, but most of the new poems I've written since (like this one) have been pretty decent, long epic poems.  I also took a break from the kind of Sharpie drawings I had been doing for years, those based on classic photos of musicians, and I drew a couple of big Sharpie Scribble Style drawings straight out of my head.  I did that just to get out of my personal rut, and challenge myself a bit creatively.  Seriously, this song and video had an incredible creative effect on me.  Thanks Ren.  I still watch this video sometimes to get into a deep, creative vibe.  

Ren- "The Tale of Jenny of Screech"

Ren- "Money Game Part 2"- rap/song

Ren- "Bittersweet Symphony" - Original roaming video- original rap/The Verve cover

Ren- "Bittersweet Symphony" - rap/The Verve cover- second version video with live strings

Ren- "Vincent's Tale- Starry Night"- rap

Ren X Chinchilla  (Ren duets with Chinchilla- about 2021-22)

Ren X Chinchilla- "Chalk Outlines" 

Ren X Chinchilla- "How to be me" live  This is a fucking incredible song and performance. 

Ren X Chinchilla- "Sexual Healing" live- Marvin Gaye cover

Chinchilla- 

Chinchilla- "I put a spell on you"- Screamin' Jay Hawkins cover- The Voice UK- blind auditions 2023

Chinchilla- "Little Girl Gone" video

Chinchilla- "Cut You Off" video

Chinchilla- "Fingers"- live for Hunger TV

Chinchilla- "OK As I Am"- video

These five young people from the U.K. are all incredible musicians.  If any of these tracks piqued your interest, dig into their work on YouTube and anywhere else you find music, there's a lot more out there.  

I do most of my writing on Substack now, a platform created specifically for writers, check it out:

Steve Emig The White Bear Substack

"Hi Ren"- Falling down the Ren rabbit hole...

A few weeks ago I saw this video in a Facebook post by Alex Leech, over in the U.K..  He said he'd been up late the night before digging into this guy's music, after watching this video.  So I watched the video.  "Hi Ren" by Ren, U.K. rapper/songwriter/musician.  This is an incredible piece of art.  This video made me look at my own creative work, and start thinking about all the ideas I haven't done.  It also got me writing poetry again, after 14 years of not writing.  

I thought the video had 2.4 million views that night that I first watched it.  It had 2.9 million the next morning.  It has 5.7 million now, a month later.  This isn't a major pop star singing bubble gum syrupy lyrics about her last boyfriend.  This is a fucking intense video talking about deep, dark, hard subjects.  I know Ren isn't about "numbers, statistics, or stats."  But this amazing, deep, intense, music video was getting 100,000 views a day, just by word of mouth.  He tried something really freakin' hard with "Hi Ren."  And Ren and crew knocked it out of the park with this video.  

Like Alex, I started digging into what else the guy has out.  He suggested "The Ballad of Jenny and Screech."  I looked up those, and "The Ballad of Violet," and somehow watched them in the right order, seperately.  Mind blown sounds so cliche', but that's what it was.  I was hooked.  

I kept digging.  Ren's got a whole bunch of music, a wide variety, going back years.  He also has a crazy personal story, 10 years sick with Lyme disease, and stress-induced psychosis.  There are a couple of really dark videos of him form years ago, in that struggle.  This guy is brilliant, he's done a bunch of music, many different styles, and this got me re-thinking all my own creative work.  While I'm down and out financially, I put out a lot of work, blogs and drawings, primarily.  Ren's work got me thinking of the deeper, smarter, crazier ideas that I haven't done.  His rhymes reminded me of some of my poems I wrote years ago.  I started writing poems again, after not writing any rhymes for 14 years.  This one song, and the other work backing it, really motivated me to step up my own work.  No other artist has done this, since I discovered Matisyahu 17-18 years ago, and first seeing Kerry Getz play live at Triangle Square, 3 or 4 years before that.  

For the last month, I've traveled down the Ren rabbit hole, and I still haven't watched it all.  Ren's a gernius.  Maybe his work is for you.  Maybe it's not.  This post is to introduce some of you to Ren, the musician, the way Alex Leech's Facebook post introduced his work to me.  Here are some of my favorites of his...

My favorite reaction video to "Hi-Ren"- "Therapist reacts to Hi-Ren"

Ren X Chinchilla - "Chalk Outlines"

"The Ballad of Jenny & Screech" (full)  This is the song I've been listening to every day...

Ren X Chinchilla- "How to Be Me" (live)

"Bittersweet Symphony" (Verve cover- sort of)

The Big Push- "Paint it Black"- Rolling Stones cover (yeah, Ren plays bass, too)

The Big Push- "War Pigs"- (Black Sabbath cover)

There's a whole lot more to discover.  Maybe you'll get sucked down into the rabbit hole, too.  

The most inspiring music video I've ever seen... "Hi Ren" by Ren

I saw first watched this today, after Alex Leech from the U.K. shared it on Facebook and said he was watching this guy's video late into the night.  This performance/video blew my fucking mind.  I'm not even going to promote this post.  It you're meant to find it, you'll find it.  "Hi Ren" by Ren.  

If you like it, check out these videos next...

"The Tale of Jenny and Screech" (full)

Therapist reacts to "Hi Ren" video  (The therapist cries before the end of the video, her reaction video is about 35 minutes long, but definitely worth watching if you're a actively creative person of any kind, or have struggled with depression/psychological issues at some point)

Ren X Chinchilla- "Chalk Outlines"

Ren X Chinchilla- "How to be me" (live)

The Big Push- Live set in Brighton, September 2022

Ren has a bunch more work to check out.  If you like these, keep digging...

It's been two days since I clicked on a Facebook post to watch "Hi Ren" for the first time.  I didn't know what I was seeing.  Instrumental?  No, he's singing weird sounds... "Oh shit, there's lyrics..."  This video changed me.  It's as simple as that.  I told Alex Leech, whose post I saw this video in, "some pieces make say, 'that's cool,' and make me want to go create something amazing.  This is the second kind."  

I've been looking for a new direction for my Sharpie art, I want to stop doing my take on classic rock star or BMX photos, and I want to draw pictures that say something.  Yeah, making a living and actually having a place ot live would be nice, too.  But I can live this crazy street life a while longer, if I'm doing some seriously cool work, drawings, writing, blogging, whatever.  

After watching Hi Ren several times, and several of his other videos, I've finished one new drawing, a totally different idea.  I started writing poetry again, which I stopped doing in late 2008, when I lost all my creative work, including 165 unpublished poems that no one else had ever seen.  That was ten years worth, the best creative work I've done.  Part of the new poem, called "You're not doing it right," is in the first new drawing.  I'm now working on a second new drawing, another completely new direction.  We'll see how it comes out.  

The big things I got from being exposed to Ren's work is 1) Tackle the hard subjects, go deep, don't be afraid of going into the really deep ideas I've held back from writing and drawing.  Go deep, dig into the meaning of life stuff, the things I had in the back of my head, but didn't write or try to draw.  And 2) Be honest.  "Brutally honest," seems cliche', but that's when the good stuff comes out, or comes through us, creatively.  

I was already really prolific writing and drawing before this video sparked me in new directions.  But now I'm twice as amped to dig into new themes, go deeper, and see what comes of it.  That's what I got out of a video by a guy half my age, who had the courage to make one of the most incredible pieces I've ever seen on video.