Premiere: Tom Tom Club Returns With Scuzzy ‘Downtown Rockers’
The Tom Tom Club have just released the Downtown Rockers EP, their first new music in over 12 years, but the husband-wife team of Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth hardly seem to have been away at all on the title track, which rips with heavy doses of fuzz and scuzz. For the video, Frantz and Weymouth hooked up with Richard Hell, Debbie Harry and a few more friends for the arresting black-and-white look.
“We had a lot of help making this video,” Frantz tells Rolling Stone. The band worked with director Jim Swaffield, who shot new video himself and interspersed it with scenes from Amos Poe and Ivan Kral’s 1976 punk-rock love letter Blank Generation.
“Debbie Harry and Richard Hell both have cameos and look fantastic,” Frantz says. “There are some beautiful young kids running around Brooklyn in band shirts from the golden age of CBGB and Max’s, a period that is just as important today as it was back then. We love the feel and look of the video. It manages to be authentic, cool and fun all at the same time.”