Ridgewood Band’s Music Video Praised as One of Year’s Best

They didn’t quite beat Kanye, but they were close.

Native Ridgewood band Alex Bleeker and the Freaks' video for “Step Right Up” was named 10th best music video of the year by Paste magazine.

The indie rockers were in mixed company – the (much) more mainstream Kanye West took the mag’s No. 7 spot and Paste said the best was this strange interactive video for Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” which allows viewers to toggle between visions of how the song would look sung by reality television stars, the cast of a romantic comedy or financial news reporters.

The “Step Right Up” video, directed by Ridgewood native Richard Law, follows the band’s front man and Real Estate bassist Bleeker for a feel-good stroll through the parking lot of a Phish concert, clad in an antlered helmet and high-fiving fellow fans at a summer festival.

“It is my opinion that Phish has the most enthusiastic conert-going fans in the world,” Bleeker told music website site Fader when the video was released. “The choice to shoot this video in the parking lot of one of their shows this summer was simple. This was the only large crowd I could think of that would lovingly embrace and interact with a man in an antler helmet without a moment’s pause.”

Law has recently directed videos for Julian Lynch’s “Northline”, featuring a cast of Ridgewood dogs, and “A.I. in Dreams” by Japanese act Hotel Mexico.

“Step Right Up” is off of the Freaks album How Far Away, available since the summer off Woodsist Records.