Retro Video of the Week: "Can't Even Tell" by Soul Asylum

In our latest installment of "Shit, I'm old," this past Monday marked the 30th anniversary of the debut screening of Clerks at the Sundance Film Festival.  The film was then picked up by Miramax for distribution and officially hit the theaters in October 1994.  It was the world's introduction to Kevin Smith's quirky brand of humor and the characters of the View Askewniverse.

For me, it certainly started my love of Smith's movies (Mallrats is still one of my favorite '90s movies), and in retrospect, Clerks is one of the defining Gen X movies, blending apathy, comedy, intelligence, and skepticism into a black and white masterpiece, all on a budget of less than $28,000.  It's one of those movies where much of the budget was spent to acquire rights to the music used in the film, which ended up including a solid lineup of early '90s grunge, alternative, metal, and punk bands, such as Alice in Chains, Bad Religion, Corrosion of Conformity, The Jesus Lizard, Soul Asylum, and Stabbing Westward.

Soul Asylum's "Can't Even Tell" was the song played over the film's closing credits, and as it happens, the video for the song was directed by Smith and featured Jay, Silent Bob, Dante, and Randal from Clerks, recreating the roof hockey scene, though this time playing against the band members of Soul Asylum.  They're from Minnesota, so Dante's prediction that they would be bad at hockey because they're in a band was a bit miscalculated!