Tsar: In The Year 2000

Watch An Unearthed EPK Shot At Spaceland In Silverlake, CA

May 02, 2025

Spaceland felt like our clubhouse.

The four members of Tsar—Jeff Whalen (vocals/guitar), Dan Kern (guitar/vocals), Jeff Solomon (bass), and Steve Coulter (aka me, drums)—practically lived at the legendary Silverlake, CA club in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.

We played Monday night residencies, drank and smoked there several nights a week while watching other local bands, handed out meticulously crafted flyers to young rockers, eavesdropped on conversations across the smoking room thanks to the inverted satellite dish hanging from the ceiling, and otherwise raised post-ironic hell.

It was also one of the places that we showcased for record labels. In the end, Rob Cavallo and Hollywood Records captured our exploding hearts. We recorded with him at legendary LA studios, haunted (and occasionally got thrown out of) valley sushi joints with our manager, threw wild parties as the record was mixed next door, and lived out our comic book rock and roll fantasies while running up a recoupable a tab.

Spaceland was the launching pad. Never mind that our lift-off proved to be ill-fated, we were too busy having a blast to read the writing on the nu metal wall. So, it made perfect sense to shoot our EPK there. Far as I know, that footage never really saw the light of day outside of backroom PR pitches—until now.

“I mostly remember being hungover,” Whalen said of the EPK shoot.

“Dan and I were super hungover—a pretty standard state of affairs at the time—and Coulter was probably still drinking from the night before. That whole period from the completion of recording to maybe around the end of the Duran Duran tour was a tremendous era of hangovers and excitement and anxiety. Truly surreal and unreal and real and magical and weird.”

That about sums it up. I thankfully long ago got sober—in fact, it’s possible that this video will be the first time my kids remember seeing me drink a beer—but any honest discussion of year 2000 Tsar needs to address all the Bud Light we consumed. While opening for Duran Duran, we once insisted our tour manager trade in the stack of clean post-show sweat towels on our rider for another case of beer. Priorities!

This footage was shot before that tour, between the time when the record was completed but before its release. That’s a magical moment for any new band. The future was uncertain, but anything seemed possible. This EPK was our first real introduction to the greater music world outside of Los Angeles.

“The video was shot at Spaceland at some insanely early hour—1 or 2 in the afternoon—in the smoking room,” Whalen said.

“Smoking in bars and clubs had been banned right around then, but somehow you could still smoke in this one room at Spaceland for another couple years. I miss that civility, that base-level humanity that only smoking in rock clubs can provide.”

We’d all been playing music in various combos and bands since our teens, but I was the only one with any major label promo experience. (Even then, my previous band Ridel High’s time with A&M Records was very short-lived.) But Tsar had this over-sized stage presence for a small club band, so the label was probably confident we could deliver. I honestly don’t remember much about this day, but setting us up in a dark bar and letting the cameras roll seems to have been the big concept.

I have no idea if Hollywood Records got what they were looking for, which might explain why this clip mostly (ahem) disappeared for a quarter century.

Here’s the thing—it’s a pretty genuine glimpse of the band’s internal life back then. If you were a fly on the wall at our rehearsal studio, spied on us in our tour van, or heard our vicious Scrabble banter through a thin motel room wall, this is a solid example of the “four friends doing schtick to make each other laugh” you would have witnessed.

“I don't think they told us to prepare material, but we jotted down a couple ideas on the way there. I didn't really know what an EPK was, and I probably still don't,” Whalen admitted.

“I thought it'd be fantastic to have it be high-energy with fast edits and quick-changing music like a commercial for a Disney Channel Original Movie or something, and have it begin with one of us saying ‘It all started when we found that map!’ and then mix in stuff like, ‘But we didn't mean to kill that old lady’ throughout.”

Mission accomplished!

Calling All Destroyers!

Today marks the long-awaited 25th anniversary re-release of Tsar’s self-titled debut album—on vinyl for the first time ever. And not just any old vinyl. This deluxe fold-out LP comes in limited-edition white vinyl.

Here’s what the Omnivore Records PR folks had to say…

A holy grail for fans of the glam meets punk meets garage meets bubblegum meets arena rock saviors, Tsar now fits perfectly on your turntable and in your ears. Where it belongs.

Whoa! I wonder what the four dudes in the EPK would have said about that.

Probably something along the lines of, “It all started when we found that map…”