Agents Of Good Roots - Come On (Let Your Blood Come Alive)

JUL 01 1998 · 12:00

Agents Of Good Roots - Come On (Let Your Blood Come Alive) (1998) Era: Post-Grunge Alt-Rock / Jam Band Crossover Era (1997–1999) - A moment when college-circuit jam bands pursued mainstream rock radio viability through major-label deals, MTV placement, and polished studio production without fully abandoning their roots-rock and jazz-funk identities. As the sole music video ever produced by Agents of Good Roots, this clip is a unique and non-redundant primary source document. It captures one of the more critically noted but commercially underperforming bands of the 1998 East Coast jam-rock wave at their only moment of mainstream visual media presence. Its brief MTV airplay (summer 1998) makes it a time-capsule artifact of a specific promotional window. The fast-cut performance aesthetic, warm low-key lighting, and minimal styling are highly representative of the visual grammar of this subgenre and moment, making it an efficient single-document case study for researchers of late-1990s roots-rock music video production. Context: Released in the spring/summer of 1998, this video exists at the precise intersection of two converging late-1990s cultural currents: the post-Hootie, post-Dave Matthews mainstream absorption of Southern/mid-Atlantic roots rock, and the MTV gatekeeping moment when jam-adjacent bands with college followings received brief, often insufficient promotional pushes from major labels. Agents of Good Roots, managed by Red Light Management (shared with Dave Matthews Band) and signed to RCA, embodied the tension of a grassroots tape-trading community being translated into a slick commercial context. The H.O.R.D.E. Festival circuit and Triple-A radio were the natural habitats; MTV rotation, however brief, was the aspirational commercial tier that proved difficult to sustain for bands of this type. Director notes: The video was produced in 1998 to support the single 'Come On (Let Your Blood Come Alive)' from the RCA album One by One (released March 1, 1998, produced by Paul Fox, mixed by Tom Lord-Alge, recorded at A&M Studios, Los Angeles). It received brief MTV rotation during the summer of 1998. It is documented as the band's sole major-label music video. No director, production company, or cinematographer credit has been located in any publicly available source.