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Video Premiere: The Rocketboys, "Time Is A Devil"

Today we've got a special video from the Rocketboys and Invisible Children in the form of a takeaway video of their song “Time Is A Devil.” The video was shot on September 10, 2012 at 178 Mott St. in New York. The band has parternered with Invisible Children and keyboardist Justin Wiseman was wonderful enough to write up an op-ed on why they partner with the company and their history together. Check it out:

JUSTIN WISEMAN: In 2004 when Invisible Children began gaining attention, all of us in The Rocketboys were immediately moved by the film and began paying attention to what was going on with the LRA in Northern Uganda. Brandon [Kinder, vocals] performed on his own at one of the first Invisible Children film screenings. Throughout the next few years, we participated in night commutes, bought merchandise and advocated for Invisible Children in our community of Abilene, TX.

As a band, though, we have generally tended to distance ourselves from things such as religion, politics, movements, agendas and organizations. It's not that any of us didn’t believe in God or vote or support causes and movements, [it's just that] the distance was simply to let [our] music speak for itself without biasing people toward or away from our music. 


I had the opportunity to visit Northern Uganda with my wife in early 2011. Despite conflict in the area being several years removed, I witnessed a multitude of lingering effects inflicted on the Acholi people by the LRA. I even met and befriended a former child-soldier who was abducted and forced to kill his parents. The magnitude of what I witnessed while there heighted my awareness and reinvigorated my sense of immediacy to the importance of IC's ultimate mission to end the LRA and bring Joseph Kony to justice.

Ironically, during my time in Gulu, our band underwent a major lineup change in which two original members left. At the time, I wasn’t entirely sure that we would move on. Though it had little to do with who was “in” or “out” of the band, the difficulty in the original aftermath of the split resulted in quite a bit of re-evaluation in regards to who we were as a band. One result of that was a decision to lay rest our almost general dismissal of associations with things outside of our band. We agreed that there are too many people, ideas, and organizations in the world that are intrinsically “good,” so we freed ourselves to be able to support those things through our music.

Fortunately for us, as we sought to figure out what it meant in actuality for us, we happened to be in San Diego for the first time ever and whimsically invited Invisible Children – an organization we all deeply admired – to the show. We had the opportunity to meet Lauren with the Invisible Children Music Department to determine ways (based off of mutual admiration) that we could collaborate in the future. The result, in our opinion, couldn’t be a more perfect union of cross-promotion and sharing each other’s passion and vision to do something that we believe is universally “good.” We are excited to see what more the future holds in this partnership.