NYE now has a theme song – We break down the Red Stick Revelry music video

“Mayor Kip came up with a great idea and he called it Red Stick Revelry.”

Lo, the familiar opening lines of one of the greatest stories of our time have now been put to song. It’s an early Christmas miracle! A few months ago, the city announced plans to host a New Year’s Eve celebration downtown complete with music, fireworks and even our own ball drop at midnight.

Well … instead of a ball, we’re dropping a giant, pointy-ended red stick from the top of the beacon in North Boulevard Town Square—a dagger that, with its downward motion, will stab into the very core of all our differences, so we can finally come together as one Baton Rouge and dance awfully to Phat Hat at Roux House.

Yesterday, the Red Stick Revelry theme song, also called “Red Stick Revelry,” was released in preparation for this first-ever downtown celebration. Read more about the event here.

The song has its own video (we’ll get to the whole thing below), in which our always-game-for-anything Mayor Kip Holden dons another great costume. He’s previously pulled off cowboy boots and a hat for Bayou Country Superfest and traditional garb for the Baton Rouge Greek Festival, but this one is his best yet.

Wendell Woods and Phat Hat wrote and performed the song. The phrase “Red Stick Revelry” comes up 26 times in its 2:23 duration and you can’t help but sing along after the 12th repetition. It’s now on iTunes, there is a line dance we’re all expected to learn in the days leading up to New Year’s Eve, there is the music video, which will play in a never-ending loop on the beacon screens for eternity, and Holden even warns we might hear it on our favorite local radio station.

“We hope you will be singing [it] from now until 2014,” Holden says.

So we’ve got about 20 days of this. We might as well just embrace it. And dance.

The video itself seems pretty harmless at first, like a toe-tapping commercial for Zatarain’s Dirty Rice with people grooving to a jazz band. All it’s missing is a Mardi Gras-themed umbrella and some confetti.

We see the band playing inside Roux House:

People are dancing and just generally feeling it:

Through the magic of technology, the Cane’s dog taps its paw to the beat:

The party moves outside, where they take the message of Red Stick Revelry across the city:

White people happen:

Wait, this is actually starting to look more like a commercial for Yaz:

We get a sneak peek of the 2014 glasses everyone will be wearing, even though those stopped being practical after 2010. Only one zero now, guys, but I still have two eyes to see with!

The saxophone player from Phat Hat is about to be impaled by the Red Stick:

The Jaguars marching band shows up and I don’t have any snark for them because they are just great:

Mike don’t care! He just wants to dance and be free!

Davis Rhorer of Downtown Development would like to alert you to a sale he’s having on Red Stick signs:

OK, I’m pretty sure this is actually a Yaz commercial now. Someone is about to come on and tell us about the side effects of Red Stick Revelry:

And then … this happens:

And with it, 2013 has officially been shut down. We have accomplished all the things. ALL THE THINGS! Kip Holden is Father Time and it’s magical and amazing and there is nothing else to see here. 2014, we welcome you, but we’re pretty sure you won’t top this.

Oh wait, we finally get a close up of those 2014 glasses … and it kinda looks like they just glued a “1” on top of the second “0” in 2004 and that’s just sad:

Sing us out, Father Kip Holden Time:

GIF of Kip Holden/Father Time created by Logan Leger. No relation to the author of this post. At least … we don’t think so. We haven’t actually done the research.