Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Music Video of the Day: More Than This by Roxy Music (1982, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

More Than This was the first single to be released from Avalon, the album that would eventually become Roxy Music’s biggest seller.  It was not only Roxy Music’s most popular studio album but it was also their last.  Though More Than This only reached #58 on the US Charts, it’s a song that’s endured.  (It did much better in the UK, reaching #6.)  The song was discovered by a new generation of listeners when Bill Murray sang it in Lost In Translation.

The video is simple and very much a product of its time.  Ferry performs the song and then watches himself and the band performing in what appears to be a movie theater.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Send Her My Love by Journey (1983, directed by Phil Tuckett)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“I had a girlfriend when I was a teenager and somebody had called backstage to one of the shows and said, ‘Virginia still talks about you and your relationship.’ It was just one of those offhanded comments. I looked at her and just said, ‘Send her my love.’

I walked out, and it hit me: ‘Wait a minute, that’s a song!’

I went home and I called Steve Perry up and I said I came up with this idea, and we wrote it on the spot. A lot of this stuff we wrote was just on the spot. Very, very spontaneous. We kind of wrote with an urgency because we didn’t have a lot of time together. The road was hard enough. When we did write, we wrote very intense. All the lyrics were, like, within hours. We didn’t mess around.”

— Jonathan Cain on Send Her My Love

Like so many of Journey’ videos (with the notable exception of Separate Ways), the video for Send Her My Love is a no-nonsense performance clip.  This video was directed by Phil Tuckett, who also directed videos for Slayer, Def Leppard, Europe, The Black Crowes, and others.

Enjoy!

Music Video Of the Day: Missing You by John Waite (1984, directed by Kort Falkenberg III)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“The biggest thing I remember about ‘Missing You’ is that the night before I went down to Let It Rock, which was a clothes store on Melrose Avenue.  I bought a Johnson suit, this black two-piece suit from London that was a beautiful suit. Tiny. I was very thin at the time. And then I went and had all my hair shaved off. I thought, ‘If I’m going to do this, I’m going to go in whole hog, you know. I’m just going to do it flat out European.’

I showed up with a black suit and a crew cut, and it worked. I do everything on instinct, basically, and half of the time it’s a bullseye.”

— John Waite on the music video for Missing You

This video was shot in downtown Los Angeles, near Pershing Square and its popularity on MTV helped to push the song to the top of the US charts.  The song was inspired by Waite’s feelings while he was working and away from his wife.  Myself, I’ll always think about it as being the song playing on the radio while I was driving a white Cadillac across the beach in Vice City.  Unfortunately, I got so into the song that I drove the car straight into the ocean.  That was when I discovered that Tommy Vercetti couldn’t swim.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Burning Heart by Survivor (1985, directed by Jerry Kramer)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This song was written for Rocky IV.  Survivor also did Eye of the Tiger, which was the anthem for Rocky III so it only made sense to approach them to contribute a training song for Rocky IV.  Burning Heart may not be as classic of a song as Eye of the Tiger but there’s no way Rocky could have defeated Ivan Drago without it.  And if Rocky hadn’t defeated Drago, the Berlin Wall would never have fallen, America would never have won the Cold War, and Adonis Creed would have had to find a different mentor.  Without this song, the world would be a very different place.

The video is a performance clip.  There’s another version out there that features clips from Rocky IV.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Kokomo by The Beach Boys (1988, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Having watched Cocktail earlier tonight with Lisa and the FridayNightFlix crew, Kokomo seemed like an obvious choice for today’s music video of the day.  Kokomo started out as an unreleased song by John Phillips.  When The Beach Boys were commissioned to provide a theme song for Cocktail, Phillips sent the song over.  The Beach Boys, of course, put their own spin on the material and the end result was a surprise hit for the band.

The video was shot at the Grand Floridian Resort at Walt Disney World in Florida, with the band performing in front of an audience that included several cheerleaders from the University of Nevada.  This is the only Beach Boys video to not feature Brian Wilson.  It does, however, feature actor John Stamos playing the conga.  (Stamos, apparently, is a long time friend of the band.)

While I couldn’t find a credited director for this video, it does contain several scenes from Cocktail, which was directed by Roger Donaldson.

Incidentally, at the time this song was recorded, there were no resorts called Kokomo.  After the song became a hit, however, several island resorts borrowed the name.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: The Night You Murdered Love by ABC (1987, directed by Les Bull Terriers)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I had never heard this song or seen this video until I happened to do a search through all of the music videos that were released in 1987.  Unfortunately, there’s not much behind-the-scenes information about this one.  I can’t even tell you who played the video’s skateboard assassin.

I can tell that The Night You Murdered Love peaked at #31 on the UK singles charts.  It was the 2nd single to be released off of ABC’s fourth studio album, Alphabet City.  The song was produced by Bernard Edwards, who is best remembered for his work as a member of Chic (of La Freak fame).  ABC, which was first founded in 1980, continues to tour that Martin Fry is the only permanent member.

According the imdb, this video is the sole directing credit for Les Bull Terriers.

Enjoy!

Music Video Of The Day: Mr. Kirk’s Nightmare by 4hero (1990, directed by Garth Jennings)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

At the risk of sound like a grumpy old man who is about to tell all the kids to get off his lawn, this is the type of shit that you used to be able to find on MTV.  The channel sucks now but, back in the previous century, they actually played music videos and sometimes even introduced people to new groups and new sounds.

Because of this video’s science fiction feel, a lot of people probably thought the Kirk of the title was meant to be Star Trek‘s Captain Kirk.  (On YouTube, a lot of the comments run along the lines of “Beam me up, Scotty!”)  Instead, the Kirk of the title is a reference to an old song called Once You Understand, which is sampled in Mr. Kirk’s Nightmare.  Once You Understand was an anti-drug song from the late 60s that ended with a voice saying, “Mr. Kirk, your son is dead. He died of an overdose.”  Throughout the whole son, Mr. Kirk has been complaining about his son having long hair and not having any direction in his life.  All Mr. Kirk’s son wanted to do was start a band and, when Mr. Kirk didn’t care about that, his son turned to drugs.  Things get a little easier once you understand.

4hero were pioneers in the UK’s electronic music scene.  They’re still together to this day.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 (1983, directed by Gavin Taylor)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

This video was shot at Red Rocks in Denver, Colorado during U2’s tour supporting War.  (The album, not the concept.)  U2’s reputation has never really recovered from the Songs of Innocence fiasco but when they were a young group and before Bono’s messianic tendencies got the better of him, they were a rocking band who were responsible for some of the best songs of the 80s.  Sunday Bloody Sunday was one of their signature songs and this video captures them at their best.  And, even if modern-day Bono does sometimes seem to be too impressed with himself, no one can deny that he’s done a lot of good in the world.

The song is meant to be a condemnation of the atrocities committed by both sides during The Troubles.

Enjoy!

Yaphet Kotto, RIP

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Yaphet Kotto in Blue Collar

I saw rumors on twitter last night that Yaphet Kotto had died but, since it was just random people on social media, I didn’t want to say anything until the news was officially confirmed.  Sadly, it was confirmed this morning.  Yesterday, at the age of 81, Yaphet Kotto passed away in the Philippines.

Yaphet Kotto was a busy actor who appeared in so many classic films that I think we took sometimes took his talent for granted.  Kotto, though, was an actor who could play almost anything.  He was usually cast in dramas but he could also do comedy.  He could play both villains and heroes with equal skill.  He held his own opposite Anthony Quinn in Across 110th Street.  He was one of the best Bond villains in Live and Let Die.  He was one of the toughest members of the crew of the Nostromo in Alien and a key member of the resistance in The Running Man.  Long before Forest Whitaker won an Osar for playing the role in The Last King of Scotland, Yaphet Kotto brought Idi Amin to terrible life in Raid on Entebbe.  He was just as believable as an FBI agent in Midnight Run as he was as a auto worker in Blue Collar.  Blue Collar was probably he best performance, one in which he easily upstaged both Richard Pryor and Harvey Keitel.

For me, Yaphet Kotto will always be remembered Lt. Al Giardello in Homicide, the philosophical leader of Baltimore’s murder cops.  Giardello was written to be a stern and no-nonsense leader but Kotto played him with a subtle sense of humor.  He was the ideal leader and one the key cast members of one of the best shows of the 90s.  Andre Braugher may have gotten the critical acclaim and Richard Belzer may have gotten an entire new career based on playing John Munch in a dozen different shows but Kotto was the one who often held the show together.  Though Homicide was cancelled before it’s time, the show was allowed a reunion movie to tie up loose ends.  The movie ended with the death of Giardello and it felt appropriate because, as played by Yaphet Kotto, Giardello was the heart and the soul of the show.

Yaphet Kotto, a great actor, has left us but he will never be forgotten.

Music Video of the Day: Missionary Man by Eurythmics (1986, directed by Willy Smax)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

I always assumed that Missionary Man was meant to be a specific attack on people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell but, according to Annie Lennox, this song was actually inspired by her brief marriage to Radha Raman, a devout Hare Krishna.  The missionary man of the title is meant to represent anything or anyone that demands total and unquestioning belief, whether it’s the leader of a cult or a televangelist.  Still, when the song and this video originally came out, it was controversial because many interpreted it as specifically being an attack specifically on Christianity as opposed to an attack on fanaticism in general.  Regardless of how you interpret it, it’s still a rocking song.

This video came out shortly after the monster success of the video for Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer.  Stop motion animation was all the rage.

Enjoy!