Author Archives: Jedadiah Leland

Music Video of the Day: Your Love by The Outfield (1986, directed by John Jopson)

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This is a song that I will always associate with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.  Your Love is on the Flash FM playlist.  It’s not a great song to listen to when you’re in the middle of a police chase but it is nice when you’re just stealing cars on a rainy night.

The video was shot, over the course of a day, on a soundstage in Astoria.  While the band is playing, an artist played by JoAnne Willette finger paints the cover of The Outfield’s first album, Play Deep.  Willette would later co-star on the Growing Pains spin-off, Just The Ten Of Us.  She also appeared in episodes of The Facts of Life, T. J. Hooker, Santa Barbara, Growing Pains, Melrose Place, Chicago Hope, Becker, ER, The Young and the Restless, My Sister Sam, Private Practice, and The New Adventures of Old Christine.  Among her film credits are small roles in both Welcome to 18 and A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge.

Even though The Outfield was a British band, they never found much success in the UK.  Their popularity was almost solely centered in the U.S., where Your Love reached #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #7 on the Mainstream Rock chart in 1986.

Weekly Trailer Round-Up: Roma, Green Book, An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn, Widows, Killer Kate

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In 2014, Alfonso Cuaron made history win he became the first Mexican filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director, for his work on Gravity.  This year, Cuaron is back with Roma, a 135-minute film about a middle class family living in Mexico City in the 1970s.  Roma will be released on December 14th and its trailer leads off this week’s trailer round-up.

Directed by Peter Farrelly, Green Book, is based on the true story of Jamaican pianist Don Shirley’s tour of the deep south.  Serving as his chauffeur and bodyguard was a New York bouncer named Tony Lip.  Shirley is played by Mahershala Ali while Viggo Mortensen play the role of Lip.  (The real Tony Lip later became an actor and played Carmine Lupertazzi in The Sopranos).  Green Book will be released on November 21st.

Judging from the trailer, An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn appears to be a typical heist comedy, enlivened by the presence of Aubrey Plaza.  Prepare to spend an evening with Beverly when this film is released on October 19th.

Based on a BBC miniseries and featuring a killer cast, Steve McQueen’s Widows is one of the most anticipated movies of the fall.  Widows will be in theaters on November 16th.

Finally, Killer Kate will be released on October 26th, just in time for Halloween.

Music Video of the Day: Any Way You Want It by Journey (1980, directed by ????)

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I’ve recently been reading Noel Monk’s memoir about managing Van Halen during the early years of their career, Runnin’ with the Devil: A Backstage Pass to the Wild Times, Loud Rock, and the Down and Dirty Truth Behind the Making of Van Halen.  

Among the many revealing stories in the book is one about an incident that happened when Van Halen was touring with Journey.  Monk went backstage and discovered that David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen had gotten into a food fight.  Eddie threw a bowl of peanuts at Dave.  Dave threw guacamole at Eddie but he missed his target and, instead, ended up hitting the lead singer of Journey, Steve Perry.  Monk says that he found Perry in his dressing room, softly crying and trying to get the guacamole off of his leather jacket.  Monk compared Dave and Eddie to “heartless mean children,” picking on the smart kid in the middle school cafeteria.

Steve Perry deserved better.

(He deserved better than the Separate Ways video, too.)

Today’s music video, Journey’s party anthem Any Way You Want It, was selected in honor of Steve Perry.

Ever since I first saw Caddyshack (not to mention the episode of The Simpsons were Rodney Dangerfield played Mr. Burns’ son), Any Way You Want It has always been my favorite Journey song.  The video is also Journey at its best, simple, without pretension, and rocking!

 

 

Music Video Of The Day: Nothing Else Matters by Metallica (1992, directed by Adam Dubin)

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“At first I didn’t even want to play it for the guys. I thought that Metallica could only be the four of us. These are songs about destroying things, head banging, bleeding for the crowd, whatever it is, as long as it wasn’t about chicks and fast cars, even though that’s what we liked. The song was about a girlfriend at the time. It turned out to be a pretty big song.”

— James Hetfield, on Nothing Else Matters

Eventually, Hetfield did play it for the guys and Nothing Else Matters went on to become one of Metallica’s signature songs.  The song may have been inspired by Hetfield’s feelings about being away from his girlfriend while he was on the road but, as Hetfield explained it to Mojo Magazine, “It’s about being on the road, missing someone at home, but it was written in such a way, it connected with so many people, that it wasn’t just about two people, it was about a connection with your higher power, lots of different things.”

The video was directed by Adam Dubin and edited by Sean Fullan and is made up of clips from the 1992 Metallica documentary, A Year And A Half.  Along with the song, the video is best remembered for a scene where Lars Ulrich throws darts at a poster of Kip Winger.  Do you blame him?

For his part, Kip Winger has said about Metallica’s hatred of him, “That is why it’s the great irony that we ended up on that geeky guy’s shirt on Beavis & Butt-head, because Metallica couldn’t play what we play, they couldn’t do it, they literally — technically — couldn’t do it. And I’ll challenge those chumps to that any day of the week, but we could play their music with our hands tied behind our back. And so, I was a little teed off about that, but in the end, none of that shit matters…”

If you say so, Kipster.

26 years after the release of Nothing Else Matters, Metallica is still selling out stadiums worldwide.  And Winger?  Look for them at the closest county fair.

Let’s give the final words to James Hetfield:

“I remember going to the Hells Angels Clubhouse in New York, and they showed me a film that they’d put together of one of the fallen brothers, and they were playing ‘Nothing Else Matters.’ Wow. This means a lot more than me missing my chick, right? This is brotherhood. The army could use this song. It’s pretty powerful.”

Music Video of the Day: Freeway of Love by Aretha Franklin (1985, directed by ????)

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From an episode of Good Times:

“I didn’t know Benjamin Franklin was on the hundred-dollar bill!”

“Who did you think was on it?”

“Aretha Franklin!”

 Of course, Aretha Franklin was never on the hundred-dollar bill but maybe she should have been.  The singer, who earned the title Queen of Soul, was one of the most influential artists of her time.  When she died yesterday at the age of 76, tributes flowed in from other musicians who were proud to say that she was one of the people who had first inspired them to sing.  Aretha Franklin paved the road that so many other artists have followed.

One of her biggest hits was Freeway of Love, which is also today’s music video of the day.  Appropriately, the video was filmed almost entirely in Detroit, the home of Motown.  Portions of the video were also filmed at Doug’s Body Shop in Ferndale, Michigan.

Keep an eye out for Clarence Clemons and his saxophone.

RIP, Aretha Franklin.

Music Video of the Day: After the Rain by Nelson (1990, directed by ????)

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Matthew and Gunnar Nelson are the twin sons of the late, 1950s teen idol, Ricky Nelson.  In 1989, they signed a recording contract with Geffen Records.  As Nelson, they released their first album, After the Rain, in 1990.  Coming at the tail end of the hair metal era, Nelson specialized in the type of hard rock that was so radio friendly and inoffensive that even your mother could safely listen to them.  Nelson achieved brief fame before Nirvana came along and permanently changed the musical landscape.

The first single released off of Nelson’s debut album was the title track, After the Rain.  It was also their first music video.

I can’t remember where it was but I once saw the video for After The Rain at the top of a list of the worst music videos of all time.  Actually, I’ve seen it at the top of several similar lists.  After The Rain‘s bad reputation is almost entirely due to the first two minutes of the video.

A slob in a trailer park yells at his son.  The sobbing teen lies down underneath a big Nelson poster than no one over the age of 12 would actually have hanging next to their bed.  Suddenly, the poster comes to life and, in true Dr. Strange fashion, Matthew and Gunnar Nelson take the trailer park teen’s astral form on a journey to some sort of sweat lodge, when a Native American shaman holds up a feather.  The magic feather transports the troubled teen to a Nelson concert and everything is instantly better.

What does it all mean, beyond suggesting that Nelson was the preferred band of both the trailer park and the sweat lodge?  I don’t know.  And was anyone’s life ever actually improved by going to a Nelson concert?  Again, I just don’t know.

Like many bands of the era, Nelson’s popularity was washed away by a tidal wave of Seattle grunge.  Nelson may now be forgotten but we’ll always have the feather.

Music Video of the Day: Drive My Car by Breakfast Club (1988, directed by Bill Fishman)

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When I was doing my research for today’s music video of the day, I was sorry to discover that the 80s pop group Breakfast Club was not named after the famous John Hughes film.

Instead, they were formed in New York City in 1979 and they went through several different lineups before they signed with ZE Records.  At one time, a young Madonna was their dummer but she left the band long before they released their first (and only) album in 1987.

Breakfast Club’s biggest hit was Drive My Car, a cover of a song that had previously been made famous by The Beatles.  The cover appeared on the soundtrack of License to Drive, which is actually one of the better films to co-star Corey Haim and Corey Feldman.  It’s no Lost Boys but it is better than Dream A Little Dream and Heather Graham’s in it.

The video is the usual combination of clips from the film and scenes of the band acting crazy.  Since they were already covering a Beatles song, it made sense to go ahead and put Breakfast Club in a 1980s version of Hard Day’s Night and have them spend most of the video trying to escape their obsessed fans.  While the Beatles had to outrun their fans, Breakfast Club was lucky enough to own an invisible car.  I don’t know who edited it but this video does do a good job of integrating the scenes of the band with the clips from the film.

Things worked out better in the video than they did in real life.  Breakfast Club split up shortly after the release of License to Drive.

Music Video of the Day: Sweet Emotion by Aerosmith (1991, directed by Marty Callner)

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Remember the old chat lines?

I don’t know if they’re even still around but back in the late 80s and the 90s, they were the only thing advertised on TV after midnight.  All you had to do was dial the number and then, for only three dollars a minute, you could get a custom psychic reading or hear Ice Cube’s thought of the day.

The most popular chat lines were the ones that were advertised as being used by “hot singles waiting to talk to you!”  The commercials all featured insanely hot girls in their underwear, usually lying in bed with a landline phone.  Common sense should have told everyone that anyone that hot wasn’t sitting at home on Friday night, waiting to hear from some teenager in Canton.  Still, 1-800 numbers were a big business back in the day.  They were the original chat rooms.

They weren’t cheap, either.  “3.99 for the first minute, 0.99 for each additional minute.”  Those minutes added up fast, especially when the operators had been trained to draw things out.  For some people, it was worth it for the chance to fantasize about the voice at the other end of the line.

The video for Aerosmith’s Sweet Emotion centers around that fantasy.  On one end, the teenager from Canton who says he’s an entertainment lawyer.  On the other end, his fantasy.  In the middle of it all is Aerosmith, performing at an old warehouse in the Charleston Navy Yards.

Sweet Emotion is one of Aerosmith’s most enduring songs.  Some fans think that the song was inspired by the band’s mutual dislike of Joe Perry’s then-wife but Steve Tyler has said that it was actually inspired by a feud between the wives of both Perry and bassist Tom Hamilton.  The song was a big hit when it was originally released in 1975 and then it was an even bigger hit when it was re-released in 1991.

Music Video of the Day: I’m Free by The Soup Dragons (1990, directed by ?????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today’s music video of the day is for the song I’m Free, which was covered by the Scottish group, The Soup Dragons, in 1990.

That’s right, this is a cover.  I’m Free was originally recorded by The Rolling Stones in 1965 and was the last track on the Out Of Our Heads album.  To quote Rolling Stone Magazine, the original song was a “folk rocker.”  The version by the Soup Dragons was much more psychedelic and featured a verse from Jamaican reggae performer, Junior Reid.  I’m Free became the band’s biggest hit, reaching the number 2 spot on Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart.  You may have also heard it in the film, The World’s End.

As for the Soup Dragons, after ten years and five albums, they disbanded in 1995, though all of the members continue to make music to this day.