Did you ever want to see what Annie Lennox would look like if she wanted to join Jem and the Holograms? You can, and it’s in this video.
The Tourists was the group that both Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox were in prior to becoming Eurythmics.
I love Stewart’s mustache, and I’m so glad he grew out a full beard for Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of These) instead of keeping it.
Despite only being around for a couple of years, they released three albums and a bunch singles. This cover of Dusty Springfield’s I Only Want To Be With You being one of them.
According to Wikipedia, they broke up one year after this in 1980 after getting signed to RCA Records the same year. Apparently guitarist and bassist Peet Coombes and Eddie Chin, respectively, went off to do their own thing which fizzled out. Stewart and Lennox decided to keep their contract with RCA, and Eurythmics was born.
Aside from Stewart’s mustache and Annie looking like rainbow sherbet, my favorite part of this video is that it is directed by Brian Grant. If mvdbase is to be believed, then 9 years later he directed Samantha Fox’s cover of the same song.
I can believe it. The person who would randomly insert Eddie Chin with what looks like a whip…
seems like the kind of person who would have somebody popup out of a trash can to pull Samantha Fox in.
I Only Wanna Be With You by Samantha Fox
I’ll have to do that crazy video at some point. After playing her sexuality straight for so many videos, they decided to still put that at the forefront, but do it comically.
How did I let it happen? I went through 421 of these posts, and it took till now to do one for a song on Jeff’s hit list.
You remember Jeff from Rock: It’s Your Decision (1982), right? He’s the kid who had decent taste in music, but was then red-pilled by reading The Big Beat: A Rock Blast by Frank Garlock, which turned him into a raving homophobic bigot with a persecution complex who treated his friends like trash and gave an insane sermon condemning rock music. During that sermon he finally named names of what songs and groups were evil. Of course AC/DC was specially mentioned with a list of some of their hits. This was one of them.
While I’m sure Jeff never saw this video, I like to pair the following images and think that he was just envious that he couldn’t pull this off as well as Scott did.
Rock: It’s Your Decision (1982, dir. John Taylor)
The video features Bon Scott as a preacher who delivers the lyrics like a sermon. We get occasional cutaways to members of the group who are choirboys, because what else would you expect members of AC/DC to be dressed like. Eventually, Scott decides to take off clerical clothing after a video effect.
Then Scott takes a flying leap that according to the Young Brothers, injured Scott.
I didn’t need Wikipedia to tell me that something went wrong. You can see that he missed the mark and fell offstage. Credit to Scott and the band for not only leaving that in, but not appearing to react to it happening.
I really like this video. If I had one complaint, it’s that it appears that Scott is screwing up his lip-syncing. You can see the difference when you watch him perform the song live. I noticed the same issue when I watched the officially posted version of Highway To Hell. I refuse to believe that Scott was this bad at lip-syncing. I think I know what happened. It’s the only explanation that I have.
The song is supposed to introduce light before sound in the pre-chorus. That is the way it was done on both the album and in the video. They fixed that in live performances, like the one below:
I have a feeling they overlayed a slightly different studio recording onto the video in order to make it sound better. You see this done on unofficially posted music videos all the time. I can see this throwing off Scott’s timing just enough that it’s noticeable. You can still see that he is reacting and making the right lip movements. They just seems to miss the mark.
This video is a perfect example of why I put AC/DC right alongside the other 1970s music-video pioneers like ABBA, Sweet, Golden Earring, Kate Bush, Hall & Oates, Funkadelic, Alice Cooper, and other musicians from that period that I haven’t covered.
Every time I miss even a day, it feels like a lifetime. Since the last post I’ve seen Anna Paquin wander through what felt like an abandoned retread of The Shining (Darkness). Mark Wahlberg traveled through a desert so he could nearly get everyone killed were it not for a Deus Ex Ape showing up to save the day (Planet Of The Apes). I watched what someone on iCheckMovies termed “Moist Max” (Waterworld). Ben Affleck practiced to play Batman (Daredevil). I saw Renny Harlin’s version of Die Hard: With A Vengeance (12 Rounds). And finally, I got to see what would have happened if Data saved Picard from the Borg by playing Sabotage by Beastie Boys into the Borg Hive Mind (Star Trek Beyond).
If you go to mvdbase and IMDb, then you’ll find some videos that show up in one, but are absent from the other. This video is one that isn’t in mvdbase. However, it is in IMDb, and that’s good enough for me.
We’ve had the sailboat version.
We’ve had the snow version, which is a video to keep in mind when we get to the notorious one for Separate Ways (Worlds Apart), seeing as they repeat the shot below as well as other elements from ABBA music videos.
Finally, we have the Spanish-language version of Knowing Me, Knowing You.
I wasn’t even aware this was an actual video till I came across it on IMDb. I originally chalked it up to one of the several Spanish version’s of their songs that are available through their VEVO channel.
While I do like the other two versions, Knowing Me, Knowing You is one of those songs that lends itself well to a simple performance that draws all of your attention to the song.
There are a couple of video effects thrown in, but otherwise it’s just them and the audience (you). Still, there seems to have been some direction given that you would expect from an ABBA video, where they don’t just look at the camera.
I like that they included both guitars from the song, the acoustic one as well as the electric one.
That’s all I have for this one. There better not be any more versions of Knowing Me, Knowing You out there.
i like blood recently told me to put on Amber by 311 because it would make me vomit. How could I not take that challenge?
I didn’t vomit. It is a song I can honestly say that I forgot existed. I’m not sure what memories this conjures up. I wanna say, sitting in a car in a parking lot outside of Togo’s. That’s all I’ve got.
The video, I’m almost 100% certain, I didn’t see it until I sat down to write this post.
What can I say about it?
You can say it’s not very good and you’ll forget it the instant it’s over.
We’re doing a question and answer post again?
Yes.
Fine.
Q: Why doesn’t the camera just go through the beads at the start? A: Because the video is obsessed with fade transitions. It probably saved them money as well.
Q: Why is he lifting his hand in the air? He does it several times during the video. A: It’s because melismas were popular at the time. There were a lot of artists who moved their hands around like that.
Q: Why is his face out of focus? A: They probably screwed up.
Q: Did you notice the 311 St. sign? A: In between the annoying jump cuts? Yes, I did.
Q: I guess that’s a street known for streaking, right? A: Congratulations. You looked up that 311 is the police code for indecent exposure. Anything else?
Q: Umm…he has a hole in his T-Shirt. A: He sure does. Also, we should be listening to Bad Brains instead of this.
Q: Aren’t you going to show some screenshots of stuff that happens outside that room? A: Nothing happens out there.
Q: Very true, but there is one person people might recognize. A: Fine. If you look at the scenes where lead-singer Nick Hexum is in the water, then you’ll notice that the woman he is with is Nicole Scherzinger. She was his fiancee at the time, a member of Eden’s Crush, and would go on to do things such as The Pussycat Dolls. The song is about her.
Q: I think that’s it. That is unless you want to make a joke about the campfire bit by trying to tie it to Cabin Fever (2002) and Doctor Dog. A: I’ll pass. The rest of the video, campfire included, is just a group of people doing things at the beach. It’s as calming as watching other people have fun at the beach. That is to say, it’s really boring.
Q: Wait a second. I forgot to ask who made this thing? A: The Malloys directed it. They are actually Emmett Malloy and Brendan Malloy who have somewhere between 40-50 music video credits to their names. The video’s first assistant director was John Downer. He has worked as such on around 83 music videos. They’ve all done other work.
Q: Gonna end this with your stupid catchphrase? A: No. I’ll just end it with their drummer apparently having discovering the language from Arrival (2016) seeing as I only enjoyed that film a little more than this video.
The video starts off and we see two people playing drums. They pretty much sum up Tight Fit prior to this success of this song: studio musicians.
When this song took off, Steve Grant, Denise Gyngell, and Julie Harris were put out there as a front for a group that existed in name only to promote the song. Much like Bucks Fizz was manufactured to get a song on Eurovision before ending up as a thing, Tight Fit started out as a name in front of session singers. Then they had some actors/singers put out in public before Grant, Gyngell, and Harris became the standard lineup. They were originally there to be pretty faces to sell the song, but when it was found that they could actually sing and people liked them, they kept them around, and an actual group was born. They went through several changes, and over the years we appear to have them back together with Grant, Gyngell and Harris owning the rights to the songs, group name, and presumedly this very video. I’m just going to assume that the people in this video are Grant, Gyngell, and Harris. I have no reason to believe otherwise.
Now we cut to Steve who is decked out like Tarzan Boy.
Am I the only one who looks at this guy and thinks of Peter Williams’ Apophis from Stargate SG-1?
It’s probably just the makeup.
Now we meet the gorilla. At least I’m pretty sure that’s supposed to be a gorilla.
I’m not sure whether that’s Denise or Julie, but she seems intrigued at the sight of the gorilla. Yes. And no, I didn’t know this song had anything to do with that till I watched this video. I’m still not sure it was supposed to have anything to do with that.
Anyways, she looks through her binoculars and sees the Anaconda 2 monkey.
She also sees Steve reminding us that he wasn’t just a singer and dancer, but also a model.
After a few more shots, we finally see the lion.
I know it would have been too dangerous, but I just watched Prince Charming by Adam & The Ants where they seemed to have gotten a real panther. This is a little disappointing.
The flamingo on the other hand, didn’t need to be real. That’s okay with me.
Now it gets weird. Why are Denise and Julie moving the grass with machetes in time to the song? I wouldn’t ask if this music video didn’t go the direction it does.
Denise and Julie get ready to try and trap the lion, but…
with a swinging Steve…
and a little magic, the net gets thrown on them.
No one touches Steve’s lion, but him.
Before long, it’s a party. Where they got the couch? Who cares.
It’s a party where somebody is gonna get laid, as the gorilla shows up to take either Denise or Julie away.
I love the look this guy gets on his face. For this video, with the looks Steve gets on his face, it’s perfect! He’s not gonna waste his closeup.
She’s way too happy to be going off somewhere with a gorilla.
And Steve is looking really happy sucking on that straw.
Then the guy down-front seems to think the video is over before it is, and the lady who went with the gorilla is seen crossing in the background towards the right.
I feel enlightened now that I have seen this video. I’m sure that original writer, Solomon Linda, and George David Weiss, the one who adapted the original tune into The Lion Sleeps Tonight, fully intended the song to be about getting up close and personal with a lion, going off to party with a gorilla, lying on a jungle couch, and drinking from a crazy straw.
Sadly, Linda died in 1962 without having really gotten much from this song. The version most people are probably familiar with is the one done by The Tokens in 1961. It was later used in The Lion King, which is where things get messy. It appears after a fight that included Pete Seeger, Rolling Stone, a movie, and a lawsuit, his family now receives royalties for its use in the past and from its worldwide use from 2006 onward. A bit of a happy ending after such a long fight that at least included the song living on and became a classic even if Linda was not around to see it become as famous as it is today.
It’s nice to come across one of these songs that didn’t have somebody show up recently to claim that it was violating their copyright on something people not only thought was in the public domain, but had become an unofficial anthem for an entire country–Down Under by Men At Work. Here, these are the descendants of the person who made this song possible.
This music video totally has to with Labor Day. It’s not just something I came up with at the last minute because I watched the 2016 American film called Split that was supposed to have to do with bowling.
Yes, I did have to be that specific. There are not only three films with the title Split that came out in 2016, but another one, from Korea, also has to do with bowling. The one I watched is a terrible film that you shouldn’t have to sit through. This video on the other hand, is one that everyone should be made to sit through.
I remember when this song hit the radio and TV. It was catchy the first time, and annoying from then on. I couldn’t get the chorus out of my mind. The one kind thing I can say is that it can be fun to swap different things in for the actual lyrics:
Please tell me why my brain is on the front lawn?
And I’m pissing with my clothes on?
I fell down chimney last night.
It was 1999, I was sick and out of school on permanent independent study. I had to make my own fun. It was easy to do so with its lyrics and it being played all the time.
As for the video, its people obsessed with Kingpin and The Big Lebowski making a video so that we think of them more like Blink-182 than their previous videos that made them look like Soundgarden and pseudo-STP.
Based on their Wikipedia page, they’re exactly what I thought at the time: a flash in the pan. I lump them right in with groups like Eve 6. Incidentally, director Gavin Bowden made a video for Eve 6. He also worked with similar groups such as Silverchair and Lifehouse. He’s done around 30 videos.
Jed Hathaway did construction on the video. I think that’s the first time I have come across that credit.
The person with the most credits is editor Nabil Mechi. Mechi has edited about 100 videos ranging from The Roots to Paris Hilton.
Enjoy these repressed memories of the late-90s whether you were there or not.
If I’m going to talk about other Bucks Fizz videos in the future, then I should do the one where it all started.
I’m not going to explain their story again. I’ll simply bring up that their career was kicked off by wining Eurovision in 1981 with this song.
Every performance I’ve seen of this song from Eurovision itself to Top Of The Pops, is what you see in this video. The only thing I saw changed was for Top Of The Pops. The most distinct thing about this performance is when they rip the long skirts off in time with the lyrics. Oddly, that’s not in the performance they gave at Top Of The Pops. Cheryl and Jay came with the shorter skirts. Maybe they got sick of doing the exact same thing over and over again.
There’s nothing else to this other than getting a chance to see why they won, why a very similar performance would show up in another one of their videos, and if I wanted to go deeper into the performance at Eurovision, which I don’t. Wikipedia has that information.
He said some other things concerning MTV, which included quoting Dr. Thomas Radecki about the dangers of music videos. You might remember him as the guy who attacked the music video for Street Of Dreams by Rainbow because of the brainwashing psychiatrist, among other things. The guy who said people were killing themselves and others over D&D. He had his medical license revoked in 1992 because of conduct with a patient. More recently he was caught in a opiates scandal. Probably not the best source in hindsight.
Perhaps that’s why there is only one article on Rolling Stone’s website by Levy. Or they just thought the one on Steve Jobs was the only one worth putting up online.
I just thought I’d include that since I find it hilarious to think that anyone ever thought up the idea to compare Adam Ant, or any similar act, to Bob Dylan. I don’t care if the context was commercialism using Adam Ant’s persona as a way of contrasting someone known for lyrics with someone known for their look in order to say that marketing had won out over the songs themselves. The comparison still makes me laugh.
So here’s a video that seems to imply that the Adam Ant persona is a combination of Clint Eastwood…
Alice Cooper…
Rudolph Valentino…
and Douglas Fairbanks (also Adam Ant’s character from the video for Stand And Deliver).
We get Diana Dors showing up as his fairy godmother, backed up by some guys who a year later would wear even less clothes for It’s Raining Men by The Weather Girls.
Back to I Want My MTV:
Adam Ant: My strategy for making videos was sex, subversion, style, and humor.
I’d say he accomplished that here. I particularly like that we don’t get the typical ending of Cinderella. The change appears to be permanent–from someone who is pushed around and shy to someone that is confident being themselves. We never see him pair up with anyone. He stands alone because the point isn’t to find love based on shoe size. It’s finding yourself when you take out what other people think of you from the equation.
The video is listed as being directed by both Mike Mansfield and Adam Ant. Mansfield did a bunch of late-70s and early-80s music videos.
Stephanie Gluck, or Stephanie Coleman as it is on Wikipedia, was the one responsible for the Prince Charming dance. Wikipedia says that the dance was arranged to mean Pride, Courage, Humour, and Flair (in that order).
There’s an archive of a fan site that that has some additional information. I can’t confirm enough of it, so I just included the link. However, it is interesting to note that both it, and Wikipedia state that one of the characters that Adam Ant plays is Vito Corleone. That isn’t in here. I guess that was removed for some reason.
Adam Ant and Rolf Harris came to an arrangement over money because of the similarities between Harris’ song, War Canoe, and Prince Charming. I can hear it, but then again, you can listen to the Canoe Song, where Adam Ant says they both drew inspiration from, and hear the same similarities. They’re just not as strong. I can understand why they would come to an agreement over it.
Finally, after the way I began this post, I think it’s worth looking at these quotes–two from Levy in a 1992 New York Times article and one from Adam Ant in I Want My MTV:
Levy: We’ve all gotten used to the junkification of America life — to the fact that you can now eat McDonald’s and that 50 years from now, we may even be nostalgic about it.
Levy: They’ve also gotten more critical of, and more of a sense of humor about, themselves.
Adam Ant: In its initial form, video was a revolution. Then MTV became worse than the record companies, and that’s fucking saying something. It became very decadent, like ancient Rome in a way. It was all about who you knew, and how many bottles of champagne you sent them. It began as a tough, groundbreaking, sexy, subversive, stylish thing with a sense of humor. Then it became all business.
The two of them only differ in age by 3 years, so we’re not talking about a generation gap.
A few months ago I came across this music video. I liked it immediately. I became hooked on her when I listened to some of her previous stuff, such as a cover of The Rolling Stones’ Stupid Girl.
I thought this was the first time I had come across Foley. Hardly.
If you’ve listened to the Bat Out Of Hell album by Meat Loaf, then her vocals should sound familiar. She’s the one who sang on songs like Paradise By The Dashboard Light. Karla DeVito is the one in the video lip-syncing Foley’s vocals.
There’s another place I already knew her from that reached back to my childhood: Night Court. She played Billie. The one-season defense attorney till they got Markie Post.
Night Court
I’m sure it’s just coincidence, but I love that the first outfit she wore on the show looks like one she wore in this video.
I can understand why they replaced her. Even if they hadn’t been looking for Post to begin with, I don’t remember her character being well-written, funny, or her being properly cast in the role to begin with. None of which are her fault. She just seemed out of place.
Along those lines, the album this song is on–her second–doesn’t appear to have done well. Having listened to other songs on the album…well, she’s not Kate Bush despite the songs trying to present her such. I like this particular video, but again, she’s not the Kate Bush-type no matter what outfits they have her wear.
Looking around, the Ellen Foley below during a live performance of Stupid Girl is more representative of her than this video.
I included that last one because I can’t be the only one thinks the lady in green looks an awful lot like Rena Riffel from Showgirls 1 & 2. She would’ve had to have been 11 there, so I’m sure it isn’t her.
Despite this song and music video not being the best of introductions to her material in general, along with the fact that I have no idea what the lyrics Joe Strummer and Mick Jones wrote for her mean, it strikes a chord with me.
At the time, she was dating Mick Jones, and The Clash backed her on all the songs off the album.
I couldn’t find out who directed this video. I have a guess though. Foley sang backup vocals in 1984 on Joe Jackson’s album Body & Soul. This one screams the videos Steve Barron did for Jackson: Real Men, Steppin’ Out, and Breaking Us In Two.
I’ll do other, more Ellen Foley, Ellen Foley music videos in the future. But I wanted to start with my introduction.
When I was a kid, all I knew about Tracey Ullman was that she did a show called Tracey Takes On… I’m pretty sure I didn’t even know that she did a show prior to that called The Tracey Ullman Show. So all I knew was that she was a comedian famous for impersonations. I most certainly didn’t know she ever did music. Much to my surprise, this video recently showed up in my YouTube feed.
Apparently, she had short-lived music career in the early-to-mid-80s that sprung out of a encounter with the wife of the head of Stiff Records, Dave Robinson. This was the first single off her debut album.
Dave Robinson himself appears to have directed this appropriately 1960s-inspired video for Ullman’s cover of the 1964 song originally performed by Irma Thomas.
It’s quite cheap. It appears to be best remembered for Ullman singing into a brush.
A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985, dir. Jack Sholder)
I want to know why there is a plane on top of the building (left) and what looks like a creepy clown head on the top shelf (right).
It’s still catchy, fun, and the editing does draw you in into the song, regardless of it having to use the white dimension several times.
From taking a quick glance at her next video for the song They Don’t Know, her videos got more impressive. But we can’t jump right to the video where we see the Rank Films gong-guy with a package, and Paul McCartney ending up with Ullman. We need to start with her first video.
Dave Robinson appears to have directed around 22 videos.
The video was produced by John Mills and prolific music video director Nigel Dick, who were also the art directors.
Through the Shattered Lens 