Category Archives: Music Review

Music Video of the Day: Do The Bartman by Bart Simpson (1990, directed by Brad Bird)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Way back in 1990, The Simpsons were still a new phenomena and, even more importantly, the show was still funny.  Today, it can be easy to forget that The Simpsons were once considered to be cutting edge.  Of course, they were also a merchandizing bonanza and this lead to the release of an album called The Simpsons Sing The Blues.  The first single and video released from that album was Do The Bartman, which had nothing to do with the blues but which was a big hit nonetheless.

The video, which features Bart up to his usual tricks, was directed by Brad Bird.  At the time, Bird was a former Disney animator who had helped to develop The Simpsons after animating some of the original shorts that aired during The Tracey Ullman Show.  Long after Do The Bartman, Bird would find fame and acclaim for his work with PIXAR, in particularly The Incredibles.  He would also move into live action directing with Mission Impossible — Ghost Protocol.

Bart Simpson, of course, was and is voiced by Nancy Cartwright.  Later episodes of The Simpsons would poke fun at both The Simpsons Sing The Blues and the Bartman.  That probably wouldn’t happen today but, back in the 90s, The Simpsons were still funny and the show was still capable of poking fun at itself.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Nervous Shakedown by AC/DC (1983, directed by Paul Belcher)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

One thing you can say about AC/DC: they’ve never been afraid to let the music speak for itself.  At a time when other bands were creating increasingly elaborate music videos and worrying more about how they would look on MTV than how they would sound while performing, AC/DC simply went out on stage and rocked while the cameras were rolling.  AC/DC’s videos are direct and make no excuses, much like the band itself.

This is the video for Nervous Shakedown.  Just like all of AC/DC’s other music videos, this video is about the performance and nothing else.  Nervous Shakedown is the fourth song off of AC/DC’s album, Flick of the Switch.  The song peaked at #35 on the UK charts, while reaching #20 in Ireland.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Lick It Up by KISS (1983, directed by Martin Kahan)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Right.  What to make of this?

Lick It Up almost sounds like the title of a song that you would come up with if you were attempting to parody a KISS song.  However, KISS beat you to it because KISS is a band that has never been afraid to descend into self-parody.

The video has a very Spinal Tap feel to it, opening with a group of beautiful women living in a burned-out city.  They’ve figured out how to survive on their own but they’re still not happy.  Then the members of KISS come walking down to the street and start singing “Lick it up,” and everyone realizes what this post-apocalyptic hellscape has been missing.

This video was from the period where KISS stopped wearing their makeup because, when you’ve got a songs like Lick It Up, who needs a gimmick?

This video was directed by Martin Kahan, who also directed the video for KISS’s All Hell’s Breaking Loose.  That video also featured KISS performing in a post-apocalyptic hellscape.  I guess that was the thing to do in 1983.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Flight of Icarus by Iron Maiden (1983, directed by Jim Yukich)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

We all know the story of Icarus.  Imprisoned on the island of Crete with his father Daedalus, Icarus fashioned artificial wings so he could fly to freedom.  His father warned him not to fly too close to the sun but the cocky Icarus ignored his father.  The sun melted his wings and Icarus plummeted to his death.  Whenever someone allows their hubris and cockiness to defeat them or they get too ambitious for their own good, we compare them to Icarus.

Iron Maiden wrote a song about the Flight of Icarus, reimaging the story as being about a teenager rebelling against his father.  That’s not surprising as every Greek myth inspired at least one heavy metal song.  Flight of Icarus was Iron Maiden’s first single to be released in the United States.  (At the time, Iron Maiden was better known in the UK than in the US.)  It’s also one of their few singles to receive substantial radio airplay at the time that it was released.

The video was shot at Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas.  The Grim Reaper was played by drummer Nicko McBrain.  As for director Jim Yukich, he was one another one of those music video directors who everyone seemed to work with in the 80s and 90s.  He did videos with everyone from Iron Maiden to Genesis to Huey Lewis to Debbie Gibson and David Hasselhoff.  That’s range!

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: May The Cube Be With You by Thomas Dolby (1985, directed by Thomas Dolby and Peter Care)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

In this video, George Clinton is an alien who manufactures green cubes that cause who people who swallow them to enter into virtual reality.  Thomas Dolby is force fed a cube and soon, he’s making out with Marilyn Monroe, bombing Washington D.C., and imagining himself as Marlon Brando in The Wild One.  It proves Dolby with the type of rush that he couldn’t get just from going to the local video shop.  Can you say LSD?

This video came out in 1985 but May The Cube Be With You didn’t actually appear on any of Dolby’s albums until 1988.  That was when it was included as a bonus track on Dolby’s third studio album, Aliens Ate My Buick.  People who bought the album on vinyl didn’t get the bonus track but those who purchased it on either cassette or CD did.  Yes, there was a time when people bought cassettes for the extras.

The video shop at the start of this video was located in London.  It’s now an internet cafe.

Peter Care co-directed this video with Dolby.  Care is also credited with directing videos for R.E.M, New Order, Depeche Mode, and Bonnie Tyler.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Shakedown by Bob Seger (1987, directed by Tony Scott?)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Written for the film Beverly Hills Cop II, Shakedown was nearly a Glenn Frey song.

Frey was hired to perform the song but, on the day he was set to record it, he came down with laryngitis.  As Frey didn’t really like the song to begin with and wanted to change the lyrics, it was decided to instead hire Bob Seger to do the song.  Seger did not object to the lyrics and the end result was another number one hit for him.  As Frey and Seger were both from Detroit and close friends, Frey later said that he was happy that they at least keep the payday in Michigan.

The song was also nominated for an Academy Award.  It lost the Oscar to I’ve Had The Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing.  1987, admittedly, was not a strong year as far as the Best Original Song competition was concerned.  Among the other songs nominated were the title song from Cry Freedom, Storybook Love from The Princess Bride, and, from Mannequin, Nothing’s Going To Stop Us Now, a song that was so vacuous that only Starship could have performed it.  Shakedown, at least, has some life to it.

The music video is basically a trailer for Beverly Hills Cop II.  Shots of Bob Seger performing are mixed with shots of Brigitte Nielsen’s legs and Eddie Murphy doing his thing.  I couldn’t find any directorial credits for the video but all of the Beverly Hills Cop II footage was directed by Tony Scott so, even if someone else directed the footage of Seger performing, this is still definitely a Tony Scott music video.

Enjoy!

 

Music Video of the Day: Shattered Dreams by Johnny Hates Jazz (1988, directed by David Fincher)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

If you did not already know that David FIncher directed the music video for Shattered Dreams, you would guess it as soon as you watched it.

Everything about this video, from the black-and-white cinematography to the disorientating camera angles to its overall melancholy feel, identifies this as being the work of David Fincher.  Long before Fincher ever directed his first film (Alien 3 in 1992, though Fincher has subsequently disowned the film due to the amount of studio interference that he had to deal with), he was a director of commercials and music videos.  Even at the start of his career, Fincher’s aesthetic vision was so clearly defined that his work stood out.  Fincher’s music videos are more than just showcases for musicians.  They are also mini-films, each one of which tells its own unique story.

This was the first single to be released by Johnny Hates Jazz and, to this date, it remains their biggest hit.  Despite popular belief, there is no one named Johnny in the band.  The three members of the band did have a mutual friend named Johnny who apparently hated jazz, which somehow led to the band’s name.  When the band was first signed to Virgin Records, they were playing in a jazz club so jazz has actually been good to Johnny Hates Jazz.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: I Don’t Care Anymore by Phil Collins (1983, directed by Stuart Orme)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Phil Collins takes a lot of abuse.  Remember Noel Gallagher telling voters to vote Labour in 2005 because Phil Collins was threatening to return to the UK if the Tories got in?  Admittedly, Phil brings some of that abuse on himself by being notoriously thin-skinned and quick to take offense.  (I’ve always gotten the impression that one reasons why the Gallagher brothers always picked on Phil was because they knew he’d never have sense enough to just ignore them and would always reply.)  But Phil Collins deserves better than he’s often given.

Not only does his music epitomize an era but he’s also one of the better drummers around.  Collins famously started out as a Genesis’s drummer, only becoming their ubiquitous lead singer after Peter Gabriel left the band.  (Going from Gabriel to Collins was just as extreme as you might think, which is why Peter Gabriel’s Genesis is often considered to be a totally different band from Phil Collins’s Genesis.)  In I Don’t Care Anymore, Collins shows off his skills as a drummer and regardless of what you might think about Collins’s overall career, the song definitely rocks.

Like most of Collins’s better songs, I Don’t Care Anymore is a dark and angry song that exists a universe away from the Disney soundtrack material that Collins produced in the 90s.  He wrote this song while he was going through his first divorce, a process that left him emotionally exhausted and feeling as if he didn’t care anymore.

The video, which is largely a performance clip, was directed by Stuart Orme, who directed several videos in the 80s.  He also did the video for Collins’s In The Air Tonight, a song that’s even darker than this one.

Enjoy!

 

Music Video of the Day: Hourglass by Squeeze (1987, directed by Adrian Edmondson)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“Lyrically it doesn’t mean much but we had some fun writing it.”

— Chris Difford on Hourglass

In the 80s, Squeeze was one of the most popular bands in the UK but they often struggled to find the same success in the U.S.  Some of that was because, much like Madness, Squeeze wrote songs that were undeniably British.  Their relatively few U.S. hits were also the relatively few Squeeze songs not to feature any obviously British references in the lyrics.

Hourglass, for instance, was largely a nonsense song that had a strong hook and an unforgettable melody.  What does “Take it to the bridge, throw it overboard, see if it can swim” refer to?  No one knows and it doesn’t matter.  Along with being insanely catch, Hourglass also had a memorable music video.  The video was popular on MTV and, in the 80s, that usually led to success on the U.S. Charts.  Hourglass became on the few Squeeze songs to break into the U.S. Top 40.

The video features the band performing amongst a series of optical illusions.  The video was directed by Adrian Edmondson while the Salvador Dali-inspired concept for the video was credited to Squeeze’s keyboardist Jools Holland.  Holland would later go on to host Later …. with Jools Holland on BBC Two and has become a British cultural icon.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Strait Playin’ by Shaquille O’Neal (1996, directed by ????)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Shaquille O’Neal, rap superstar?

Yes, that actually happened.  He released four studio albums and a handful of singles and his videos were popular on MTV, back when MTV still played videos.  Actually, Shaq wasn’t a bad rapper but he never escaped the impression that his musical career was just a celebrity vanity project.  Considering some of the other celebrity rap albums that came out in the 90s, Shaq’s work holds up as listenable if not exactly inspired.  (I’ve never heard Brian Austin Green’s rap album and I’m planning on making sure that I never do but I’m still sure that Shaq was better.)

Strait Playin’ is from his third studio album, You Can’t Stop The Reign.  It was produced by DJ Quik and featured verses from Quik and Peter Gunz.  The song peaked at #33 on the U.S. R&B charts but it was more popular in New Zealand, for some reason.  It hits #17 on the New Zealand charts.  It was also featured on the soundtrack for Steel, a movie that featured Shaq in the lead role.

As for the video, every 90s rap video cliché is present, from driving around in an open top car while rapping to the house party at the end.

Enjoy!