Today’s music video of the day is Saint Motel’s My Type. I don’t have too much to say about this one, beyond the fact that I like the retro feel of both the song and the video. This is a fun song to dance to and that’s certainly something that this video captures.
This video was directed by A/J Jackson, Saint Motel’s lead vocalist. Jackson has said that he was going for a cross of “early 70s cigarette ads and New York street photography.” Myself, I like to think of the video as being an outtake from a lost Joe Sarno movie.
This video’s cinematographer was Mario Contini while Cody Fusina is credited with production design.
As we all know, music video of the day has always been and always will be Val’s baby. Starting with If You Don’t Know Me By Nowin June of 2016, Val has shared and analyzed over 300 music videos! It’s become one of my favorite of our regular features here on the Shattered Lens.
As most of you know, for health reasons, Val is taking a temporary break from this feature. Until Val comes back, I figured that I might occasionally share a video or two. Admittedly, I do not have Val’s encyclopedic knowledge of music (and I should admit that my musical taste pretty much begins and ends with EDM) but what Val and I do share is a deep appreciation for a little Canadian show called Degrassi.
See, it was that love of Degrassi that led me to the video below. Earlier tonight, I was rewatching Death of a Disco Dancer, the third episode of Degrassi’s fifth season. In this episode, Paige is upset that her friend, co-worker, and classmate, Alex, doesn’t seem to care about going to college. When Degrassi hosts a college fair, Paige attempts to entice Alex to attend by offering her a joint.
“Will you go if you’re high?” Paige asks.
“I’ll go if you’re high,” Alex answers.
The two of them duck into an alley and light up the joint. What follows is perhaps the best three minute montage in the history of Degrassi as a very stoned Paige and Alex walk through the fair, giggling at all the Canadian college recruiters. It’s all good fun until Paige discovers that a friend of her mother’s is at the fair. Uh-oh!
Anyway, I’ve always loved the song that plays during the montage. It’s called Upfront With You and it’s performed by a Canadian band called Universal Honey. After watching the episode tonight, I looked the song up on YouTube and that’s when I came across the video that was made for it in 1996.
Now, despite doing a handful of Google searches, I can’t tell you who directed or worked on this video. I can tell you that Universal Honey has been around since 1992 and the band is made up of Leslie Stanwyck and Johnny Sinclair. (Before Universal Honey, they were both in a band called The Pursuit of Happiness.) Up Front With You is off of their first album, Magic Basement.
Not surprisingly, this is a Canadian band. One of the great things about Degrassi is that it exposed me to a lot of Canadian bands that I, as an American, might otherwise have never heard of.
The video starts off with The Darkness onboard their version of the ZZ Top spaceship car.
Rough Boy by ZZ Top
Then Justin Hawkins emerges from a heart-shaped bath before something that reminds me of Grimace dries him off. That’s followed by Hawkins reminding us that he is a fan of Queen.
Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
You can also see in the background that he either made a sculpture based on this…
I Want To Break Free by Queen
or borrowed some of the furniture from the Korova Milk Bar used last by Rob Zombie in 2002.
Never Gonna Stop by Rob Zombie
This was a few years before Zombie would get Alex DeLarge and Michael Myers to sit down and discuss masks.
Then it’s time to introduce the rest of the band, and play some guitar before Hawkins gets beamed down to a planet to fight a giant crab. I guess the Gorn were too good for this music video.
Star Trek: TOS — Arena
However, we do get a cameo appearance from the rock.
Star Trek: TOS — Arena
Of course Hawkins dodges the rock like Captain Kirk did, and with the power of a Bohemian Rhapsody reference…
he throws it right back. They’re working with a limited runtime. Hawkins doesn’t have the time to make a gun.
Then Hawkins runs through decontamination before turning to point down the corridor to show off their gigantic Marshall Stack.
I’m sure they were added later, but I’m still going to call this for The Animals and say that hot flames of fire were roaring at their feet. I have no idea if this one was a reference to Spill The Wine by The Animals, but it is the first thing I thought of when I saw the scene. Plus, out of the middle of the flames does comes this red-colored Orion girl.
Meanwhile, back on the bridge, the band prepares for their final reference.
A space creature latches itself onto the ship like in that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Star Trek: The Next Generation — Galaxy’s Child
Unlike Star Trek: The Next Generation, they turn on their instrument phasers and blast the thing to dust.
Then we get a thumbs up from Hawkins…
before their ship crash lands on a planet in the video for their song Friday Night, which picked up right after this one.
Every January, I list my fourteen favorite songs of the previous year and, every January, I include the same disclaimer. My fourteen favorite songs are not necessarily the fourteen favorite songs of any of the other writers here at the Shattered Lens. We are a large and diverse group of people and, as such, we all have our own individual tastes.
If you ever visited the TSL Bunker, you would be shocked by the different music coming out of each office. You would hear everything from opera to death metal to the best of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. And then, of course, you would reach my office and you would discover that my taste in music pretty much runs the gamut from EDM to More EDM.
Now, usually, I do try to listen to a variety of music. You can go to my Song of the Day site — Lisa Marie’s Song of the Day — and see that I do occasionally listen to other types of music. But, I have to be honest. 2016 was not a year that inspired me to really leave me comfort zone. If anything, music provided me with some much needed consistency in an otherwise chaotic year. 2016 was a year that made me want to dance until it was all over and, for the most part, my favorite songs of the year reflect that fact.
Before I list my 14 songs, I should make something else very clear. These are my 14 favorite songs of 2016. I’m not saying that they’re necessarily the best songs of 2016. I’ll leave that debate for others. Instead, there are the songs that I found myself listening to over and over again. These are the songs made me dance. These are the songs that made me sing. A few of these songs relaxed me when I needed to be relaxed. One of the songs made me cry but I’m not going to say which one.
It might make you cry too.
Or it might not.
That’s the beautiful thing about art. Everyone experiences it in their own individual way.
Here are my 14 favorite songs of 2016:
14) David Bowie — Lazarus
13) Afrojack & Hardwell — Hollywood
12) Cedric Gervais (ft. Juanes) — Este Amor
11) Matoma (ft. Becky Hall) — False Alarm
10) Radiohead — Burn the Witch
9) Gorgon City (feat Vaults) — All Four Walls
8) Penthox — Give It Away
7) Britney Spears — Clumsy
6) Martin Garrix (feat Mesto) — WIEE
5) Tiesto, Oliver Heldens (feat Natalie LaRose) — The Right Song
A pair of immaculate white sneakers, being worn by the lead singer of The Talking Heads, David Byrne, walk out onto a bare stage while an unseen audience applauds. Byrne places a radio on the stage beside him and says, “I have a tape I want to play for you.” Accompanied only by a drum machine and an acoustic guitar, Byrne launches into a performance of Psycho Killer that ends with him lurching across the stage like a marionette that is losing its strings.
So begins the greatest concert film of all time, Stop Making Sense.
As Psycho Killer comes to an end, Byrne is joined on stage by bassist Tina Weymouth. While Byrne and Weymouth perform Heaven, the black-clad stage crew sets up a drum kit behind them. Drummer Chris Frantz comes out for the third song, Thank You For Sending Me An Angel. The fourth member of the Talking Heads, Jerry Harrison, appears on stage for Found A Job and is then followed by several touring members of the band, including legendary keyboardist Bernie Worrell, guitarist Alex Weir, percussionist Steve Scales, and backup singers, Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt. It’s not until the concert’s sixth song, Burning Down The House, that the entire band is on stage.
Pieced together from three separate shows performed at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles, Stop Making Sense showcases one of the most important bands of the 80s at their absolute best. Eschewing any candid footage of the band backstage and only occasionally showing any shots of the audience, Jonathan Demme keeps the focus on the music and David Byrne’s amazing showmanship. Even more than the music, what really makes Stop Making Sense stand out is Byrne’s physicality. During one instrumental passage, Byrne even runs around the stage in circles before jumping back to his microphone without missing a beat.
Though the entire band is in great form, Byrne is almost always the focus of attention. The only time he’s not is when he goes backstage during a performance of Genius Of Love by Weymouth and Frantz’s side project, The Tom Tom Club. During that time, Byrne is changing into the “big suit,” the costume that continues to define the Talking Heads to this day.
Along with Burning Down The House, highlights include Life During Wartime,
Swamp,
Once in a Lifetime,
and Stop Making Sense‘s most famous moment, David Byrne performing Girlfriend is Better while wearing the iconic “big suit.”
Stop Making Sense is a fun, exhilarating, and sometimes exhausting concert film and, given all the bad feelings that exist between Byrne and the other three members of the band, it’s probably as close as any of us will ever get to experiencing The Talking Heads live.
For tomorrow’s movie a day, I’ll be explaining why Blue Chips always makes me think of England.
The year of 2016 has taken many of the music scene’s greatest. Prince, David Bowie and Glenn Frey just to name a few taken too soon. Now, George Michael joins his musical brethren as news of his passing on Christmas Day was announced and confirmed.
There’s not much to say other than any kid growing up during the late 80’s knew and listened to George Michael in some capacity or another. While he became famous as part of the British boy band WHAM! it was when he branched out on his own as a solo act that he hit megastar status. His solo debut album, Faith, would reach multi-platinum levels and each single released from the album and each video that ran in circulation on MTV would become instant hits.
My favorite song of his and this goes to his many excellent post-modern videos, would be the third single released from his debut album, “Father Figure.”.
Father Figure
That’s all I wanted
Something special, something sacred
In your eyes
For just one moment
To be bold and naked
At your side
Sometimes I think that you’ll never
Understand me (understand me)
Maybe this time is forever
Say it can be, woah
That’s all you wanted
Something special, someone sacred
In your life
Just for one moment
To be warm and naked
At my side
Sometimes I think that you’ll never
Understand me (understand me)
But something tells me together
We’d be happy, woah baby
I will be your father figure (oh baby)
Put your tiny hand in mine (I’d love to)
I will be your preacher teacher (be your daddy)
Anything you have in mind (it would make me)
I will be your father figure (very happy)
I have had enough of crime (please let me)
I will be the one who loves you
Till the end of time
That’s all I wanted
But sometimes love can be mistaken
For a crime
That’s all I wanted
Just to see my baby’s
Blue-eyed shine
This time I think that my lover
Understands me (understands me)
If we have faith in each other
Then we can be strong, baby
I will be your father figure
Put your tiny hand in mine (my baby)
I will be your preacher teacher
Anything you have in mind
I will be your father figure
I have had enough of crime
I will be the one who loves you
Till the end of time
If you are the desert, I’ll be the sea
If you ever hunger, hunger for me
Whatever you ask for, that’s what I’ll be
So when you remember the ones who have lied
Who said that they cared
But then laughed as you cried
Beautiful darling
Don’t think of me
Because all I ever wanted
It’s in your eyes
Baby, baby
And love can’t lie, no
(Greet me with the eyes of a child)
My love is always telling me so (Heaven is a kiss and a smile)
Just hold on, hold on
And won’t let you go, my baby
I will be your father figure
Put your tiny hand in mine
I will be your preacher teacher
Anything you have in mind
I will be your father figure
And I have had enough of crime
So I am gonna love you
Till the end of time
(I will be your father) I will be your (I will be your preacher) Father (I will be your father) I’ll be your daddy, whoa
I will be the one who loves you
Till the end of time
Did everyone have a good Christmas? Did everyone get everything that they wanted?
If the answer’s yes, you have one man to thank for that!
Hooray for Santy Claus!
(You might recognize this song from one of our favorite holiday classics, Santa Claus Conquers The Martians! Apparently, it was performed by Milton DeLugg and the Little Eskimos.)
(Be careful listening to this song. As TSL contributor and Late Night Movie Gang founder Patrick Smith can tell you, once this song gets stuck in your head, it’ll never leave.)
On August 18, 1969, Jimi Hendrix performed the greatest version of The Star Spangled Banner on record. Jimi, who has been awake for three days when he performed his version of the National Anthem, later said, “We’re all Americans … it was like ‘Go America!’… We play it the way the air is in America today. The air is slightly static, see”
Depending on where you live, Friday the 13th is either over or nearly over! And, if you’re reading this, you survived!!!!!
Obviously, you listened to Crazy Ralph and you did not have sex, smoke weed, skinny dip, go out at night, take a boat trip to Manhattan, go into space, go to sleep, go out for firewood, ask any strange people if they needed help, go looking for your friends, strip down to your underwear so you could go run around in the rain, or have any fun whatsoever!
In other words, today was a boring day for you! But you survived!
In honor of your survival, here’s the end theme from Friday the 13th. This was composed by Harry Manfredini and, believe it or not, it’s actually a rather beautiful piece of music. So, celebrate your survival by listening.
And be prepared to make up for lost time on Saturday the 14th! Be bad…be very bad….
