Music Video of the Day: Here We Go by Stakka Bo (1993, directed by Johan Renck)

Posted on August 4, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

Today’s music video of the day is for a song that always makes me nostalgic and, for reasons I’ll explain further down, sad. When I was growing up, I used to regularly spend my summers visiting family in the UK. For most of the 90s, you couldn’t go anywhere in Europe without coming across Stakka Bo’s Here We Go playing somewhere and whenever I hear it, I’m reminded of those brilliant summers.

Stakka Bo’s real name is Bo Johan Renck. Music was largely a side project for him. He is best known as a highly respected director. Not only has he directed music videos for Madonna, Beyonce, New Order, Lana del Rey, and David Bowie but he’s also directed episodes of Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. In 2008, Renck directed his first feature film, Downloading Nancy.

He also directed the video for Here We Go. Undoubtedly a part of the video’s popularity was due to the girl in the video, model Alma Jansson-Eklund. (Though Alma did a great job lip synching, the vocals were provided by Nana Hedin.) Tragically, Alma struggled with depression and committed suicide ten years after the release of Away We Go. While I was doing research for this post, I came across two blog posts written by people who knew Alma: this one and this one. (The second post is written in Swedish.) No one can know the exact events that led to her death but it’s impossible to watch this video and not mourn for a talent the left this world far too early.

Music Video of the Day: Pale Shelter by Tears For Fears (1983, directed by Steve Barron)

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

Back in the day, living it up in Vice City

Today’s music video of the day is for a song that I used to enjoy listening to back when I was living in Vice City. Believe it or not, I used to steal cars just so I could turn the radio over to Wave 103 and listen to songs like Pale Shelter by Tears For Fears. I know I’m not alone. Vice City was a crazy place to live, man.

As for the video, it was directed by Steve Barron (who was responsible for several classic new wave videos) and is about weird things happening in Los Angeles.

It begins with a classic California scene as a woman in a red, one-piece bathing suit dives into a pool. She’s soon joined by an alligator, which causes her to fly straight into the air. This followed by a police officer directing traffic, a child raising his hand in school, a woman taking laundry off a line, a soccer team celebrating a goal, a blonde stretching in bed, and an airplane flying over an airport. When the laundry woman burns a shirt with an iron, it leaves a giant, steaming imprint in the middle of the runway.

Standing in the middle of imprint, Curt Smith drops his guitar which ruins everyone’s day. The police officer loses his cool. The blonde realizes she’s overslept. The laundry woman panics as it starts to rain. The child in school isn’t called on and retaliates by making a paper airplane that he throws out the window.

Soon, hundreds of paper airplane are raining down on Curt Smith and Roland Orzbal. Most of them seem to be hitting Curt.

Everyone in the video looks up to the sky and things get better. The school child is reunited with the laundry woman. Curt fixes his broken guitar. The blonde gets out of bed, drives her car, and catches the eye of the policeman. The soccer players congratulates themselves on a good game.

Curts throw his guitar into the air. Back in the school, all the students start to throw paper airplanes. The alligator gets back in the pool. A paper airplane hits Curt right between the eyes. The woman in the red bathing suit heads back down to Earth while the alligator eats Curt’s guitar.

And you thought Vice City was a strange place!

Music Video of the Day: The Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden (1982, directed by David Mallet)

Posted on August 2, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

Today’s music video of the day is for the song that convinced an entire generation of parents that heavy metal was Satan’s music. Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris wrote The Number of the Beast after watching the second Omen film and a careful listen to the lyrics will reveal that the song is not meant to be taken seriously. Of course, religious groups across America took it very seriously and spent 1982 protesting Iron Maiden.

It all seems a little silly now.

The video was also controversial, even though it was really just clips of old horror movies mixed with footage of Iron Maiden performing. With Lisa Marie’s help, I think I have correctly identified the source of almost every clip featured in the video:

0:10 — The video starts with a scene from 1944’s The Return of the Vampire. Contrary to popular belief, that is not Vincent Price providing the voice over. Originally, the band wanted Price but, when they discovered they couldn’t afford him, they hired an actor named Barry Clayton instead.

0:30 — The Goatman who first appears here and then reappears throughout the video is taken from 1968’s The Devil Rides Out.

0:36 — This clip is from 1922’s Nosferatu.

0:42 — This is the star of 1957’s I Was A Teenage Frankenstein.

0:50 — The fighting dinosaurs are from 1940’s One Million Years B.C.

1:12 — This is from 1958’s The Screaming Skull.

1:19 — The Godzilla footage is taken from 1964’s Mothra vs. Godzilla.

2:15 — I’m not totally sure but I think this is from 1946’s The Crimson Ghost.

2:19 — The exploding Goatman is, again, from The Devil Rides Out.

2:30 — This is from 1958’s How To Make A Monster, which was a sequel to I Was A Teenage Frankenstein.

2:38 — This is either another clip from How To Make A Monster or a clip from 1957’s I Was A Teenage Werewolf.

2:41 — This scene is from The Crimson Ghost.

3:21 — The scarred giant is from 1958’s War of the Colossal Beast.

3:24 — I like this way this part of the video was edited to make it appear as if Godzilla was reacting to the Colossal Beast.

3:51 — The big spider is from 1959’s The Angry Red Planet.

4:00 — This is another clip from The Crimson Ghost.

4:13 — Of course, everyone knows Eddie.

4:32 — I Was a Teenage Werewolf, again.

Can you believe people took this seriously?

Music Video of the Day: I Wanna Be A Lifeguard by Blotto (1981, directed by ????)

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

37 years ago today, MTV first started to broadcast. Over the course of the day, the station aired 116 music videos.

Everyone knows that the first video to ever be shown on MTV was Video Killed The Radio Star by The Buggles. But did you know that the 36th video aired was Blotto’s I Wanna Be A Lifeguard?.

Who were Blotto? A new wave band from Albany, New York, they had a strong cult following among college students in the late 70s and early 80s. Much like the Ramones, all the band members used pseudonyms and took Blotto as their last name. Among the members were: Bowtie Blotto, Broadway Blotto, Cheese Blotto, Lee Harvey Blotto, Sergeant Blotto, Blanche Blotto, and Chevrolet Blotto.

I Wanna Be A Lifeguard was probably their best known song, as it was adopted as an anthem by the Jones Beach lifeguards. Before they made their MTV debut, Blotto and I Wanna Be A Lifeguard were championed by Dr. Demento and, like all good, quirky New York bands, they appeared on both The Joe Franklin Show and the Uncle Floyd Show. Today, it’s clear to see that Blotto were ahead of their time. The band’s mix of humor and music are tailor-made for the age of YouTube and social media.

As for the video, it was filmed by video production students at SUNY Albany and it feels like a cross between two quintessentially 90s shows. Starting in a shoe store and ending on the beach, I Wanna Be A Lifeguard is Married With Children meets Baywatch. Since the video came out ten years before either one of those shows premiered, I Wanna Be A Lifeguard was as ahead of its time as the band that performed it.

Music Video of the Day: Bad Boys by Inner Circle (1993, directed by George Seminara)

Posted on July 31, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

Today’s music video of the day is Bad Boys, by the Jamaican reggae band, Inner Circle.

Yes, that would be the Cops theme song.

When Inner Circle first recorded and released Bad Boys in 1987, the song didn’t receive much attention. That all changed in 1989 when a new docuseries premiered on Fox. Cops followed the police as they patrolled the streets, dealt with a hostile citizenry, and broke up domestic disputes. Every episode opened with a disclaimer (“All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”) and the opening verses of Bad Boys.

In 1993, the show’s worldwide success led to Inner Circle rereleasing Bad Boys as a single and filming the music video below:

Thirty-one seasons later, Cops is still in production and even those who may not be aware of who performed the song still know the famous “whatcha gonna do?” chorus.

Music Video of the Day: I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For by U2 (1987, directed by Barry Devlin)

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

Filmed over the course of one night on Fremont Street in Las Vegas, the music video for I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For accomplished two things. First, it showcased the members of U2 at their most approachable and likable. Secondly, it did wonders to improve the image of Las Vegas as a city. Instead of focusing on people gambling away their life savings, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For portrayed Vegas as a friendly and diverse city where, if you go out on the right night, you might even run into one of the biggest bands in the world. According to civic leader Pat Christensen in a 2002 interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal, “”The whole perception of Vegas changed with that video. Now all the big names come here, some of them five, six times a year.”

As usual, in this video, the focus is on Bono and the Edge. Larry Mullen, Jr. and Adam Clayton are both present but it would be easy to mistake them for being a part of the crowd that gathers to watch The Edge play his guitar. Perhaps that is why, at the end of the video, Adam appears to just wander away from the shoot and get in a waiting taxi cab.

Music Video of the Day: California Girls by David Lee Roth (1984, directed by Peter Angelus)

Posted on July 29, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

David Lee Roth first came to prominence as the lead singer of Van Halen. Famously, he and Eddie Van Halen did not get along but the band’s early success was definitely due to the combination of Eddie’s technical virtuosity and Roth’s unabashed stage presence. For better or worse, Roth earned the right to be known as Diamond Dave. When Roth left Van Halen (for the first time) and embarked on his solo career, he made up for what he may have lacked in range with pure theatrical showmanship. Nowhere was that more evident than in Roth’s first solo hit, a cover of the Beach Boys’s California Girls.

Even before the video begins, we know what’s in store for us:

Assuming the opening quote hasn’t scared you off, the video proper begins somewhere in California, with a campy Twilight Zone-style narrator introducing us to a tour group of strange-looking tourists and Jane Leeves. (Nine years after this video, Leeves would be better known for playing Daphne Moon on Frasier.)

Fortunately, the world’s best tour guide is there to show them what California’s all about!

But first, Diamond Dave makes them all walk through a cemetery for some reason.

Of course, Diamond Dave loves the East Coast Girls. The Yo Mamma graffiti is a nice touch.

And Diamond Dave loves the Southern Girls, with the way they talk and hang their Confederate flags.

He also likes the Midwest Girls and, apparently, corn.

And don’t forget Northern Girls, with the way they kiss in the snow.

But you know what Dave really likes?

California Girls!

Jane Leeves is amazed!

The bodybuilder here is played by Kay Baxter, who was Dave’s personal trainer at the time.

The screenshot below is not only the epitome of Diamond Dave but also a good example of why he and Van Halen have always had such an uneasy working relationship. Eddie Van Halen could probably perform a technically perfect version of California Girls (or any other Beach Boys song) but he could never pull off an orange suit and a bowtie.

The video’s most famous (and most often parodied) moment comes when Dave dances down a runway of bikini-clad models, who are all standing still and posed like mannequins. It may be ridiculous put it’s also the epitome of David Lee Roth.

California Girls was one of Roth’s biggest solo hits and, much like him, it epitomizes an era. Roth would later rejoin and leave Van Halen several more times before finally joining again in 2007. When last checked, Roth was still a member and he probably still loves California girls.

Music Video of the Day: Cars by Gary Numan (1979, directed by Derek Burbidge)

Posted on July 28, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

One of the first great hits of the new wave era, Gary Numan’s Cars was inspired by an incident of road rage. As Numan explained in an interview

“I was in traffic in London once and had a problem with some people in front. They tried to beat me up and get me out of the car. I locked the doors and eventually drove up on the pavement and got away from them. It’s kind of to do with that. It explains how you can feel safe inside a car in the modern world… When you’re in it, your whole mentality is different… It’s like your own little personal empire with four wheels on.”

From this humble beginning came the song that not only became synonymous with post-punk new wave music but which also inspired an untold number of teenagers to switch from learning how to play the drums to wanting a keyboard for Christmas. Cars may have been about something as modern as road rage but its futuristic sound and video made it a science fiction anthem.

(Sorry, you’re probably going to have to go to YouTube to actually watch this video.)

Cars starts with what I like to call a Doctor Who shot.

Anyone who has ever seen classic Doctor Who or really any science fiction movie from the late 70s knows how important neon was to decorating any villain’s intergalactic lair. When Gary Numan approaches the microphone, he could easily be mistaken for a militaristic alien who had made the mistake of falling under the influence of the Master.

Once Numan starts to perform, it becomes more obvious that he was more inspired by David Bowie than Doctor Who:

The video features several close-ups of Numan’s tambourine. The effect may seem cheesy now but in 1979, it undoubtedly blew a lot of minds.

Of course, no new wave video would be complete without some synthesizer action.

Cars became an unexpected hit and remains popular today. Anyone who has played Grand Theft Auto: Vice City knows the pleasure of fleeing the police while listening to Cars on Wave 103.

Music Video of the Day: You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon (1986, directed by Gary Weis)

Posted on July 27, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

How did Chevy Chase come to star in a music video?

It all started with a case of mistaken identity. Paul Simon and his then-wife were at a party where they met French composer, Pierre Boulez. Boulez was not sure who Simon was and repeatedly called him “Al.” At the same time, Simon was suffering from a mid-life crisis that would not be resolved until Simon visited South Africa. Simon brought the two incident together when he wrote You Can Call Me Al, the lead single off of his 1986 album, Graceland.

As for the video, it was the brainchild of Lorne Michaels. Michaels, of course, is best known for producing Saturday Night Live and it was his idea to combine the tall and extroverted Chevy Chase with Paul Simon, who was neither of those things.

Lorne Michaels and Chevy Chase have had a long history together. Michaels originally hired Chase for SNL and was instrumental in Chase’s early success. Chase reacted to his sudden success by leaving SNL after its first season and subsequently trashing the show in interviews. When Chase first returned to host SNL, he got into a fist fight with his successor, Bill Murray. Chase’s subsequent appearances on the show have become legendary for Chase’s obnoxious and absuive behind-the-scenes behavior. (In 1986, for example, Chase suggested a sketch in which openly gay cast member Terry Sweeney would announce that he had AIDS and then be regularly weighed throughout episode.) Eventually, Chase managed to become the first former cast member to be banned from appearing on the show.

Paul Simon, though, is still welcome anywhere he goes.

Music Video of the Day: I Wanna Sex You Up by Color Me Badd (1991, directed by ????)

Posted on July 26, 2018 by Jedadiah Leland

For today’s music video of the day, we have the song that was ranked #40 on Blender’s list of the 50 Worst Songs Ever. From Color Me Badd (which I guess earned that extra d by being extra bad), here’s I Wanna Sex You Up.

Let’s break it down.

0:01 — “To the tick tock ya don’t stop” is sampled from La Di Da Di by Doug E. Fresh.

0:03 — Now, we meet the band, who appear to be Kenny G and his roadies.

0:15 — Kenny G and the boys, out for a stroll.

0:22 — “Yes, I will watch my video cassettes.” Are we watching Swedish porn now?

0:32 — This song was released in 1991, coming at the tail end of late 80s pop but before the start of the grunge revolution.

0:41 — “We’re dancing and we’re spinning! And now, we’re spinning and we’re dancing!”

0:47 — When listening to the vocals, take a moment to consider that this song came out the same year as Smells Like Teen Spirit and you’ll understand why Nirvana saved the music industry from itself.

0:55 — Kenny G. proves the chivalry is not dead.