Music Video of the Day: The Lion Sleeps Tonight by Tight Fit (1982, dir. ???)

Posted on September 5, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

Ummm…let’s just go through this thing.

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.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: My Own Worst Enemy by Lit (1999, dir. Gavin Bowden)

Posted on September 4, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

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.

Music Video of the Day: Making Your Mind Up by Bucks Fizz (1981, dir. ???)

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

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.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Prince Charming by Adam & The Ants (1981, dir. Mike Mansfield & Adam Ant)

Posted on September 2, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

From the book, I Want My MTV:

Steven Levy, writing in Rolling Stone, unfavorably compared “superficial, easy-to-swallow” acts such as Adam Ant to Bob Dylan.

You’d think having discovered Einstein’s brain in 1978 would have made him more open-minded. No really, he did. It’s worth reading his story about it.

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.

He has gone on to do better things after the 80s–along with doing good things back then as well. He appears to have lightened up on his condemnation of MTV as early as 1992.

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.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: The Shuttered Palace by Ellen Foley (1981, dir. ???)

Posted on September 1, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

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.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Breakaway by Tracey Ullman (1983, dir. Dave Robinson)

Posted on August 31, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

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.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) by Eurythmics (1983, dir. Jon Roseman & Dave Stewart)

Posted on August 30, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

Like Blue Monday 88, I’m not doing this because of Atomic Blonde (2017). Movin’ on.

Sweet dreams are made of these. Who am I to disagree?

Not me with this song or video. But I don’t think the 1985 biopic about Patsy Cline had the right to call itself Sweet Dreams.

It’s riddled with problems from the fact that it doesn’t have a story to tell to something as simple as continuity. It also has no dignity.

Sweet Dreams (1985, dir. Karel Reisz)

Yes, it really does cut directly from that sex scene to Patsy Cline ironing her husband’s shirt with a closeup of his last name–Dick. What a wonderful way to honor her memory. An obviously rushed production made to cash-in on the success of the producer’s 1980 film about Lorreta Lynn, Coal Miner’s Daughter.

I knew about this song beforehand, but I will give credit to the 1996 NBC TV Movie, Sweet Dreams, for reminding me it exists by it featuring Marilyn Manson’s cover version.

Sweet Dreams (1996, dir. Jack Bender)

I do have a copy of this movie where then Tiffani-Amber Thiessen gets amnesia. I spent a decade looking for it after its original airing in 1996, and that 1985 film didn’t help my search when the TiVo was looking for movies with the title Sweet Dreams. It’s not weird!

Neither is the fact that the origin of this video begins with Dave Stewart having a lung that kept collapsing.

In the book, I Want My MTV, he states that he was quite ill at the start of the group because he had a lung that kept collapsing. I don’t want to paraphrase what he has to say about how he came to love mixing images with music, so here’s an excerpt from the book:

I had just gotten out of surgery, and they must’ve given me tons of morphine or something, because my head started to explode with the idea of visual imagery and making music. From then on, I was obsessed with videos.

Just before that, a weird thing happened: I was walking down the street in Australia and stepped on something quite hard. I looked down and it was a solid gold bracelet. I picked it up, and as I turned the corner, I saw a pawnshop. I swapped the bracelet for an 8mm cine camera. From that moment on, I was always filming. I started to understand about putting imagery together with music.

There are two obvious questions that come up when you watch this music video:

Why the cow?
How did they get away with Annie Lennox wearing a matching suit with Stewart?

Jon Roseman, producer: Dave had a tremendous feel for images. People often ask me, “How did you come up with the idea of the cow?” I tell them, “Dave just said, ‘Let’s have a cow.'”

If Stewart wants to be a smoking caterpillar, then he gets to be a smoking caterpillar.

Don’t Come Around Here No More by Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers (1985, dir. Jeff Stein)

If Stewart wants a cow, then he gets a cow.

It doesn’t matter how difficult it may have been to do so:

Dave Stewart: I presented the treatment to the label, and they could not understand the bit with the cow. The cow was complicated, because we were in London, and the cow had to go down an elevator into the basement. The farmer who owned the cow was really agitated.

Annie Lennox: “Sweet Dreams” was shot in a basement studio in the middle of London. There was an elevator big enough to take the cow down from the ground floor. That was one of the most surreal moments I’ve had–being in a building with a cow walking around freely.

Little known fact, Dave Stewart is a Beastmaster.

Annie Lennox: During the scene where Dave is sitting at a prototype computer, tapping the keyboard, the cow’s head came really close to him.

Annie Lennox: I could see that happening and I thought, Oh shit, what is the cow going to do? It was almost nudging him. And Dave is so intuitive, he just rolled his eyes, so it looks like there was some kind of understanding between him and the cow. Like the cow had been told, “Right, so you do this and then Dave’s gonna do this. And…ACTION!”

Look into the eyes of Dave Stewart!

Lennox explains the purpose of the cow:

In a way, the video is a statement about the different forms of existence. Here are humans, with our dreams of industry and achievement and success. And here is a cow. We share the same planet, but it’s a strange coexistence.

As for how Annie Lennox got away with wearing a matching suit with Stewart:

Dave Stewart: “Sweet Dreams” prompted a big argument with the record company. They were pissed off when Annie and I turned up in matching suits, with Annie’s hair cropped off. They wanted her to wear a dress. They were like, “We don’t understand. Annie is such a pretty girl.” Then MTV got the video and it just went mad. It didn’t look like anything else. Annie’s hair was so different, and the colors in the video looked amazing. It was shot on 16mm film, but it was very rich. It became a phenomenon.

It’s not mentioned in the book, but I’d like to think that the ending was inspired by the ending of Jacques Rivette’s film, Celine And Julie Go Boating (1974).

Celine And Julie Go Boating (1974, dir. Jacques Rivette)

After that, Lennox is shown waking up in bed with a book on her nightstand with the same title as the song. It goes to black when she turns off the light.

Celine And Julie Go Boating cuts back to the beginning of the film where Celine wakes up, and she and Julie have now switched places. It’s Celine who ends up following Julie after she drops a book in a park. Before, it was Julie who followed Celine after she dropped something in the same park.

If Going Back To Cali by LL Cool J was inspired by the likes of Godard, Chabrol, and Antonioni, then it’s not a stretch to think that Stewart saw that movie, and thought to mimic that shot which shoots us out of the film to simply repeat the same movie with the characters switched. Much like you can imagine that Lennox is going to sleep to end up back in the same dream she just had, based on what she read in the book–the cover appearing to show one Annie reaching out to touch another Annie.

Chris Ashbrook produced the video.

Enjoy! And for all of us who have misheard lyrics at one time or another: Sweet dreams are made of cheese. Who am I to disagree?

30 Days Of Surrealism:

Music Video of the Day: Blue Monday 88 by New Order (1988, dir. Robert Breer & William Wegman)

Posted on August 29, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

I turned on this video in order to write about it for Monday, but became so hypnotized by its imagery that I couldn’t write till today.

I felt it was critically important to watch several forgotten early-90s thrillers in order to write about this video.

I felt it was better that Lisa do it because of Tobe Hooper’s passing.

Or I’ve been having difficulty eating and sleeping, which really caught up with me on Sunday afternoon.

Unfortunately, it’s the fourth one, and it’s still going on as I write this, so I may be in and out for awhile. We shall see.

Anyways, Lisa jumped in yesterday and spotlighted the one music video I’m aware of that was directed by Tobe Hooper–Dancing With Myself by Billy Idol.

If I had to wager a guess as to how he ended up directing that video, then I figure it probably went one of two ways:

He was a fan of Generation X (Idol’s band prior to going solo), and ended up getting in contact with Idol to film the video. Then he brought on the cinematographer who shot The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and did uncredited camerawork on The Funhouse (1981)–Daniel Pearl.
Or it went the other way, and prolific music-video cinematographer Daniel Pearl suggested they hire Tobe Hooper.

No matter what the reason, I’m sure Hooper and Pearl having collaborated before had something to do with it.

How they ended up shooting it on a set from a production of Ann Jellicoe’s punk rock-themed play The Sport Of Mad Mad Mother is a mystery to me.

Something else that’s a mystery to me, is how and why there are at least four different music videos for Blue Monday made in 1983, 1984, 1988, and 1995. Not versions of the song. Actual videos made for those different versions. No, I am not going to try and track them all down right now.

I could embed an okay-at-best cover version of this song that was done by HEALTH for the movie Atomic Blonde (2017) to try and tie it to something recent, but I’d prefer to embed the video of Orkestra Obsolete playing Blue Monday using nothing but instruments from the 1930s. I find that much more interesting, and by doing so, I won’t be lying by implying that movie is the reason I’m doing this video.

For me, the dog is the biggest selling point of this video.

I’m not sure if I want to know how it got so good at balancing.

The dog’s name is Fay Ray. Not only can this dog balance on a chair that is balanced on another chair, but she was able to catch the tennis ball her mouth.

Lead-singer Bernard Sumner couldn’t do it.

Yes, I’m sure they pulled it away at the last second. Nevertheless, it did appear to nearly hit Gilbert, so there seems to have been a fair amount of randomness to that part of the video. I’m kinda disappointed that he didn’t snatch it out of the air with his mouth.

Director and photographer William Wegman owned Fay Ray along with three other dogs named Batty, Chundo, and Crooky. They would all go on to teach kids the alphabet in 1995’s Alphabet Soup.

Wegman did sketches for the video, and the other director, Robert Breer, is the one who did the hand-drawn animation.

While I’m not sure I want to know about the training Fay Ray went through, I am curious as to what Gillian Gilbert is looking at in this shot.

The only other thing I have to say about this video is that I am completely perplexed as to why it appears to be comparing the dogs ability to balance with her ability to balance.

Maybe you’ll have better luck figuring out the video than me.

Maybe you’ve read Breakfast Of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut–where they got the title from.

Or maybe you’ll just sit back and enjoy it as I do.

Information on the song, and it being re-invented over and over is easy to find on Wikipedia and Songfacts.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Dancing With Myself by Billy Idol (1983, dir by Tobe Hooper)

Posted on August 28, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Hi! Lisa here, filling in for Val, with today’s music video of the day!

On Saturday night, fans of both film and horror were saddened to learn of the death of Tobe Hooper. Tobe Hooper was a Texas original, a fiercely iconoclastic director who totally changed the face of horror when he directed a low-budget shocker called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

When it came time to pick today’s music video of the day, I decided to see if Tobe Hooper had ever directed a music video. It turned out that he directed exactly one and here it is:

According to almost everyone online, Dancing With Myself is a song about masturbation. However, Idol himself says that the song’s lyrics are actually meant to be quite literal. The song actually is about dancing with yourself. Here’s how it’s explained over on Songfacts:

“This song is commonly thought to be about masturbation, but it’s really more about dancing by yourself. Billy got the idea after watching Japanese kids at a Tokyo disco “dancing with themselves” in a nightclub. The kids would dance in a pogo style up and down, and there were mirrors in the club so they could watch themselves doing it… This song is about more than just dancing. Idol told Rolling Stone: “The song really is about people being in a disenfranchised world where they’re left bereft, dancing with their own reflections.”

As for how Tobe Hooper came to direct the video … well, I have no idea. I imagine he was hired because of his fame as the director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This video came out a year after the original Poltergeist, a film that Hooper is credited with directing but which many people believed was actually directed by producer Steven Spielberg. (Poltergeist was a huge hit but the rumors of Hooper being a director-in-name-only permanently and unfairly damaged Hooper’s reputation.) As far as I know, this is the only music video that Tobe Hooper directed.

As for the video, it features neither masturbation nor Japanese nightclubs. Instead, it appears to be taking place in a post-apocalyptic setting. The beginning of the video reminds me a bit of Hooper’s underrated slasher film, The Funhouse.

Anyway, enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: The Loco-Motion by Kylie Minogue (1988, dir. Chris Langham)

Posted on August 27, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

The 1987 version.

This is the 1988 version. After the song did well in Australia, the record company PWL re-recorded it for a 1988 release. This included both altering the original 1987 video, and removing things to make the cover more straight-forward. It sounds like an update of the 1962 Little Eva version, whereas the 1987 version took more creative license with it. I’m assuming that’s also why they changed the title from Locomotion back to The Loco-Motion.

I’d like to add that according to Wikipedia, the 1987 video was filmed at Essendon Airport and the ABC studios in Melbourne, Australia. Wikipedia goes on to say that this version of the video was created from the original 1987 version. I’m still leaving Chris Langham as the director, but it does seem to imply that there was someone else who came in to re-edit the video.

Enjoy!