Since I shared the video of Kim Gordon’s cover of this Robert Palmer song yesterday, it only seem right to now share Tina Turner’s version. Kim did her video at a make-your-own-video booth in Macy’s. Tina did her version before a sell-out crowd in Europe. I like both versions.
Enjoy!
Yes, this is a cover of the Robert Palmer song that, for many, epitomizes the 80s. The music video for Ciccone Youth’s version probably cost considerably less than the video for the original Palmer version. Back in the 80s, stores often had booths where, for $19.99, you could stand in front of a blue screen and lip sync along to a song while images were projected behind you. This video was shot at Macy’s. Palmer performed his song with a group of models playing his backup band. Kim Gordon performed the song in front of what appeared to be a documentary about the war in Vietnam. As for Gordon’s vocals, they were recorded in a karaoke booth.
Ciccone Youth was a side project of Sonic Youth members Steve Shelley, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, featuring contributions from Minutemen/Firehose member Mike Watt and J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. They released one album in 1988, The Whitey Album. Ciccone Youth were not the only artist to cover Addicted to Love in 1988. Tina Turner was doing the same thing and she even released her own video of the song at roughly the same time that Kim Gordon was dancing at Macy’s.
Enjoy!
“You know, when you drive through Bakersfield on a Sunday morning or Sunday evening, all the country music radio stations start broadcasting black gospel services live from LA. And that’s what the song refers to. But the song’s really about driving alone, listening to the radio.”
— Mick Jagger on Far Away Eyes in 1978, to Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stones do country!
Actually, the Stones were always heavily influenced by both the Blues and Country music. This song was written by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger and there’s a bootleg version of Richards singing the lyrics. The official version, with Jagger singing, was the sixth track on the Stones’s 1978 album, Some Girls.
The video, a clip of the Stones performing the song in an intimate studio, was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who did a number of videos for both the Stones and the Beatles. For instance, Lindsay-Hogg is the credited director on Let It Be.
Enjoy!
Happy birthday, Bob Dylan!
Enjoy!
Shaq, rap superstar! It’s a thing that happened. Briefly.
While Shaq’s rap career didn’t exactly set the world on fire and his attempts at film stardom didn’t go much better, he was fortunate enough to have another career to fall back on.
At least now you know what Shaq and the General are listening to while they’re driving around the country and telling people about car insurance.
Enjoy!
I don’t have much to say about this video but then again, you don’t have to say much when it comes to Rick James. James was one of those artists who didn’t need an elaborate video to get people to realize that he rocked. All he had to do was get out there and perform.
I hope this song and music video serves as a good start for your weekend!
Enjoy!
“It’s not about anything. Like all my songs, it’s a portal into your own mind where I give you a guided meditation. It’s a blank, abstract canvas for people to lose themselves in.”
— Steve Kilbey on Under the Milky Way
Written while Steve Kilbey and his then-girlfriend were visiting Kilbey’s mother in New South Wales, Under The Milky Way would go on to become The Church’s biggest hit. Ironically, the other members of the band didn’t care for the song and had to be pressured to include it on their album, Starfish.
As Kilbey later put it, after the song became a hit:
“It changed everything in our lives, it put me on a new level of temptation and opened more doors that maybe shouldn’t have been opened… and made a lot of money and so we did a lot of touring. But saying that, the guys in the band all hated each other and they all hated me. Instead of being grateful that I’d written this song which had dragged them into the spotlight they were sort of envious and miserable about it as well.”
Part of the problem is that audiences would show up to see Church play and then, once they had heard Under the Milky Way, they would promptly leave before the show was over. Eventually, the members of the band got so frustrated by what they called “Milky Way gigs” that they refused to play the song for several years in the 90s. I probably would have just played the song at the end of the show so the audience stayed for the whole show but still got what they wanted but I’m not a rock star.
Considering how much the band dislikes it, I almost feel guilty about liking Under The Milky Way. It is a really good song, though, and the video is a good fit.
Enjoy!
Operation: Mindcrime is the title track from Queensrÿche’s third studio album. The album was considered to be the band’s breakthrough album and, unlike a lot of heavy metal from the 80s, it still has a good critical reputation to this day. I’m not a huge Queensrÿche fan but I have to admit that the bass line in the title track is pretty awesome.
The album was a concept album, about a junkie named Nikki who was turned into an assassin by the evil Dr. X. (As with most concept albums, the plot was actually much more complicated but I’ve only got so much space for this post.) For the album, this song was about how Dr. X could program Nikki to kill simply by saying, “Mindcrime.” The video, while containing all of the themes from the overall album, simplifies things to two men playing Russian Roulette while sitting in an office that’s decorated with a portrait of Stalin.
This video was directed by Chris Painter, who directed several other Operation: Mindcrime videos and who also did the video for Rush’s Roll The Bones.
Enjoy!
Ship of Fools was the second single to be released from Robert Plant’s fourth solo album, Now and Zen. Now and Zen was the most financially and critically successful of all of Planet’s solo albums, though Plant himself has said that he feels that the album’s music “got lost in the technology of the time.” I would be disappointed if Robert Plant didn’t decry “the technology of the time” but, in this case, he’s being too hard on himself. Now and Zen is a very good album.
This song is mood piece, a love song. In the video, Plant appears to be singing in the rain and it works. The song was later used in “Freefall,” the final episode of Miami Vice, the show that epitomized the 80s and the technology of the time like no other.
Enjoy!
This lengthy music video finds Phil Collins playing a drummer-turned-singer in the 1930s. With the help of his friend, a guitar player named Eric (and played, of course, by Eric Clapton), Collins auditions for a demanding theater owner (Jeffrey Tambor). While he auditions, he imagines what his life would be like if he becomes a success. He might even win an Oscar, probably for writing a song for a Disney film.
This video is more like a short film than a traditional music video, with over two minutes of “acting” before the singing even begins. This video came out at the time when Collins was still trying to make a career as an actor. I like the video but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that, for some people, it probably represents everything that they didn’t like about Phil Collins back in the day.
This video was directed by Jim Yukich, who directed several videos for Collins. Yukich’s name can be spotted on a clapboard when Collins is imagining what it would be like to be a film star.
In the scenes in which Collins is acting opposite of Humphrey Bogart, Bogart is played by Robert Sacchi. Sacchi built an entire career out of his resemblance to Humphrey Bogart. Whenever a sitcom in the 80s or the 90s needed Humphrey Bogart to appear in a dream sequence, the call went out to Sacchi. Sacchi also appeared in several movies, playing characters with names like Sam Marlowe, Inspector Bogie, and The Bogeyman. According to the imdb, he also appeared in The Erotic Adventures of Three Musketeers as Athos. I’m not sure if I believe that.
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 