Blood and Roses was the lead single off of The Smithereens’s debut album, Especially For You.  In the U.S., it peaked at #14 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Chart.  That’s not bad for the first single from a debut album.

It was also the theme song for a teensploitation film called Dangerously Close.  Written by John Stockwell and directed by Albert Pyun, Dangerously Close is about a group of high school students who keep order in their school through fear and intimidation.  It’s meant to be a statement about fascism and out-of-control policing but mostly it’s just remembered for being the debut film of future Bond girl and Law & Order actress Carey Lowell.  Not surprisingly, the music video duplicates the film’s high school setting.

According to the imdb, this video was also directed by Pyun.  However, according to Wikipedia, the video for Blood and Roses features clips from the film, none of which are featured in the video that’s available on YouTube.  I’m going to guess that there were two versions of this video, one that just featured the band performing and another one that was done to promote Dangerously Close.  Did Pyun direct both of those videos?  I don’t know but for now, I’m going to assume that imdb is correct and that Pyun directed the video featured in this post.

Pat DiNizo, lead singer of the Smithereens, would later run for the U.S. Senate in New Jersey as the candidate of the Reform Party.  (Remember them?)  In the 2000 Senate election, he ran fourth with 0.4% of the vote.  That election was won by Jon Corzine.  Corzine later went on to serve as governor of New Jersey and did such a terrible job that he was defeated for reelection by Chris Christie.  Corzine was then appointed CEO of M.F. Global.  Under Corzine’s leadership, M.F. Global went bankrupt, investors lost over $1.2 billion in cash, and at least an extra two years were added to the Great Recession as a result.

In other words: you should have voted for DiNizo, New Jersey!

Enjoy!