In America, Scorpions are best-known for Rock You Like A Hurricane. Big City Nights comes from the same album, Love At First String. In fact, it was the last single released from that album and the video is made up of footage that was shot while the band was touring in support of Love At First Sting. Though the song was never as big a hit as Rock You Like A Hurricane, the video was probably responsible for a lot of teenagers deciding to start a band in 1985. The main message of this video seems to be that if you want to get laid, even when you’re middle-aged and your hair is starting to thin, then you need to start a band. Of course, that was the message of most music videos of the period.
Today’s music video features a linguistic lesson from Huey Lewis.
Perhaps realizing that a generation was being raised to think that “bad” was the proper way to describe something as being cool, Huey uses this song to remind his fans that sometimes, bad just means that something’s bad. Sometimes, your cousin plays the guitar and it sounds like chainsaw. Sometimes, there’s a strange pair of shows under the bed. Sometimes, bad is bad.
To make their point, the band performs the song while walking around the Potrero Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. What better way was there to do that? It’s not every day that you see Huey Lewis and the News walking behind a garbage truck.
“I wrote that in a little apartment I had in Encino. It was right next to the freeway and the cars sometimes sounded like waves from the ocean, which is why there’s the line about the waves crashing on the beach. The words just came tumbling out very quickly – and it was the start of writing about people who are longing for something else in life, something better than they have.”
— Tom Petty on American Girl
Because it’s the 4th of July, I wanted to share the music video for Tom Petty’s American Girl but it turns out that there never was an official video for American Girl. The song came out before the launch of MTV and, strangely enough, it was never as big a hit in the United States than it was in the UK.
I was, however, able to find footage of Tom Petty performing the song on Fridays. Fridays was a rip-off of Saturday Night Live. It aired live with a regular ensemble and it also featured a weekly musical guest. The only real difference between it and SNL was that Fridays aired on …. you guessed it, Friday night. It never escaped the shadow of Saturday Night Live, though it did receive some attention when guest host Andy Kaufman got into an on-air brawl with Michael Richards. (Apparently, it was a staged fight though, as was often the case with Kaufman, few people realized it.) Today, Fridays is best known for featuring several performers — Richards, Larry David, Bruce Mahler, and others — who were later appeared on Seinfeld.
This performance above is from the June 6th, 1980 episode of Fridays. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers performed Shadow of a Doubt and American Girl on the episode. According to Wikipedia, that episode also featured sketches with names like “Johannes the Friday’s Parakeet Needs Marijuana Seeds” and “Prostitution Debate with Pastor Babbitt.”
American Girl, incidentally, was originally recorded on July 4th, 1976. Today is its 44th birthday.
John Cleese used to joked that, on the 3rd of July, the UK would celebrate “Dependence Day,” by setting up cardboard cut-outs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and taunting them with shouts of, “Well, why don’t you go get your freedom, then!?”
Sadly, Dependence Day is not an actual holiday. Perhaps it should be. If the UK can celebrate Guy Fawkes Day without being sure whether or not it means to celebrate Fawkes’s plan to blow up Parliament or his death, I certainly think that time can be found to shout rude things at a caricature of John Adams.
Today, in honor of Dependence Day, I picked a music video for a song that has nothing to do with the American revolution but it does mention London and I guess that’s close enough. This song was actually written because the members of ELO used to spend a lot of time riding the train between from Birmingham to London.
The song, Beat the Clock, was named after a game show that aired, off-and-on, from 1950 to 2018. On the show, contestants would try to win prizes by completing challenges in a certain amount of time. Like the best game shows, it was simple but challenging. The show originally aired on CBS and, over the decades, switched channels several times. When the latest version of the show ended, it was airing on Universal Kids.
The video does not really have much to do with the game show. Instead, it features Sparks performing while cardboard cut-outs of the band roll down an assembly line. Interestingly, this video was made in the days before MTV, when most music videos were still strictly performance clips. At the time it was released, the video for Beat The Clock would have been unique for actually having a concept behind it.
The video was directed by Scott Millaney and Brian Grant. If Brian Grant’s name seems familiar, that’s because he went on to direct over 225 videos. He did videos for everyone from The Human League to Whitney Houston to Queen to Peter Gabriel and Duran Duran. If your band was big at some point in the 80s, there’s a good chance that Brian Grant directed a music video for you. Grant has also directed episodes for several television programs, including Dr. Who, Highlander, and The Red Shoe Diaries.
“I was thinking about football when I wrote it. I wanted a participation song, something that the fans could latch on to. Of course, I’ve given it more theatrical subtlety than an ordinary football chant. I suppose it could also be construed as my version of ‘I Did It My Way.’ We have made it, and it certainly wasn’t easy. No bed of roses as the song says. And it’s still not easy.”
— Freddy Mercury on We Are The Champions
According to scientists, this is the most catchy song every written.
In 2011, a team of scientific researchers actually conducted a study to determine the catchiest song ever recorded and this is what they decided upon. Don’t ask me how they actually made that determination. Maybe they were all football fans. If you’re fan of football — whether it’s American football or association football — you know this song by heart. You also probably know what it’s like to hear the other team sing it after your team loses. As great as it feels to be one of the champions, it really sucks to be one of the losers who they don’t have time for.
This video was filmed at the New London Theater. The audience was made up entirely of members of Queen’s fan club. The video was directed by Derek Burbridge, who also directed yesterday’s music video of the day.
AC/DC was always a no frills/no bullshit/hard-rocking band and the same is true of their music videos. While other bands of the period were using elaborate videos to covers for their deficiencies as musicians, AC/DC used videos to show off what they could do on stage. AC/DC always respected their fans enough to let the music speak for itself and that’s what they did in the video for For Those About To Rock (We Salute You).
Along with their “official” videos, Saint Motel also frequently releases videos for alternate versions of their songs. This is for the acoustic version of Save Me, which can be found on The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack album.
This video description on YouTube offers up only one credit — which is “cinematography by Mario Contini.” I know that A/J Jackson is usually credited for directing the group’s videos (and, of course, he’s the band’s lead singer as well) but since I don’t have any official listing for a director, I’m just going to leave that credit blank.
Mario Contini, according the imdb, has worked on several music videos, including ones by Lady Gaga, Post Malone, and Muse. I like the look of this video. The band certainly has a talent for finding good locations in which to be filmed performing.
Through the Shattered Lens