There are many houses featured in the music video for Madness’s Our House. While the song is about the day-to-day life of the British working class, the video still offers up glimpses of the Playboy Mansion and Buckingham Palace. However, most of the video was filmed at a terrace house in northwest London.
This song is often mistakenly referred to as being a one-hit wonder. While it may be the band’s best-known and most popular song in the United States, it’s just one of the many hits that Madness had in the UK. First formed in 1976 and still together (though they did temporarily break-up for 6 years, from 1986 to 1992), Madness has had 15 singles reach the UK top ten, one UK number one single, and two numbers ones in Ireland. Over the course of the 80s, Madness spent a record 214 weeks on the UK singles charts.
This video was directed by David Robinson, who directed several other videos for Madness. He also directed videos for Robert Plant, The Belle Stars, Robert Palmer, and Tracey Ullman.
The song may be about a drunk race car driver named Jerry and a retired fireman named Captain Pearson but the video is exhibit one of why nachos shouldn’t be left on the sidewalk.
Jerry Was A Race Car Driver was the second single to be release by Primus and it was their first song to receive heavy radio airplay. It eventually peaked at number 23 on 1991’s Modern Rock Tracks. Listen closely and you can hear a sample of Bill Moseley saying, “Dog will hunt!” in Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
As for the video, the man buying the nachos is played by Adam Gates while the skateboarder who collides with him is Primus’s guitarist, Larry LaLonde. The performance footage was filmed at a Primus show at Phoenix Theater in Petaluma, California while the race car footage was filmed at the Petaluma speedway. As for the claymation figures in the nachos, they are all creatures who appeared on the cover of Primus’s Sailing the Seas of Cheese album.
First released in 1989, the album Dr. Feelgood became and remains Mötley Crüe’s best-selling album to date. It was also their most critically acclaimed, in no doubt due to the band’s newly found sobriety. After years of drugs, sex, and debauchery, Dr. Feelgood was Mötley Crüe’s announcement that they could still rock even if they were sober.
Ironically, for an album that was recorded sober, the title track was about drugs. Dr. Feelgood was about a Los Angeles drug dealer. Nikki Sixx, who wrote the song, later told Rolling Stone that the song was based on several different drug dealers that he had done business with. Just two years before Dr. Feelgood became a hit, Sixx had been a notorious junkie who, after a heroin overdose, was actually legally dead for two minutes before a paramedic was able to revive him with two shots of adrenaline.
Along with being a slang term for heroin, Dr. Feelgood was also the nickname of several notorious doctors. Perhaps the most infamous Dr. Feelgood was Max Jacobson, who used to give “miracle tissue regenerator” shots to the rich and famous. His clients included everyone from JFK to Marilyn Monroe to Humphrey Bogart. Robert Freyman, the physician who is though to have inspired The Beatles’s Dr. Robert, was also sometimes called Dr. Feelgood.
Dr. Feelgood became Mötley Crüe’s first and, to date, only gold single in the United States. The video follows the song’s title character as he goes from working the streets to owning a mansion. In a repeat of what happened to Tony Montana, Dr. Feelgood’s own hubris eventually brings him down. As for why Mötley Crüe is performing in a revival tent, it probably just looked cool.
The song spent 109 weeks on the charts after its release and it remains Mötley Crüe’s most popular single.
Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun”, perhaps the most maudlin hit of all time, reached #1 on the charts in March 1974 and stubbornly stayed there for three long weeks:
This schmaltzy little ditty about a man saying goodbye to his loved ones as he’s preparing for death was based on Belgian chanteur Jacques Brel’s 1961 European hit “Le Moribond”, with English lyrics provided by that most sickeningly saccharine of 60’s poets, the Godfather of New Age, Rod McKuen (ATTENTION DIABETICS: better take your shot of insulin before clicking on the next video!):
Terry Jacks was no stranger to the Top 40. He and his wife Susan performed under the name The Poppy Family (how cute!), and reached #2 in 1970 with the single “Which Way You Goin’, Billy?”:
ARRGH! All this sweetness has given me a sugar rush! Think I’ll go run around the block six or seven times….
To be honest, this music video freaks me out a little bit. I think that’s understandable, though. When you see a big disembodied head chasing someone through a maze, it just makes sense that you’re going to get a little bit freaked!
That’s actress Calina Chen being chased through the maze. She also appeared in the video for Matt Darey’s Follow You, which was directed by the same director who did Blue Fear, Ciro Ayala.
If this song and video doesn’t make you feel good, there’s no hope for you.
(Unless, of course, a spaceman really does arrive on the planet and offers up a chance of redemption. I mean, who knows what miracles they may be capable of performing?)
I already shared another video for this song back in May of this year. In fact, I shared it on May Day, because I felt like poking some fun at socialism. That video featured the Flying Lizards performing on a Danish show. At the time, I didn’t realize that there was an actual “official” video for their cover of Money.
But, last night, I came across that official video so here it is!
I have no idea who directed this or any of that good stuff. I just like the song.
Okay, I’m just going to be honest. I love this video. I know that the video’s main theme is one of regret and the soul-destroying pain of being lonely but seriously, this video amuses the Hell out of me. From the vomit to the ball gag to the hipster at the end, this is another wonderfully self-aware video from the great Dillon Francis!
I like this video because the story it tells can be viewed either negatively or positively.
Now, if you take a literal interpretation, it would appear that the video details not only a possible demonic possession but also an intergalactic invasion of some sort. I mean, when graffiti comes to life, it’s probably reasonable to be a little bit concerned. I guess it depends on how good the artists are in your area.
However, I tend to view the video much more positively, as a celebration of the vibrancy of music, art, and freedom! Myself, whenever I watch this video, I want to go out and dance in the middle of the night. Actually, I do that most nights anyway but still, this video always puts me in a good mood.
(Or an even better mood, as the case may be.)
How you view it will probably depend on how pessimistic or optimistic you are right now.
18 and Life was based on a true story, about an 18 year-old boy who accidentally shot his best friend with a gun that he thought he was unloaded and who was given a life sentence as a result. Did the video do justice to the real-life tragedy? Let’s break it down.
0:01 — The video starts in prison, with the usual tracking shot of men smoking behind bars. Ricky is already serving his sentence, thinking about how his life got so messed up.
0:27 — At the time this song was recorded, Sebastian Bach was Skid Row’s lead singer. In 1996, Bach was fired from Skid Row when he suggested they accept the opening spot on KISS’s latest tour.
0:45 — Ricky ends up on the patio, where his best friend is waiting for him. Fortunately, Ricky has not been injured by all of that broken glass so, after saluting his father, he and his friend go off to have some fun, 80s style.
1:16 — Secret handshakes, 80s style!.
1:27 — Hanging out, 80s style!
1:31 — Setting shit on fire, 80s style!
1:39 — Breaking and entering, 80s style!
1:46 — Shooting liquor bottles in an alley, 80s style!
1:51 — Not following common sense gun safety rules, 80s style!
2:00 — Wasting your life away in prison, 80s style!
2:09 — Vandalism, 80s style!
2:18 — Ricky is Tipper Gore’s worst nightmare.
2:23 — They’re back to playing with the gun. Will these youngsters never learn?
2:34 — Is his friend begging or daring Ricky to shoot him? This part of the video is open to interpretation. In real life, the shooting happened because the gun was believed to be empty but, in this video, they’ve both been firing gun so they both know it’s loaded.
2:35 — Ricky has obviously read Watchmen, but he probably still doesn’t understand why Richard Nixon was still the president.
2:53 — Ricky shoots his only friend. But why? Ricky does not look shocked and we saw him firing the gun earlier so there is no reason to believe that Ricky, unlike the real person who inspired this song, didn’t know it was loaded. Was Ricky crazy? Was Ricky angry? Or was Ricky just stupid?
3:13 — Ricky throws his gun into the fire, which has been raging for at least two days now.
3:26 — In 2017, Sebastian Bach announced that he was having a “singing-related” hernia operation because, in his own words, he literally “sang my guts out.”
3:37 — In prison, Ricky ponders how different his life would have been if he wasn’t an idiot.
3:49 — Did anyone ever put out that fire? It looked serious.
This video was directed by Wayne Isham, who has been everyone’s go-to video director for decades. The song was Skid Row’s biggest hit and it was also the most played video on MTV in 1989.
Through the Shattered Lens 