The Monkees (Davy Jones, Mickey Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Mike Nesmith) brought rock’n’roll to TV with their mega-successful 1966-68 musical sitcom. Inspired by The Beatles’ onscreen antics in A HARD DAY’S NIGHT and HELP!, producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider cast four fresh-faced youths (Jones was a Tony nominee for OLIVER!, Dolenz had starred in TV’s CIRCUS BOY, Tork and Nesmith were vets of the folk-rock scene), hired some of the era’s top songwriters (Gerry Goffin & Carole King, Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart, Neil Diamond, Harry Nilsson) and session musicians (Hal Blaine, James Burton, Glen Campbell , Carol Kaye), and Monkeemania became a full-fledged teenybop pop phenomenon.
Detractors (and there were many) in the music biz called them ‘The Pre-Fab Four’, looking down their noses at The Monkees while looking up as hits like “I’m a Believer”, “Daydream Believer”, and “Pleasant Valley Sunday” climbed to the top of the…
I originally planned to do Overcome by Live since it’s one of the last two 9/11 themed videos I consider important enough to spotlight, but it doesn’t feel appropriate at the moment. It feels right to skip a day. I’ll be back tomorrow.
Since I did the Ryan Adams video for New York, New York last year on this day, I have embedded another one of my favorites of his that, to my knowledge, never got a video.
Hi! Lisa here, with today’s music video of the day. The Rat is the latest video from Blanck Mass, the solo project of Fuck Buttons’s Benjamin John Power.
In this video, Benjamin John Power stares straight at the camera while riding through the It’s A Small World ride in Disneyland. He never blinks. He never betrays any emotion whatsoever. Around the 3:24 mark, there’s suddenly a brief shot of a bunch of maggots. All in all, it’s rather disconcerting but I really wouldn’t expect anything less from Blanck Mass.
I want to quote two possible interpretations that I’ve come across for this video. The first comes from Power himself. In a press release, Power stated:
“The video itself is a bit of fun and was filmed on a family vacation, but somehow I feel it represents discontent within a capitalist regime and a world full of sugar-coated shit.”
Meanwhile, on YouTube, Crimewaveddd offered up this reading of the video:
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.
Back when AM Radio ruled the airwaves, before the onset of polarization, you could hear everything from rock and pop, to soul and jazz, to country and folk all on your favorite local station. Frequently sandwiched in with the hits were novelty tunes, like “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” by Napoleon XIV, which reached #3 on the Billboard Top 100:
Napoleon XIV didn’t really exist. The record was the brainchild of one Jerry Samuels, a recording engineer who used a Variable-Frequency Oscillator to create the vocal effects and manipulated the tape speeds to get his desired results. Samuels didn’t exactly sing the ditty as much as use a poetic cadence, which makes him a pioneer of early rap music!
“They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” plummeted down the charts as quickly as it rose. A controversy had ensued regarding the song making fun of the mentally ill, and the…
I had a completely different music post scheduled for today, but with all the strife and hatred going on right here in our country, I thought I’d share Timmy Thomas’ #1 global smash “Why Can’t We Live Together”, an impassioned plea for peace and unity that’s (sadly) as relevant today as it was 45 years ago. No further words from me are necessary, just watch the video:
Hi, everyone! Lisa here with today’s music video of the day!
I’ve heard a lot of different opinions as to what exactly is being portrayed in the video for Calvin Harris’s Slow Acid. Some people think that the woman in the video has been passed out in an alley and this video is supposed to represent her dream (or nightmare, depending on how you feel about holding up convenience stores). Some people think that the blueish tint of the woman’s skin is meant to indicate that she’s on drugs or she’s had too much to drink. (Personally, I find the tint to be more silvery than blueish.) There’s a lot of debate as to whether she’s dead or just asleep at the end of the video. The first time I ever saw this video, I assumed she was supposed to be a robot.
Then again, “she was supposed to be a robot” is pretty much my automatic go-to interpretation for almost everything. You’d be surprised how often I turn out to be right.
Anyway, I really don’t care what the exact meaning is. I just like Calvin Harris and this song. You can dance to it. People sometimes forget how important that is.
Anyway, this was directed by Emil Nava, who has worked on a lot of videos since 2009.
There aren’t many entertainers who can boast of 9 #1 hits, 12 Gold Records, 4 Platinum, 1 Double Platinum, 10 Grammys, a hit television show, and a co-starring role in a John Wayne movie! In fact, there’s only one. Glen Campbell, who died yesterday at age 81 of complications from Alzheimer’s Disease, was more than just an average country music singer. During the tumultuous late 60’s/early 70’s, when protests and riots were common occurences, Campbell’s country/folk/pop songs were a common denominator, enjoyed by hippie freaks and establishment tools alike. Face it, Glen Campbell was The Man!
Born in humble, sleepy little Billstown, Arkansas, Glen took up playing guitar at an early age. His uncle was a musician, and teenage Glen began his show-biz career picking on his radio show. The young man soon formed his own band and toured the South and Southwest extensively. The bright lights/big city of Los Angeles beckoned, and Campbell…
Hi! Lisa here, filling in for Val, with today’s music video of the day!
Before anyone asks, my selection of this music video has absolutely nothing to do with the current situation between the U.S. and North Korea. To be honest, when I picked this video, I didn’t even know that was going on. The fact that I picked Atomic at a time when everyone is freaking out about nuclear war is just one of those coincidences that helps to keep life interesting!
No, the reason I picked this video was because I’m getting ready to finally watch T2 Trainspotting but, before I watch T2, I have to rewatch the original Trainspotting. Sleeper’s cover of Atomic is prominently featured in Trainspotting and I have to admit that I’ve always liked that chorus of “Your hair is beautiful.” I’ve always loved my hair.
(My boyfriend got excited when I told him I would be featuring this song because apparently, he used to listen to it while running down pedestrians in Grand Theft Auto. And, actually, I can imagine this would be a pretty good driving music.)
Anyway, I did some research to see if I could explain just what exactly this song is actually about. It turns out that the song is actually about nothing. Courtesy of Songfacts, here is Blondie’s lead singer, Debbie Harry, on how Atomic came to be:
“He (Blondie Keyboardist Jimmy Destri) was trying to do something like ‘Heart Of Glass,’ and then somehow or another we gave it the spaghetti western treatment. Before that it was just lying there like a lox. The lyrics, well, a lot of the time I would write while the band were just playing the song and trying to figure it out. I would just be scatting along with them and I would just start going, ‘Ooooooh, your hair is beautiful.'”
While the video takes place in a post-apocalyptic world (and features artist Jean-Michel Basquiat as the man who takes away the horse at the beginning), the song actually has nothing to do with nuclear war. It’s actually not about anything. It’s just a good song!
Garage rock bands sprouted up everywhere during the 60’s. Any teen who could master three chords on guitar or bang on a drum kit wanted to be a rock star, mainly because all the girls were ga-ga for teen idols. Cape Cod, MA was no different, and The Barbarians rose to #55 on the Billboard charts with their long haired anthem, “Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?”:
The difference between The Barbarians and all those other would-be Beatles was their drummer, Moulty, who had a hook in place of his left hand. Victor “Moulty” Moulton lost his hand in a homemade pipe bomb explosion at age 14, but that didn’t stop him from joining the rock revolution. He had his hook modified to fit a drum stick, then he and the band grew their hair out longer than the popular Beatle-bowl cut. Their unique looks helped land The Barbarians a gig in THE TAMI…
Through the Shattered Lens