Tonight, I’m starting my summer job of writing about Big Brother for the Big Brother Blog. In honor of that, today’s song of the day is the little-remembered theme song from the first season of Big Brother!
After listening to this, you’ll understand why they’ve gone with an instrumental theme song from season two on.
In retrospect, this music video is probably best known for drummer Chad Gracey wandering around in the background while the rest of the band performed the song. Beavis and Butthead speculated that Gracey forgot to bring his drums to the video shoot and that…
Well, why take it from me when you can hear it from the boys themselves?
To the band’s credit, they actually had a sense of humor about the whole thing and, in fact, later credited Beavis and Butthead for helping to make the song a hit. That’s quite a contrast to the reaction that some artists — *cough* Kip Winger *cough* — had to being featured on the show.
The song rocks, by the way!
Enjoy!
Back in the 1990s, I could recite the standard line-up: Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, The Offspring, Green Day, and others. Live would always be the band I would recall after that–despite them being one of my favorites. For me, it’s Ed Kowalczyk’s voice. I’m sure it’s changed by now, but I recall during one of the SNL anniversary shows that they were the only band that received standing ovations during the two times that they played the show. According to Wikipedia, they played I Alone the first time and Lakini’s Juice the second time. There’s just something so powerful and uplifting about his voice.
Also, back in the 1990s, I saw a couple of Live music videos, but the only one I could definitively recall is Lightning Crashes. I had faint memories of something involving a tiny tub. It took me a bit to find out that was the video for Lakini’s Juice. I knew the song. I just never saw the video. Or, if I did, I had no memory of it.
There are several parts of this music video that I like a lot. Peter Guinness–the actor playing the guy who enters the nightclub. The ending is memorable because of its syncing with the music and because that’s when it gets really weird.
Finally, I love this shot below.
That doesn’t look like something Kowalczyk was told to do. That looks like he was smiling at something off-camera or thought the shot was done.
I looked around and couldn’t find anything on this video other than where it was in the playlist for MTV in 1997 according to Billboard magazine. I also still haven’t come across any books that cover music videos after the first ten years of MTV. In fact, it looks like it hasn’t been till the current decade that people have started writing bios and general history of that period of music videos and MTV.
The video was directed by Paul Cunningham.
It was produced by Niki Amos.
It was edited by Scot Crane.
I can find only a handful of music video credits for any of them.
Enjoy!
30 Days Of Surrealism:
When I was a kid, this was one of those music videos that never seemed to get played that much, but when it did, I would stop to watch it. I guess there was just something moving about it that I couldn’t resist. I always had a fondness for the books on the floor part. Watching it today, it doesn’t do a whole lot for me except to send me on a bit of a nostalgia trip.
Whenever I listen to the song, it sounds like the story of a an old woman who dies in one room while a woman gives birth in another room. According to Ed Kowalczyk, the music video created a misinterpretation that the new mother died:
“While the clip is shot in a home environment, I envisioned it taking place in a hospital, where all these simultaneous deaths and births are going on, one family mourning the loss of a woman while a screaming baby emerges from a young mother in another room. Nobody’s dying in the act of childbirth, as some viewers think. What you’re seeing is actually a happy ending based on a kind of transference of life.”
I never really thought of it as having a happy or sad ending, but something sadly inspirational. A mystical experience if you will. I think that aspect is captured well in the music video. You could say that the books represent a lifetime of accumulated knowledge haunted by ghosts of people who have come and gone in the form of the band members who seem to either be ghosts or pass on just as the baby is removed and held high before being given to the young mother.
The music video was directed by Jake Scott who seems to have been drawn to this type of music video seeing as he also did Everybody Hurts by R.E.M., Wonder by Natalie Merchant, and When You’re Gone by The Cranberries. He seems to have directed 50 or so music videos.
Salvatore Totino shot the music video. He seems to have shot around 15 music videos usually directed by Jake Scott. He went on to shoot some well-known films such as The Da Vinci Code (2006), Frost/Nixon (2008), Everest (2015), and the upcoming Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017).
Patrick Sheffield edited the music video. He seems to have only worked on a handful of music videos.
Ellen Jackson produced this music video, and that’s all I could find. I highly doubt that is all she has done though. She probably worked for their record company. That’s my best guess.
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 