Since it’s the 50th anniversary of Woodstock right now, it seems appropriate to share this music video.
This is a cover of a song that Joni Mitchell wrote about the festival. It’s a song that’s been covered by many different groups and, as is typical of the boomer folk music of the late 60s and early 70s, it’s a bit too self-serious for my taste. That said, it’s definitely better than that Big Yellow Taxi song and Miya Folick brings a dream-like edge to her version of the song. When you hear Folick’s version, it sounds like it’s possible that she’s being sarcastic when she sings about meeting a “child of God,” and that alone makes it better than most other versions of this song.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the first day of the famous (or infamous, depending on how you feel about hippies, nudity, mud, and Crosby Stills Nash) 1969 musical festival, Woodstock. Today’s music video of the day is taken from Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary about that event.
Arlo Guthrie was the son of folk singer, Woody Guthrie. He’s best known for the Thanksgiving anthem, Alice’s Restaurant. I enjoy his performance here because Arlo is both playing up to the crowd while, at the same time, remaining rather detached from them as well. He understands the audience and allows them to think that he’s one of them while remaining a bit above it all. (And if you have any doubt, just look at him flying over Woodstock in a helicopter.) It’s the same feeling that one gets from watching Arlo in the film version of Alice’s Restaurant and it makes him a more intriguing figure than the artists who unambiguously embraced the counter culture.
Wadleigh, of course, uses Guthrie’s song as a way to acknowledge that, believe it or not, a lot of weed was smoked at Woodstock.
Finally, it’s a pretty good song. Rhyming “Los Angeles” with “a couple of keys” guarantees that.
“I was looking to make a fusion of various styles which somehow would summarise the last 25 years of pop music. It was a deliberate point I was trying to make. Whereas rock and roll had created a generation gap, disco was bringing people together on an enormous scale. That’s why I really wanted to make a simple, bland statement, which was, ‘All we’re talking about basically (is) pop music.”
— Robin Scott, on Pop Muzik
Before adapting the persona of M., Robin Scott attended Croydon College with Malcolm McLaren (who would later manage the Sex Pistols) and released a folk album called Woman From The Warm Grass. Scott eventually walked away from his folk roots, turning instead to electronic music. Pop Muzik, which was written from the perspective of a DJ, was arguably the first new wave hit and this music video was extremely popular during the early years of MTV.
The video was the first to be directed by Brian Grant, who was a BBC producer at the time. Working with a £2000 budget, Grant created a video that was revolutionary for the time. (In the late 70s, music videos were mostly just straight performance clips.) The success of Pop Muzik led to Grant becoming one of the busiest music video directors around. Grant went on to direct videos for The Human League, The Fixx, Squeeze, Duran Duran, and many others. If you were a New Wave group, Brian Grant probably directed at least one video for you.
I searched but I could not find the names of the two models who appeared in this video. Does anyone reading this know?
So, is this video a celebration of hanging out with friends or is it the final vision of a dying person whose life is flashing before their eyes. I tend to assume it’s the latter but then again, you know that I always tend to lean towards the morbid when it comes to interpreting things.
“They didn’t have enough confidence in the material that they had to try and hook kids in with some disco thing.”
— Gene Siskel on Dragnet (1987)
In 1987, Dragnet was released into theaters. Based on the classic television series, Dragnet was a comedy that featured Dan Aykroyd as straight-laced Sgt. Joe Friday and Tom Hanks as his new partner, Det. Pep Streebeck. Perhaps realizing that they had spent $20,000,000 making a movie about a show that most teenagers had never heard of, Universal Pictures decided to promote the film by having Aykroyd and Hanks rap about fighting crime.
The end result was City of Crime and this music video. Collaborating with Aykroyd and Hanks on this song are former Deep Purple and Black Sabbath vocalist Glenn Hughes and famed guitarist Pat Thrall. This video was directed by Marty Callner, who is best-known for doing videos for Aerosmith and Poison.
One of the most popular bands to ever come out of Australia, Midnight Oil is known for their energetic protest songs. In Dreamworld, which was the last single to be released off of Diesel and Dust, Midnight Oil protested what they viewed as being the destruction of Queensland’s heritage under Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen.
Belke-Petersen, who served as premier from 1968 to 1987, remains a controversial figure in the history of Australia. He was viewed by many as being a corrupt authoritarian who held onto power by disenfranchising urban voters. At the same time, during the time that Belke-Petersen was premier, Queensland underwent significant economic development.
Unfortunately, much of that development involved demolishing many of Queensland’s best-known historical locales. Among those was the Cloudland Dance Hall, which had previously hosted Buddy Holly in 1985 and, years later, Midnight Oil themselves. The song, itself, was named after Queensland’s Dreamworld theme park, which can be spotted briefly in the song’s music video.
If you’ve seen previous Lara Snow videos like I Like Snowand Sometimes It’s Enough, than you might be surprised by the video for Swim Far. On the basis of those previous videos, it was easy to think of Lara Snow as being an artist with a rather cold, almost vampiric aesthetic. However, Swim Far presents us with a much more emotionally colorful and vibrant Lara Snow, one who is surrounded by flowers. That said, the shadows and the surreal imagery are still there and we’re all the better for it.
Through the Shattered Lens 