Music Video of the Day: Harden My Heart by Quarterflash (1981, dir. ???)

Posted on August 22, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

Right now, if you go over to Songfacts, then you’ll get the following information about the video:

Released the same year MTV went on the air, the video contains many random images that have nothing to do with the song, including jugglers, a little person, a makeup table in the dessert, well-dressed guys on motorcycles, and a sax solo in the rain. It was fairly common in the early ’80s to throw lots of disjointed scenes into the videos in an attempt to create a memorable image.

That just sounds like somebody who solved Nik Kershaw’s riddle, and is angry that it doesn’t mean anything–according to Kershaw himself. I’m sure this video makes perfect sense.

It starts off with Rindy Ross running away from superimposed text.

She does eventually find a door that opens unto a room where there’s a little person and somebody juggling fire off to the side.

A bodyguard for her heart. And juggling the memories of old flames.

Gymnasts. They are timed to enter when she says “wildest dreams.”

Back in the trailer, she finds another door.

This one leads to a little boy sitting at a makeup table in a quarry.

And he’s in the trailer like some sorta doppelgänger?

Now there are three of them.

Maybe this is a little random.

Phew! This is something that makes sense. Rindy Ross playing the saxophone. She does that in real life.

Why it’s going on in a warehouse with water on the floor behind people on motorcycles is anyone’s guess.

I wonder if this inspired the ewok playing drums on a storm trooper helmet in Return Of The Jedi (1983).

She’s getting ready to “leave you here.”

She’s tormented by her past relationship.

The guitar is kicking in to tell us that she’s ready to harden her heart, which of course means bulldozer…

and someone with a flamethrower.

They’re here to destroy the place that keeps her trapped.

She did say she was going to swallow something. Fire is more impressive than tears, so a fire-eater it is.

She eventually makes it out of the place with multi-colored doors,…

it’s crushed,…

and set ablaze.

Okay, the video is a bit random. It probably helped give us Total Eclipse Of The Heart.

You do have to give them some credit. It isn’t completely random. You can say that the plot is lead-singer Rindy Ross trapped in her own mind where these dream-like images appear while she tries to find a way out of a vulnerable place in order to harden her heart from future heartache by having that place bulldozed and burned.

It’s also a good early example of the lead-singer-wandering-through-trippy-images videos of the early-MTV era. Hungry Like The Wolf by Duran Duran got upgraded to a travelogue. Even Going Back To Cali by LL Cool J is the same kind of thing. The big difference is that they tweaked it from Alice In Wonderland to Monica Vitti In Antonioni-land.

Needless to say, the song did well back then, and is the reason the group even exists, as it blew up from a regional hit in Oregon resulting in them getting a recording contract.

According to Songfacts, they originally released the song under the name, Seafood Mama, before changing their name to Quarterflash, where the song reached the Top 10 on the charts.

I like what the book, Rock Band Name Origins: The Stories of 240 Groups and Performers says about their name:

The name Quarterflash was suggested by the group’s producer, who had just returned from Australia and heard a popular Australian phrase that referred to newcomers to the country as “one-quarter flash and three-parts foolish.” With the advent of MTV, the saying held even more significance, since music videos required groups to not only sound good but look good as well. The formula of adding a quarter-flash (visual image) to three-quarters substance (song) worked for many groups, including Quarterflash, with Rindy Ross to catch the eye.

A fitting description for this particular Quarterflash video.

Enjoy!

30 Days Of Surrealism:

Music Video of the Day: Total Eclipse Of The Heart by Bonnie Tyler (1983, dir. Russell Mulcahy)

Posted on August 21, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

I wanted to hold off on this video till later, but the sun and the moon made other plans. So, let’s go through it.

Why is Bonnie here in the first place?

Is the bird practicing to be thrown later?

Swinging lamps…

on loan from Harden My Heart by Quarterflash.

Harden My Heart (1981)

It’s safe to look at Total Eclipse Of The Heart…

but don’t look at the total eclipse of the sun today with the naked eye, or you could end up like this guy.

Doors also on loan from Harden My Heart.

Harden My Heart (1981)

It’s a Russell Mulcahy video. You can usually be assured that his videos will contain metaphoric liquids and/or homoerotic imagery.

Is this the same bird from earlier?

The Reflex!

The Reflex by Duran Duran (1984)

It was nice of Godfrey Ho to let Mulcahy borrow some ninjas.

Gentlemen, welcome to The Skulls.

Another thing from Harden My Heart.

Harden My Heart (1981)

Since both videos were filmed in Holloway Sanitarium, I like to think that while Bonnie was upstairs, Ozzy Osbourne was being chased around the basement by a werewolf for Bark At The Moon.

The Judas Priest dancers reaching for Bonnie.

And Bonnie’s reaction…to the entire video.

There’s more Harden My Heart in here, but I choose to show this person upside-down instead.

Definitely Mulcahy.

Pressure.

The Thin Wall by Ultravox (1981)

I love that they almost missed Bonnie with the altar boy.

Exactly how many birds is he supposed to have? We could see some others earlier, and there are a few behind him. Does he just wait around to throw them at people who pass by?

Wild Boys cameo

The Wild Boys by Duran Duran (1984)

Then Bonnie is rescued by an angel from the clutches of Mulcahy.

Or is she?

In reality, it was a bit of both.

Here’s what Mulcahy had to say about this video in the book, I Want My MTV:

I collaborated on the storyboard for Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” with Jim Steinman, who wrote and produced the song. Jim is fabulously, fabulously crazy. We would banter ideas over a bottle of red wine. I’d say, “Let’s set it in a school and have ninjas in one scene,” and he’d say “Let’s have a choirboy with glowing eyeballs.” We shot it in an old abandoned insane asylum in London. We had one sequence, which was Steinman’s idea, where a shirtless young boy is holding a dove and he throws it at the camera in slow motion. Bonnie came around the corner and screamed, in her Welsh accent, “You’re nothing but a fucking pre-vert!” And she stormed off.

There was nothing perverse intended. The imagery was meant to be sort of pure. Maybe slightly erotic and gothic and creepy, but pure. Anyway, the video went to number one, and a year later Bonnie’s people rang up and asked if I would direct her new video. And I told them to fuck off, because I was insulted about being called a fucking pervert. And I was a little mad because pervert wasn’t pronounced correctly.

So the bird throwing kid was Steinman’s idea. Interesting. Perhaps her comment is why he isn’t shirtless in the video.

I wonder what video Bonnie’s people wanted him to come back to direct a year later. I ask because the video for Faster Than The Speed Of Night, which came out the same year, puts a kid throwing a dove to shame.

Faster Than The Speed Of Night (1983)

Needless to say, regardless of their falling out, this kind of video became Bonnie Tyler’s thing for awhile.

Holding Out For A Hero (1984)

If mvdbase is to believed, she even got Jim Steinman back to co-direct If You Were A Woman (And I Was A Man). It’s something you’d hardly notice if you watch the video.

If You Were A Woman (And I Was A Man) (1986)

I’m glad she followed up Total Eclipse Of The Heart with similar videos. The songs are great, and the videos make them unforgettable.

Enjoy the eclipse!

30 Days Of Surrealism:

Music Video of the Day: Naughty Girls Need Love Too by Samantha Fox & Full Force (1988, dir. Scott Kalvert)

Posted on August 20, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

No, I was not looking to specifically feature this video just to share the story below. This is my favorite Fox music video, and that is the only story about her in the entire book. It’s one of the odder behind-the-scenes stories I’ve heard about the production of a music video. I feel I’d be remiss not mentioning it. The first part gives some insight about how they were planning on selling her, while the second paragraph is the odd part, which you can skip if you wish.

According to The Baltimore Sun on December 30th, 1988, this song “was not so much a song as a T-shirt with a rhythm section.”

Ann Carli, then senior vice president of artist development at Jive Records, said the following about the video in the book, I Want My MTV:

We signed Samantha Fox–she was one of the biggest Page Three Girls in England. Page Three Girls pose topless in the Sun. She was fairly young, and extremely buxom. RCA wanted to do pinup calendars and take a real skanky approach. I wanted her to be more of a girl next door, so that was a big fight.

Samantha would drink early in the day. She wanted champagne right from the beginning of the day. I made sure her drinks got watered down. At one video shoot, she was constipated. She was bloated and wearing a midriff costume. I had to get a doctor. This is kind of a disgusting story. I don’t want to know what the doctor did, but the problem was solved.

This must be the video Carli was speaking about because I can’t find another video where she was wearing a midriff.

I’m glad it appears that Carli only partially won that fight. Debbie Gibson and Tiffany had already cornered the girl-next-door market. Fox is a nice middle-ground between the way Carli described they wanted to sell her, and the actual way I’ve seen her presented in music videos.

I can’t imagine anyone else at the time being able to pull off wearing a Debbie Gibson hat…

Out Of The Blue (1988)

with a Tiffany-style dress…

I Think We’re Alone Now (1987)

while holding a man’s head next to her breasts…

before pushing his head downward.

I think she did this kind of material well without looking “skanky.”

Cut to 30 years later, and now Gibson, Tiffany, and Fox have all been in SyFy movies. There’s something I’m sure none of them would have expected to happen in their future.

Fox played Ms. Moore in Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017).

Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017, dir. Anthony C. Ferrante)

Below, I’ve embedded an interesting little interview she gave last year on Loose Women concerning her sexuality. It puts this video in a different light.

The people accompanying Fox are the group, Full Force. They have worked with numerous artists, such as Bob Dylan. Some, or all, of their members wrote the song.

Scott Kalvert directed the video. He’s done close to 100 music videos. The few that I have seen have this kind of late-80s/early-90s-street look to them. Outside of music videos, he is probably best known for directing The Basketball Diaries (1995).

Donyale McRae did makeup for the video. He seems to have worked on around 35 music videos. He’s worked on a lot of things from Doctor Who to The Wolf Of Wall Street (2013)–which means that both him and Kalvert went on to work with DiCaprio.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Shadow Of A Doubt by Sonic Youth (1986, dir. Kevin Kerslake)

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

The title is from a Hitchcock movie. It looks like the consensus is that the song is based on Strangers On A Train (1951)–more Hitchcock. I haven’t watched either film recently.

While the music video is gorgeous, I can’t find anything on it other than a quote from Kevin Kerslake in the book, I Want My MTV:

It was a point of honor among bands on 120 Minutes to not show up in regular rotation on MTV. They wanted to be the bad kids on the block, who showed up for those two hours on Sunday night and ran riot. At that point, indie rock was thriving. You had great underground labels like SST and Rough Trade, and they’d give you complete freedom. I wanted to do something totally new. I’d shoot Super 8, and play with the color palette to make it more psychedelic. The punk rock ethos really drove the visual content, even if you weren’t working with punk bands. My first music video–“Shadow Of A Doubt,” for Sonic Youth–used horrible quality, super-grainy performance footage. It was fantastic.

The part with the performance footage doesn’t do a whole lot for me–except to provide a strong tie between song and video by putting the harder part of the song in there. I like what Kerslake did before and after that the most. It makes me think of a very colorful, indie, and simplified version of one of those collage-style videos that Jim Blashfield made for And She Was by Talking Heads or Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush. It gives the video an ethereal quality that I love.

It’s very appropriate that this was on 120 Minutes back in the 1980s. This is exactly the kind of thing I would have expected to see on late night cable back in the 1980s and 1990s.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: My Love, My Life by ABBA (1976, dir. Per Falkman)

Posted on August 18, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

It’s been so long since I did an ABBA music video that a lot of their videos are now listed on IMDb. I don’t remember them being there before. It doesn’t look complete, but somebody went through trying to hit everything they could. I bring this up because I didn’t know about this one till I looked at the list of their videos on IMDb. I would have missed it otherwise.

It’s a simple video that would have you believe that it was a solo effort by Agnetha. It’s not. This was on the album, Arrival.

It uses some video effects, but that’s about it. It keeps a tight focus on Agnetha. It’s a nice song, and the video tries to get out of the way, which I think is appropriate.

According to IMDb, the video was directed by Per Falkman. He apparently also directed the videos for Tiger and When I Kissed The Teacher. I didn’t know that before. I’ve updated the titles on those ones, but I can’t fix the links at this point. There are too many of them.

Enjoy!

ABBA retrospective:

Music Video of the Day: Sloop John B by The Beach Boys (1966, dir. Derek Taylor)

Posted on August 17, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

One year before we had Golden Earring playing on a boat and mud wrestling, we had The Beach Boys doing a little silent comedy–mostly fighting over a raft in a pool.

What else can I say without trying to talk about it in a larger context?

It’s the video they recreated for Love & Mercy (2014).

It’s in 480p. You can watch the video for Good Vibrations in 1080p because it was posted in 2016, but this one was put up in 2009. It didn’t receive that kind of treatment.

It’s that same kind of turn-the-band-into-silent-comedians type video, and was filmed at Brian’s house.

I didn’t mention it when I did Sound Of The Screaming Day by Golden Earring, so I will here. Since both are treated like short comedic films with the song playing, there isn’t any lip-syncing. We did get Barry Hay mimicking the flute during that part of the song. In this, there’s none of that. Just something interesting to keep in mind whenever you read about musicians getting harassed for not lip-syncing from the 1980s onward.

This video almost meets all the elements I listed when talking about Elected by Alice Cooper:

It has the band, it is live-action, it uses real sets rather than just a backdrop, it has a storyline, it has no lip-syncing, and it has no re-creation of a performance.

The only thing it is kind of missing is a storyline. But even that’s something you could argue is present in this video.

Surprisingly, IMDb has an entry for this that not only lists the director, but also who worked the camera.

The video was directed by their publicist, Derek Taylor. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did other videos as well. He apparently is also in the video.

Dennis Wilson is credited as having worked the camera.

I wish I had more information other than that there appears to be another promo film for this song. I probably won’t do it though since I have no idea of the provenance other than that it looks like it was made for Swedish television.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Sound Of The Screaming Day by Golden Earring (1967, dir. ???)

Posted on August 16, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

I was a fool to think Golden Earring showed up with Radar Love in the early 1970s.

They actually date back to the early 1960s. In fact, Barry Hay wasn’t even the original lead-singer. He came onboard in 1967. It’s weird to not hear Hay sing on a Golden Earring song even if that song is from a very different period. They weren’t even Golden Earring then. They were originally called The Golden Earrings. They had a pop-sound during this time.

The only thing weirder to me than not hearing Hay sing a Golden Earring song, is hearing him dial back the power of his voice to sing this kind of song. I’m well aware that This Is Spinal Tap (1984) already covered this kind thing, but it’s no less strange to me to come across this. It’s up there with listening to Bon Scott singing in the Australian pop-group The Valentines.

Then there’s the video for the song.

Hay looks more like he does from the 1980s onward,

When The Lady Smiles (1984)

in the 1960s,

than he did during the 1970s.

Radar Love (1974)

I guess that was just a phase.

The video is very 1960s–much like Radar Love is to the 1970s. It’s one of those videos that essentially turns a band into silent comedians, complete with mud wrestling.

That sequence goes on for quite awhile.

My personal favorite part of the video is when Hay pops out of the water playing an invisible flute.

I also like when one of the members of the band reaches out to turn the camera as a way to create a spin transition. It’s a nice little thing.

Along with Hay’s vocals sounding wrong, this video would not tell you that they would go on to do something like Clear Nite, Moonlight.

Speaking of that video, I made error when writing about it. I missed the obvious foreshadowing of the violent end in the form of the “So Little Time” license plate at the start of the video.

Clear Nite, Moonlight (1984)

To put that correction in a new post, is the main reason I did this post on another Golden Earring video. It’s also a fun video, regardless of my reason for doing it today.

The reason I put the date of release as 1967 is because according to Wikipedia, this was a single that was released in 1967 separate from any of their albums. That explains why Hay is here, but not on the album that they released in 1967, Winter-Harvest.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden (1994, dir. Howard Greenhalgh)

Posted on August 15, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

No, I won’t do three separate posts for the three different versions of this video. The differences are too small for that to make any sense. They’re all here–at least when this post goes up they should be. We’re gonna back into the original version.

First things first, the release date that I found is sometime in June of 1994. According to Wikipedia, a couple of weeks later, the blackhole most of us probably remember was added in to give us the version posted above.

The second thing is that you’ll notice Cornell is wearing something around his neck.

Apparently, that was a fork necklace given to him by Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon. Hoon would die one year after the release of this video. There’s a reason I bring that up. It leads to the previous version of the video.

In this video you’ll see a side-by-side comparison of the two versions. The black hole isn’t shown as much. Whether that’s good thing or not, is up to you. I prefer it being there. The other effects are different or missing.

The thing I found interesting is the following:

While the bees were in the original, the more explicit reference to the bee-girl from the music video for No Rain by Blind Melon wasn’t. I have no idea if that is Heather DeLoach or not. I didn’t come across anything that said one way or another.

Regardless of whether it is or isn’t, I wonder why she wasn’t there to begin with. Maybe they weren’t sure they had the rights. Seeing as Shannon Hoon didn’t pass away till over a year later, my guess is that someone looked at that shot and thought the reference would go over people’s heads, so if they were going to give the video a facelift anyways, then put her in there.

Thank you, YouTube comments. I wouldn’t even know the following version exists without them. I hate those sections, and usually wish they would go away, but this time they lead me to this alternate, or uncensored version.

The only thing I noticed here is that the guy on the TV in this one has the phone number 1-800-TRUTH displayed below him.

I didn’t see any other differences when I watched it. There could be since someone mentioned that the black hole is missing. I didn’t notice it missing any less than the second version. I could be wrong though.

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise to me that the band says this video “was entirely the director’s idea.” They also went on to say that “our take on it was that at that point in making videos, we just wanted to pretend to play and not look that excited about it.”

They succeeded at that. I always wondered why they looked so disinterested. However, Thayil said that it was one of the few Soundgarden videos they liked. Them looking the way they did makes them look like they are the heart of darkness at the center of this black hole pulling this Blue Velvet-like idyllic landscape and characters towards their destruction.

If you want an analysis of the song, then look at the video below. It’s kind of funny watching that knowing Cornell said he wrote it in about 15 minutes.

When I was kid in middle school to high school, I knew about this video, but it was past its rotation time. It would pop up every once in awhile. Today I’ve seen it plenty of times. Then, it was like a 5-6 minute event to get to see it again.

There are numerous credits attached to this video.

The first is director Howard Greenhalgh. He’s done over a 100 music videos.

Megan Hollister produced it, Ivan Bartos shot it, Stan Kellam edited it, and both Ian Bird and John Wake did the specials effects.

They all seem to have stuck to music videos.

Enjoy!

30 Days Of Surrealism:

Music Video of the Day: Slow Acid by Calvin Harris (2014, dir by Emil Nava)

Posted on August 14, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

Music Video of the Day: Tonight I’m Yours (Don’t Hurt Me) by Rod Stewart (1981, dir. Russell Mulcahy)

Posted on August 13, 2017 by Valerie Troutman

If you want something dark and serious, then I point you to yesterday’s A Movie A Day post that Jedadiah wrote. I’m not doing that today.

Yesterday, I did the apparently famous, but still obscure version of The Tide Is High by Blondie, where Debbie Harry rolls around on a circular pink bed. Since I brought that to people’s attention, then I might as well do the batshit Rod Stewart video that is Tonight I’m Yours (Don’t Hurt Me).

The video starts normally enough. It’s a song for a night on the town, so we’re getting some shots of the city.

Oh, that’s clever. It’s a much better way to introduce the song and artist than superimposed text.

I guess we’re going down to this pool. That looks like Stewart down there.

Ah, it is Stewart.

Some women in the pool. Makes sense. The video needs some sex appeal for people who aren’t attracted to Stewart.

What’s going on here? Is she head-banging to Rod Stewart?

Why is she getting out of the pool in a scuba outfit?

Do I even want to know what is happening here?

I’m beginning to think that they hired a bunch of women, brought out racks and boxes of stock outfits, and told them to just pick whatever feels right–then ad-libbed a lot of the video. This lady seems to have really gotten into the dominating teacher role. Back into the pool for you!

I think this guy fell in the pool during filming.

Did a fight actually break out on set during filming? Did they think that would be funny? Was this planned?

These two picked out the slumber party outfits. I’m really glad they came with pillows. Otherwise you could try to explain this as two lesbians having a night out who happened to hear the party going on outside. With the pillows there, we are assured that this is yet another thing that makes no sense.

I see nothing odd about this though.

A little Old Hollywood musical bit.

The lady with the piano leg looks like the most planned out part of this video.

And this looks like the least planned part of the video to me. I’m pretty sure she had no direction, so she just started shaking a tree.

Is this some kind of an orgy?

This lady is the one who has me convinced the outfits were picked out at random. Why would there be a detective here? She shows up in several shots as if she’s spying on them.

I could probably list drugs as a co-director on this video, couldn’t I?

Speaking of drugs, here’s what Songfacts says:

The video did well on MTV, which was new at the time and had no choice but to play lots of Rod Stewart videos, since he made so many. It was directed by Russell Mulcahy and shot at the Sunset Marquis in Los Angeles, where scores of beautiful women are scene larking about in and around the pool and on the balconies as the band performs.

According to Mulcahy, Stewart had a little too much fun the night before and didn’t want to do the video. Mulcahy told him he was going to shoot the video with or without him, so he found the strength to do it.

That explains why Stewart looks worn out. It also explains a fair amount of the craziness. It’s not hard to imagine taking Stewart and the band out of the video, and still having something that works.

Paul Flattery produced the video, and while I’m sure he has some stories to tell, I want hear from Peter Lippman. He was the production manager.

There’s rarely anything useful in the comments section on a music video. The following is an exception: