Thank you, Pet Sematary. People’s obsession with covering you have helped to knock off three days in October with a single song–so far.
I had no idea that Plain White T’s still existed. All I remember is Hey There Delilah. That song was played to death when I was in college. It appears they did some other stuff. I never would have thought that they would cover a Ramones song, but then again, I know people had a similar reaction when Green Day did Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life), so whatever. I still think Plain White T’s is an odd choice. Tom Higgenson’s vocals don’t fit. They do a fine job of making the song kid friendly, but it just sounds wrong to me.
The video is okay. I like that, while still being a band-performs-with-cutaways-to-movie-footage video, it does integrate them visually. It’s not jarring when they cut between the two. Unfortunately, they don’t integrate the band into the movie in some fashion. That would be a tall order since Frankenweenie (2012) is animated. The best they do is have the family from the movie watch a reenactment of the last shot from the original Ramones video.
Oh, well. They can’t all be Freddy Krueger having a nightmare about Dokken or Lemmy playing cards with Pinhead.
Did you think that Pet Sematary by Ramones didn’t have enough gothic/doom metal in it? As in any? If that’s you, then here’s a cover version by the lead singer of End Of Green, Michelle Darkness. Apparently people love covering this song. And here I thought that there was only the Plain White T’s version for Frankenweenie. At least this seems to be the only other legit video. The others appear to be pieced together with footage from the two movies.
The video reminds me of something I would have expected from Marilyn Manson with a spritz of Nine Inch Nails back in the day.
In an era of throbbing disco beats, ponderous prog rock, and angry loud punk, Tom Petty’s rootsy, guitar-jangling sound was like a breath of fresh air blowing through the late 70’s radio airwaves. Petty was a Southern boy, but didn’t fit the ‘Southern Rock’ mode of the Allman Brothers or Marshall Tucker. Instead, he and his band The Heartbreakers were influenced by the stylings of The Beatles and The Byrds, crafting tight-knit pop tunes for the ages.
The Florida-born Petty was an artsy type of kid, an outsider in a world of machismo. He met his idol Elvis Presley when The King was making the 1961 film FOLLOW THAT DREAM on location, and three years later, when The Beatles appeared on Ed Sullivan, Tom knew what he wanted to do with his life. By age 17, he’d dropped out of high school, and three years later started Mudcrutch, a…
You can hardly tell this was done by the same director who made the video for I Wanna Be Sedated by Ramones.
I Wanna Be Sedated by Ramones (1988)
This song was obviously made for the movie Pet Sematary (1989). It’s the following guy that we have to thank for this song existing:
King is apparently a big fan of the Ramones. According to Wikipedia, King invited them to his home where he proceeded to hand a copy of the book to Dee Dee who went into the basement, and came out an hour later with the lyrics for the song. Impressive. Sure the song would go on to win the Razzie Award for Worst Original Song, but I’m assuming he both read the book and wrote the lyrics in an hour. I find that to be impressive. Still, I can understand why it won that award. All you have to do is play I Wanna Be Sedated back-to-back with this song, and it’s night and day.
The video was shot at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in the New York village of the same name. The band plays on a hydraulic platform instead of sitting at a table while things go on around them.
Those things include Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie, and members of The Dead Boys. I couldn’t find any of them for sure. You’d think Debbie Harry would stand out, but the video quality is so bad. My best guess is that she is the one on the left.
In the end, they’re buried.
Despite the fact that Mary Lambert of music video fame directed the film, as well Pet Sematary 2: Judgement Day, the video was directed by Bill Fishman. He appears to have done around 50-60 music videos total, with the most recent one being in 2014 for The Decemberists. He directed a couple of videos for the Ramones.
To my knowledge, this is the last Toto Coelo video out there. I can’t imagine why this song didn’t do as well as I Eat Cannibals and Milk From The Coconut. Some of these lyrics are priceless:
‘Cause your castle is a nightmare
You’ve got batty friends who live there
Oh please, just squeeze
I go insane don’t tap my windowpane
……
Got to get my teeth in you
Necking is the thing to do
Even though they never know it
Positive or not
You and I coagulate
Vitalize a dying rate
Vladimir my dear
You know I’m after every drop
Get into a different vein
R.I.P is all the same
I was bitten now I’m trying
Transylvania
You’re the coffin I’m the key
We tune up in harmony
I’ll do anything for you
Except for mania
Then you have the video. I love this video. There’s something goofy in almost every shot.
They also make sure to pound it into your head that the song has something to do with sex. It’s a little difficult to miss that when you watch the video.
The dance isn’t the best part, but it’s pretty great. You can find numerous videos of people doing their own dance to the song:
They even performed this live for the German TV Show WWF Club:
Something tells me this song is what people think the Twilight films are until they’re unfortunate enough to sit through them.
Welcome to October on Through the Shattered Lens. I’ll try to do my best to find 31 October-related music videos.
It is about an actor and his friend. His friend is playing the lead in a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a part he’s been reading all his lfe, waiting for the chance to play it. He’s finally got the big break he’s always wanted, and he is the star. After many rehearsals he dies accidentally, and the friend is asked to take the role over, which, because his own career is at stake, he does. The dead man comes back to haunt him because he doesn’t want him to have the part, believing he’s taken away the only chance he ever wanted in life. And the actor is saying, “Leave me alone, because it wasn’t my fault – I have to take this part, but I’m wondering if it’s the right thing to do because the ghost is not going to leave me alone and is really freaking me out. Every time I look round a corner he’s there, he never disappears.”
The song was inspired by seeing James Cagney playing the part of Lon Chaney playing the hunchback – he was an actor in an actor in an actor, rather like Chinese boxes, and that’s what I was trying to create.
At least that’s what you’ll get when you go to a page that includes an article which appears to have been sitting out there since 1990. It is from “Kate’s KBC article Issue 3 (November 1979)”. Back in the day, there was a fan magazine called The Kate Bush Club. The page linked to above contains that excerpt from it where Kate talks about the song and video.
Surprisingly, despite the title, that same article begins with Kate saying the following:
The song is not about, as many think, Hammer Horror films.
She goes on to describe the making of the video:
Making the video of Hammer Horror was the first time I had worked with a dancer. I wanted to do something different with it, using a dancer, and I was sitting in a hotel room in Australia when it suddenly came to me–the whole routine happened before my eyes–and the next morning at 9 a.m. the dancer turned up to start work. We’d never met before, and in ten minutes we were having to throw each other around. He was so inspiring that we did the video that same afternoon.
She continues for a bit after that:
I did it again in New Zealand, when we arrived late, so I went straight into the routine with a dancer I’d never met before who had learnt it from the video. It was the strangest experience–I got to the chorus and suddenly this total stranger appeared behind me doing the routine perfectly. I just couldn’t stop laughing, and we had to do about three takes.
In the show I wanted to use the same routine, but I couldn’t possibly sing it and dance at the same time, and I thought it was important not to mime it, as I wanted it to be a dance number, totally dedicated to dance, so I could let rip more. It was important that everyone should know that it wasn’t a cheat, so I decided to dance to a backing track, and it was the only number in the show that wasn’t live.
I’ve already done two videos that director Keith MacMillan worked on, but I haven’t talked too much about him.
Keith MacMillan appears to be his real name. When he directed music videos he used the name Keef. It encompassed himself as the director and John Weaver as a producer. However, he was a photographer and designed album covers as well. There, he used the pseudonym of Marcus Keef. One particularly noteworthy cover is the one he did for Black Sabbath’s debut album:
He did the cover of Paranoid as well. He worked with numerous artists, such as David Bowie and Rod Stewart. There’s a short article that features some of his work here.
This song was on Kate Bush’s second album called Lionheart.
I’m not sure if he did the cover art, but it wouldn’t surprise me based on looking at his other album covers. In addition, according to mvdbase, he directed all of her early music videos as part of Keef.
I did the well-known version of Stayin’ Alive yesterday, so here’s the other version. Going off of Wikipedia again, there were three videos that were shot for Saturday Night Fever (1977). However, they were put aside in favor of reshooting them in California when Barry grew his beard back. That’s why you can see him without his beard in this one.
You can also see him without his beard for Night Fever, which, to the best of my knowledge, is also one of the three original videos.
This is the kind of video you think of when someone tells you there is a music video for Stayin’ Alive. It uses quite a few video effects that I can’t say I care for.
They fit the disco sound, but Bee Gees were always more than disco. Go listen to the song New York Mining Disaster 1941 or Lonely Days. I think the other video fits them better than this one.
If you want to see these kind of effects used well, then I recommend the video for Knock On Wood by Amii Stewart.
Regardless, I’m glad this video is out there. It shows more of the kind of style that was used in the 1970s. It helps one to understand where some directors were coming from when they entered the MTV-era. They did more than just concert videos.
It’s hard enough when there are multiple versions of a video. It’s tough dealing with videos–officially posted or not–disappearing. This is a new one on me. Count it off!
1. The official beegees YouTube account posting:
2. The Rhino YouTube account posting:
3. The BeeGeesVEVO YouTube account posting:
They’re all the exact same video–no difference in runtime or quality. And yes, there is a second version of Stayin’ Alive as you might have gathered from the title of the VEVO account posting.
As for the content of the music video…this is a really upbeat song and the title is Stayin’ Alive…have them wander around abandoned sets at MGM Studios??? It reminds me of the video Gowers did for The First Cut Is The Deepest by Rod Stewart except there it made sense for him to be isolated on a staircase. They were probably just opportunistic since they filmed this video on the sets that were next-door to where Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978) was being filmed. At least that’s what Wikipedia says.
I do like that whatever the reason, the video is showing us the opposite of what comes to mind when you go to put this video on. Also, it’s a testament to Gowers’ talent as a director. Back in the 1970s, he could do something for the Bee Gees, Journey, The Rolling Stones, and he’s the one who did Bohemian Rhapsody for Queen. Cut to the early-1980s and you can still his style at work. Sometimes it made for a funny, but memorable video, like Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor. Other times you got Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) by Journey. I’ll talk about that video at some point since that also brings in ABBA, a famous Italian director, and Bohemian Rhapsody–at the very least.
In 1981, it was Stig Anderson’s 50th birthday. They wrote a song and performed it in his honor since he was their longtime manager. You’ll notice that they are wearing the same outfits that they wore in the music video for Waterloo.
ABBA’s career took off after winning Eurovision in 1974 with the song Waterloo. Anderson co-wrote it.
The title of the song is a reference to Anderson’s hometown of Hova and “Vittne” translates to “witness”.
Courtesy of the book, ABBA: Bright Lights Dark Shadows by Carl Magnus Palm:
…on January 25, the celebratory mood continued when Stig turned 50 and threw a lavish party. To mark the occasion, Björn and Benny wrote the tune for a song called ‘Hovas vittne’ (‘Hovas Witness’, a pun on his place of birth) as a special gift for him.
The affectionately satirical lyrics, penned by the four ABBA members, Michael Tretow and Rune Söderqvist, referred to all sorts of quant characteristics exhibited by Stig. One example was his habit of switching on a vacuum cleaner when he decided it was time for his parties to end. “When he got tired of his guests–no matter who it was–he would bring out the vacuum cleaner and announce loudly: ‘The taxi cabs are here!’ Because he had called for cabs as well,” recalled Rune Söderqvist “of course, it was a bit embarrassing to stay then.”
…
Also, on the day before Stig’s birthday, a special video, featuring ABBA singing ‘Hovas Vittne’, was made. In the video they were wearing their 1974 ‘Waterloo’ costumes, as if to remind everyone of the moment in time when they and their manager had been at their most unified.
A few years down the road, things would get hostile between the group and Anderson. You can read about that here.
That’s exactly how I feel with this retrospective. On and on and on. At least I can take comfort in the fact that some great stuff is coming.
Agentha…
ends up doing a video that is like Fifty Shades Of Grey (2015).
Benny…
and Björn…
will bring us a rock opera with at least one well-known song.
Finally, we get to see Frida…
become a private detective of sorts to expose the guy that I’m just going to assume is the same one who ends up in the Agnetha video, seeing as both songs were written by the same person.
But before we get to Frida and her panda…
we still have some more ABBA videos made prior to the break up.
The song shares a similarity with Let There Be Rock by AC/DC. You might recall that Bon Scott screwed up and introduced “sound” before “light”. You can hear it that way in the video and on the album. It was intended to be the other way around, which you can hear in live performances. In the case of this video, they used an earlier version of the song that included an extra verse involving Humpty-Dumpty. That one didn’t get a stereo release until 2011.
The photographs used to make up this video were taken from a concert they did in Las Vegas in 1979.
Except for the information above, the Wikipedia article is pretty slim, and I was lucky it had any information in it to begin with or that an article even existed. I guess why they felt the need to reintroduce people to the members of the band will remain a mystery to me for the time being. It doesn’t even kick in with the line, “He said, “Who am I and who are you and who are we?”
For me, this is one of the weakest videos in the ABBA collection so far. I enjoy the song, but like the video, I’ll forget about it pretty quickly.
IMDb lists ABBA’s late-70s photographer Anders Hanser as the director. Mvdbase lists Lasse Hallström. I decided to go with Hanser. It seemed to make the most sense. You can read a bit about him and his relationship with the band here.
Through the Shattered Lens