ain’t no rest for the wicked/money don’t grow on trees
Hi everyone! Lisa here, filling in for our resident music video expert, Valerie.
Now, there’s a variety different reasons why Val or I might pick a video for music video of the day. Sometimes, the choice is made as a way to honor an artist who has recently passed away. Sometimes, it’s done to commemorate a historical event. And sometimes, especially in my case, it’s just because the song’s chorus has gotten stuck in my head.
For instance, take today’s music video of the day. Sunday morning, I was driving to the store and I turned on the radio and, just by chance, this was the song that was playing. Ever since, I’ve had Ain’t No Rest For The Wicked, Money Don’t Grow On Trees stuck in my head.
And really, the song has a point. Money doesn’t grow on trees.
Anyway, this video was directed by D.A.R.Y.L., which is the creative moniker of directors James Hall and Edward Lovelace.
It’s about time I got to a music video that lead to the PMRC. It may not look like one that would, but it did.
At the beginning of the book, I Want My MTV, there’s a whole chapter about the issue. The authors start off by talking about Tipper and her daughter’s experience watching Hot For Teacher. According to the book, her daughter said the following:
Mom, why is the teacher taking off her clothes?
I would love to know if that was Kristin Gore considering she went on to have a career in comedy. She and Tipper even played on a Diva Zappa comedy single. Frank Zappa having testified at the congressional hearings over this stuff. Although it sounds like it was Sarah LaFon Gore Maiani judging by her age when she saw the two videos.
On another occasion, Gore and her six year old saw Tom Petty’s “Don’t Come Around Here No More” video–some other parent, having gone through the “Hot for Teacher” incident, might have learned a lesson and banished MTV from the home–and the girl was “disturbed,” Gore said, “because the last scene showed [an actress] turning into a cake and being sliced up.
I have feeling the authors of the book think this is ridiculous.
In September 1985, Senator John Danforth, also married to a PMRC member, convened a congressional hearing to discuss the excesses of rock music in the age of cable TV. And that is how the Commerce Committee of the 99th Congress of the United States, like millions of other Americans, watched “Hot for Teacher” and Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Going to Take It” when they should have been working.
You got me as to what bothered them with We’re Not Gonna Take It, considering it’s a song about civil rights and standing up for what you believe in. At least with Hot For Teacher you could make the reasonable argument that while harmless entertainment, it should be aired when a six-year-old isn’t likely to stumble across it. I’m really glad we live in a time when music videos aren’t taken down from YouTube for explicit content. Oh, right, that happens.
Anyhow, lets talk about the video, including some bits from Alice herself, Wish Foley (Louise Foley).
Here’s the genesis of the video according to Tom Petty:
Dave Stewart and I wrote and produced “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” We were talking about the video while we were in the studio, and he said, “I’ve always wanted to be the guy sitting on a mushroom with long nails and a hookah. You know, like in Alice in Wonderland.” And I said, “That’s it. We’ll do Alice.”
Thus, Dave Stewart got his wish:
Tom Petty: We didn’t use any special effects. Everything that’s big was big, and everything that’s small was small. It was a two-day shoot, and each day was fourteen hours, way into the night. Even for musicians, those were challenging hours. But we knew while we were doing it how shit-hot it was.
I don’t want to copy the entire section on this video, so here are the highlights:
Wish Foley: When I went to the audition, there were fifteen or twenty girls coming in at the same time. They were models, in skimpy leather outfits with short skirts. Boobs everywhere. It was kind of gross; they would stand in front of a mirror and do their “come hither” look. And here I am, dressed up like Alice in Wonderland.
She was 21. She had done a bunch of commercials along with some TV work. She says she had been the original Joanie (Happy Days), but that after they shot the pilot, she was told that she looked too much like Cindy Brady. It’s funny that after this video, Foley went on to work on Disney productions such as Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), and Hercules (1997). She was also in the movie, Harper Valley P.T.A. (1978) before going on to do this video.
Harper Valley P.T.A. (1978, dir. Richard C. Bennett & Ralph Senensky)
Jeff Stein: We built a giant teacup out of an aboveground pool.
Jeff Stein: The doughnut was a giant inner tube. I asked for the water in the teacup to be warm, and it wasn’t. She was in cold water on an air-conditioned stage for quite some time, and never said anything. When she came out, she had hypothermia.
Wish Foley: If you look closely, you can see me shivering. They bundled me up and shoved me into an emergency-wash shower.
Tom Petty: For the last shot, where we cut a piece of Wish’s body and eat, we had a giant cake made in the shape of her body, and Wish slipped her head from underneath. That must have been uncomfortable as hell. There was only one cake, so we had one take to get it right.
Wish Foley: When people said that the cutting of the cake promoted cruelty to women, I had to laugh that people took it so damn seriously.
Jeff Stein: I was cited by a parents-teachers organization for promoting cannibalism.
It amazes me that this video was swept up in that whole thing. It’s a trippy music video based on a book that has been adapted into everything from an X-rated musical to a Goodtimes animated cash-in movie to an official Disney version.
I think my favorite part about this whole PMRC thing comes from Dee Snider. He both testified, and played himself in the VH1 movie about it called Warning: Parental Advisory (2002). In an interview, he said that he didn’t have a problem with there being a label on albums to tell parents about the content. He thought that was reasonable. He wasn’t happy about the way they were going about it. A bunch of wives of congressmen getting their husbands to hold sessions on the evils of music, which forced people like Snider, Zappa, and John Denver to have to come and testify in front of Congress about music and censorship.
John Diaz was the producer.
Tony Mitchell, Kathy Dougherty, and Peter Cohen did “special effects” for the video, according to mvdbase–despite what Tom Petty said about them not using special effects. They were probably the people responsible for creating the things, and that one special effects shot at the end.
After doing a song by Vixen, I knew I would find a Madam X video somewhere.
Madam X are a metal band that was originally formed by the Petrucci sisters–Maxine and Roxy. Roxy Petrucci would go on to be in Vixen. The band went through several band changes including bringing in Sebastian Bach before he went on to be in Skid Row. From what I can tell, this song is their most successful one. What a video they made for it.
The video begins by introducing us to our main character played by a guy I have a strong feeling I’ve seen in something else. I wanna say he is the doorman in Harden My Heart by Quarterflash. He is startled by the school bell ringing.
Then the teacher comes in who I’m quite sure is played by guitarist Maxine Petrucci.
With a little jump cut, they are now in a prison, like a certain other video that takes place in a high school.
The bars come down on the window next to our hero.
The main reason I think Maxine plays the teacher is because I’m betting those are the two male members of the band–Bret Kaiser and Chris Doliber.
Our hero looks inside of his desk. Inside, he sees the band performing on a history book.
Of course simply looking inside of your desk and smiling means that the teacher and class are going to scream the chorus at you.
The teacher looks inside his desk. Seeing herself playing guitar lets him off the hook for now.
Meanwhile, one of the other band members is trying to make fire.
Teach now pulls out a leopard. With a little of laying on of the hands…
she gives birth to her sister Roxy.
Now the class sings the lyrics, “you’ll never pass by kissing ass,” at the teacher.
One look from teacher, and a grin from our hero, the class now has their heads replaced by things like a globe and a pyramid.
The teacher comes over to grab our hero’s ear, which stretches like Silly Putty.
After the band plays some more, the desks open up…
to reveal that their actual heads are trapped inside the desks.
The teacher is gone now. I’m just going to assume this very quick cut to Maxine holding what looks like his ear is supposed to mean she transported into his desk.
Our hero leaps up on her desk to reveal that he is a fan of the band.
The class are now zombies apparently. With them bearing down on him…
he leaps into his desk, but appears to hold on for a while for some reason.
After a little flip…
he lands and jumps into the arms of the lead-singer to end the video.
The video was directed by Marcelo Epstein. He only did a handful of videos such as Looks That Kill by Mötley Crüe.
The video was produced by Alexis Omeltchenko and Joanna Bongiovanni.
Yesterday I heard about the passing of Chester Bennington of Linkin Park. I have never been fan. I never really kept up on their career. However, I would feel remiss not doing a Linkin Park video today, so I picked the one video that did have a part in my life up to this point.
When this came out in 2001, I was 17 going on 18. Since I am part of whatever you want to call the transgenerational gap between Gen X and Millennials, my music as a kid was stuff like Nirvana or The Offspring. In other words, the Gen X bands of the early 90s. Despite the fact that I was in elementary and middle school during that time, watching Singles (1992) earlier this year when Chris Cornell also left us (his birthday was yesterday) was like looking through a time portal to an era I distinctly remember.
Britney Spears, Limp Bizkit, Backstreet Boys, and Blink-182 were the kind of musicians that popped up and flooded MTV and VH1 during the late 90s. Of course back then, you didn’t have a choice as to what videos you were going to see when you turned on the television. It’s not like it is today where if I want to watch Fat Lip by Sum 41, then I can, and then watch any other music videos I want for months or years before returning to watch that video. No such luck back then. If those weren’t the people you wanted to see, then too bad. As a result, I looked to the lists of greatest musicians that VH1 was putting out, and music documentaries in order to begin to fill in the music that came before my time–something I’m still doing to this day. That was me in high school. I was listening to The Velvet Underground while riding out musicians like the ones I already mentioned.
In 2001 I was in my last semester of high school. I’d been on permanent independent study for at least two-and-a-half years at that point. I watched a lot of TV, which didn’t help those musicians because it meant that I was probably seeing their video 2-3 times a day, everyday. That’s not a good thing. Aside from shows like TRL or the handful of videos VH1 played, there seemed to be no other outlet unless you were willing to be up early in the morning when MTV still played videos. Then I discovered that I had MTV2. They played all kinds of stuff. It was wonderful. This is where I remember Linkin Park first showing up on my radar. They showed up with this arguably embarrassing video. They looked and sounded like I would expect Backstreet Boys to be if they tried to combine rap with metal. They did nothing for me.
After I moved onto college and this video stopped being shown, the band basically disappeared from my life. It wasn’t until I transferred to Cal in 2007 that they showed up again. I don’t remember if my first roommate liked their music or not, but they came up. I was rooming with a freshman, so they were probably 10-11 when this came out. This was not the Linkin Park my roommate knew.
In the years that followed, I would hear them on the radio, and it wasn’t this Linkin Park. At the time of writing this, a new Linkin Park video was released for the song Talking To Myself. That is not the band in this video at all. They came a long way from my unfortunate introduction to them in presentation, style, and the place I was in at the time of its release. It’s doubtful that I’ll ever develop the kind of deep connection that many people have to the band. They slipped through the cracks in my life leaving only the memories of them that I have stated above.
Would I have written about this video at some point even if this tragedy hadn’t happened? Yes, I would have. While on the fringes, this video has stuck with me all these years. It would’ve essentially been the same thing I already wrote above about how much they changed while I wasn’t looking. It just wouldn’t have had to be in a somber tone, I would have had some fun with how ridiculous the video looks, made a comparison with It’s My Life by Bon Jovi, and it would have been wonderful to not have to include the following:
Rest in peace, Chester Bennington.
—————–
Now I need to talk a little bit about the crew because this may have one of the most unique directors I have come across while doing these posts. Gregory Dark got his start making adult films. I’ve only seen one of his movies–New Wave Hookers (1985). It is infamous for having Traci Lords in it. Well, had her in it, since the version that is available has her edited out, which is the version I saw–thankfully. The movie is bonkers, colorful, funny, has a humorous setup, and is so 80s it hurts–much like this video is so 2001 it hurts. That film seems to have kickstarted his career.
Looking at Dark’s filmography, it appears that about a decade later he moved into music videos. I can find credits for about 70 of them. I know that Michael Bay made an adult film while also doing music videos. But I’m pretty sure this is the first video I’ve spotlighted that was made by someone who had made a career out of making them.
The video was edited by prolific editor Jeff Selis. He’s done over 100 videos. Even with only 372 of these posts, this is already the third video he edited that I have put up here.
The concept for the video came from Linkin Park member Joe Hahn–according to IMVDb. According to Wikipedia, the video was originally supposed to be like the one released yesterday. He would go on to direct a bunch of their videos.
Toni Jo Peruzzi did the make-up for the video. For her, I can only find a handful of credits.
Of course there’s a video by a band named Britny Fox called Girlschool that came out in 1988. It wouldn’t be the weird world it is if that didn’t happen the same year as the band Girlschool did a cover of Fox On The Run.
I thought this was going to be a short post, but there’s a fair amount of info here.
First, yes, yes they were really there. According to an interview with bassist Billy Childs, they must have used some sort of cloth because he remembers being able to see the girls in the room while they were playing their part. He doesn’t know how it worked. Although at least as recently as 2015, he still wants to know exactly how they pulled that off. I’m assuming it operated the same way as a two-way mirror. That’s as far as I can go, short of digging into physics. It’s something that you see when you’re in a brightly-lit room, and don’t see if you are in a darkly-lit room.
While I can’t explain exactly how it works, I can show you some of the seams.
The clock is flat.
During the transition you can still see the bulletin board and clock.
The band is hiding behind Bach.
This part is kind of amazing to me. The band manager at the time had the foresight to film behind the scenes during the shooting. Here is the general behind-the-scenes stuff.
Now comes two people you might recognize in this video.
The first is the lady with the headphones. That is Kim Anderson who apparently did work on numerous videos, and is still remembered to this day along with other famous women from heavy metal videos. The band manager also edited together footage that included her.
You can see a super-short interview with her below.
The second is the teacher. That is Marianne Muellerleile. You may know her from one of her current 224 acting credits. The one that comes to mind is probably the wrong Sarah Connor from The Terminator (1984). However, she’s one of those actors who if a show had some success, then she was probably in at least one episode of it. My thanks go out to Billy Childs for bringing up where she was from in that aforementioned interview. It wasn’t coming to me.
The last is a quote from I Want My MTV. It’s from Kari Wuhrer talking about a time they shot the show Remote Control in Florida:
Kari Wuhrer: We shot in Florida during the third season, and Britny Fox were on the show as contestants. It was the height of hair metal. I hit on their singer. The next thing I knew, I was getting tattooed and I was on tour with them. He was so dumb, my father called him “the house plant.” As soon as the tour ended, I never heard from him again.
There you go. It’s one of the dumbest metal videos I’ve ever seen. At least Cherry Pie by Warrant was meant to be a parody. Yet, this does have some nice effects work. I just don’t know why it’s in this.
I can’t believe it took till the 369th post to do a Girlschool music video. I would have gone with I’m The Leader Of The Gang, but…Gary Glitter and all. Plus, while that one may have a scorpion in it, this one has a random dog in the background. That, and since I did The Ballroom Blitz by Sweet for other reasons, I figured I’d do their version of Fox On The Run, and then do the Girlschool cover.
Girlschool is a second wave British heavy metal band that is all-female. If you aren’t familiar with them, but do know who Motörhead is, then they are along similar lines, but women. They are friends. They collaborated. They had a similar opinion towards music that wasn’t heavy metal. They did covers of songs that weren’t heavy metal. Sadly, they now share something else in common–both of their lead singers are no longer with us. Kelly Johnson passed away from cancer in 2007. Lemmy passed away from cancer, congestive heart failure, and cardiac arrhythmia in 2015. Assuming it is still up, you can see them perform Please Don’t Touch below as Headgirl on Top Of The Pops.
If you don’t know Motörhead, then you should, and Girlschool is heavy metal, but with leanings towards punk rock and new wave. I even remember hearing an interview one time where Girlschool referred to themselves as a new wave band even though they play heavy metal.
In 1988, when this video came out, Kelly Johnson wasn’t with the group as she is in the performance above. Rhythm guitarist Kim McAuliffe sings lead vocals. She is an original member of the band.
The video…well this video is exactly what it looks like. It’s Girlschool doing a version of that kind of music video that made Bon Jovi’s career, which I’ve seen credited to the video for Home Sweet Home by Mötley Crüe. It’s that mixture of the band onstage, but also behind-the-scenes stuff that frequently includes a tour bus. The difference between this and those videos, is that this one screams that the 80s are about to die, whereas Home Sweet Home and Livin’ On A Prayer don’t.
Edge Of A Broken Heart by Vixen ages a bit better because of the glam, but it also came out in 1988. You can tell it was starting to wear thin even if the quality of the music wasn’t. I’ll do Edge Of A Broken Heart soon because while I don’t know if they had any formal connections with Poison, the first thing that came to mind when I watched that video was Poison. Then just in case you didn’t think that, they have someone with a Poison jacket on in the video.
I’ll get to other Girlschool videos, like the one where they transform from cats into humans. It’s weird to look at that video if your first introduction to them is this video. Or you discover them in the late 2000s while in college, and the greatest hits album you buy has a cover with them in leather and denim looking like they are ready to kill the photographer if they don’t leave soon. That would be how I found them.
I’ll get to their covers of Tush and 20th Century Boy as well. Of course they covered T-Rex and ZZ Top. In the meantime, enjoy their take on Sweet’s Fox On The Run even if the video is nothing particularly special.
The video was directed by Jean Pellerin who did about 20 videos, and has done some feature films.
Bart Devaney was the executive producer.
Jean Richardson was the producer.
Sarah Bayliss was the production manager.
The one who seems to have the most credits is the runner, Bill Payn, who did that on at least 32 videos. He also did some 1st and 2nd assistant directing work on a couple of music videos. He appears to still be doing work in those areas–music and otherwise.
Depending on where you go, this was either directed solely by Romero, or by both him and Richard Donner. Considering I can’t find any credits for the two of them working together elsewhere, and Donner appears to have only directed two unrelated music-videos, I am going with just Romero. There is also an explanation on Wikipedia about how this video came into existence that seals the deal for me:
The music video was directed by George A. Romero, famous for his Living Dead film series. Bassist Jerry Only has expressed admiration for Romero, calling Night of the Living Dead “still to this day one of the scariest movies ever made.” At the time Romero was in Toronto filming Bruiser and needed a band to perform during the film’s final murder scene. The Misfits agreed to perform in the film and to record two songs for the soundtrack in exchange for Romero directing their “Scream” video. According to Only, “It was an even trade, we shook hands and the deal was done. Business complications soon followed and I became very unhappy with my record label and my publishing company.” No soundtrack was issued for Bruiser. The Misfits’ two songs, “Fiend Without a Face” and “Bruiser”, along with the demo version of “Scream”, were released in 2001 on the compilation album Cuts from the Crypt.
The “Scream” music video consists of black-and-white footage of the band members as zombies terrorizing a hospital along with a number of Misfits fans, interspersed with color footage of the band performing live. A promotional VHS version of the video was included for free with the purchase of a set of Misfits action figures from 21st Century toys in 1999 and 2000. The video was also included in an enhanced CD-ROM portion of Cuts from the Crypt in 2001.
With Romero’s passing yesterday, I thought I’d see if he ever did a music video. He apparently did for the legendary punk rock band, Misfits. With a little search, I can see why they would ultimately end up doing a video with Romero. They did a song called Night Of The Living Dead in 1979 and are a horror based punk rock band. They would later do songs called Land Of The Dead and Twilight Of The Dead. Their history as a horror band is chronicled over on Wikipedia.
From what I can tell, this was rather late in the game for The Misfits in the sense that they were having band overhauls including not having original lead-singer Glenn Danzig. That’s as far as I’ll go talking about the band because my knowledge about them until I did some reading right now consistened of the following:
Oh, yeah. I know of the Misfits. Much like Meat Puppets, Mudhoney, Green River and others, their names always come up when they talk about bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden. The bands that didn’t get enough attention, but if you want to know where the grunge explosion came from, then these are groups you are supposed to look at.
So, with no joke intended, rest in peace Romero. Enjoy the music video.
I didn’t find out that Martin Landau also passed away yesterday till after having written this post. Amazingly, this connects to him as well. The Misfits used to have their own record label called Blank Records. Then Mercury Records wanted the trademark to it, and exchanged studio time with the band for it. The band renamed the label, Plan 9 Records, after Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959). Rest in peace, Martin Landau.
I’ve been dying to do this on an actual Sunday morning.
I have no special info on this video other than a couple things below and the usual YouTube comment section nonsense. It amounts to people complaining that the video is too hippie, and that the group made fun of hippies in songs like Sweet Jane–a song that starts out trippy. If anything, the only problem I see is that if the quote over on Wikipedia from Andy Warhol is correct, then the song is supposed to be about paranoia. I’m not sure the images get that across.
I don’t care. I love the song. It has always felt warm, comforting, and like an out-of-body experience. This video reflects that for me.
It was directed by James Eads, who also did the art.
The animation was done by Chris McDaniel.
The only other credit for either of them that I can find is that James Eads designed the poster for the film What Would Bear Do? (2013). You can visit his website here, which has some of his artwork.
You can read a little about how the two met to take Eads artwork and turn it into animation here.
There are numerous videos and other pages of their animated images.
Q: Didn’t you just feature a Sweet video yesterday? A: No, Lisa did yesterday’s post.
Q: You know what I mean! The day before last-the last time you posted. A: That’s true.
Q: Wait a second…did you and Lisa collude to do a Warren Fu video because you plan on doing… A: I’ll stop you right there. Of course I will get to that video. How could I avoid it?
Q: So why are you doing this video? Because it was in the trailer for Guardians Of The Galaxy, Vol. 2? You want to point out that Marvel can also play the pick-a-song-that-ties-in-with-our-rival’s-movie game? A: No, but since you mention it, that is a good tie-in.
Q: Then why are you doing this video? They all stand as stiff as Arthur Kane of New York Dolls. But at least that was something he was known for doing onstage. A: Yes. That’s one of the reasons I am doing it. I want people to appreciate the difference between this, and the video for The Ballroom Blitz–made two years prior.
Q: Then what’s the other reason? Stop jerking me around. A: The answer to that is easy.
Q: That’s not an answer. A: Yes, it is. I just found out they’re gonna stick some tubes down my throat at the beginning of August. I’m so sorry it’s too cryptic for you.
Q: At least include those “Song Of The Month” things Andy Scott did about their songs. You forgot that when you did The Ballroom Blitz. A: Good point. I did forget those. So, here they are for Fox On The Run and The Ballroom Blitz.
Q: Okay, I’m satisfied. Just say your stupid catchphrase, and end this conversation with yourself. A: Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 