When I was searching for the perfect music video for Independence Day, I did a google search for “Best Libertarian songs.” After all, as anyone who knows me can tell you, the only thing more firm than my love of cinema is my resentment of authority.
Anyway, as you can probably guess, my search led to me sitting through a lot of dreary progressive rock songs, the type that featured 20 minute drum solos and lyrics lifted from Ayn Rand. However, it also led me to a song called I Can’t Drive 55.
Though this song is just a little before my time, it still feels like it was specifically recorded just for me. I have always considered traffic laws, not just the laws themselves but the way they are enforced, to be the epitome of everything that can go wrong when people blindly respect authority.
Last year, I was mailed a ticket for running a red light. I’ll be the first to admit that I ran the red light but the time to ticket me was when I did it. Furthermore, if I’m going to be ticketed, I demand to be ticketed by a human being and not some machine that is impervious to being manipulated by tears. Sending me a ticket a month later and expecting me to pay it just because some camera recorded me bending the law is the first step to dictatorship. The second step is people passively paying the fine because “that’s the law.” Laws, after all, are man made and obeying them without question is giving mankind more respect than it’s earned through it actions.
As for the video, it also feels like it was specifically filmed for me. It’s actually a fun little video with a sense of humor and who hasn’t wanted to tell a traffic judge what he can do with his gavel?
Last week’s hospital procedure was to see if they could find anything that could be causing this 20+ year chronic cough. The doctor doesn’t like to discuss the results immediately afterwards since you’d probably be too groggy. I agree with that. However, he did give me an envelope with some results inside of it. I didn’t have any plans to look at it without the doctor to interpret it for me. I was feeling pretty down, so I opened it up. I don’t know exactly what they are going to do, if anything, but they did find several things. I’m very happy about that. It’s really weird to be happy about doctor’s finding something wrong. But if they hadn’t, then I would have been back to square one. This has cheered me up to at least put a short post together. Unfortunately, it’s an example of one of the serious downsides to doing these posts. There’s another version of Talking In Your Sleep by The Romantics–of course there is.
Back when I knew I was going to be starting a several week rollercoaster of antibiotic side-effects, I did a post on Goodbye To You by Scandal. That video looked very similar to this one. It was just more lively. I bring it up because while doing that post I was also looking at other videos by Scandal, such as the one for Love’s Got A Line On You. There’s the professional version with Patty Smyth decked out in her best 80’s prom dress. Then there’s the two versions that just have the band performing against a white background. The only reason they are notable is because you get to see Jon Bon Jovi playing with them. Beyond the, There’s another version?, I would say that this one is for completionists only, like those other Scandal videos. For those people, I felt I might as well do this while I remember it exists.
In general, I have been feeling particularly bad. Lisa may jump in from time to time. If I need to bow out completely, then I’ll say so. One upside to feeling bad is that I blaze through a lot of movies. With that in mind, it means I can tie this post of video for a Detroit, Michigan band to Canada’s 150th anniversary.
During the past week, I watched what may be the worst–non-Hallmark–Canadian film trying to masquerade as an America one that I’ve seen so far. That film being The Masked Saint (2016). It’s a pro-vigilante film about a wrestler turned pastor that moves to Michigan, dresses up like Santo, and violently defends his flock. I knew it was Canadian the second I saw a big American flag on the back wall of his church for no discernible reason. It was also the last film starring Canadian wrestler Roddy Piper. It’s kind of sad that he went out with this film, but considering the movies he made, I get the impression he had a good sense of humor.
Also, The Romantics’ album In Heat, which included this song, did well in Canada and the Netherlands. The first is obvious. The second ties to Canada because they have a special place in the Netherlands since they were some of the first soldiers to arrive to liberate the Dutch during WWII. They also took in the future queen of the Netherlands, Beatrix, during the war. She’ll come up again when I eventually do a certain Golden Earring video–but that’s for another day.
If y’all already didn’t already known in which direction my musical tastes tends to run, you probably could guess just by doing a search and seeing who, out of the 18 writers on the site, has spent the most time writing about The Chemical Brothers and the Electric Daisy Carnival. In other words, I’m not going to pretend that I know much about Megadeth.
But I do know that it’s World UFO Day and this video certainly seems to fit with the theme!
I’m sorry, but MTV and VH1 have told me all my life that Love Is A Battlefield by Pat Benatar is the first music video to have dialog in it. I have a few theories about this.
The first is that while I don’t think anyone would say that Loverboy songs aren’t fun and catchy, they and their videos are what they are. I could see MTV wanting something impressive like Love Is A Battlefield to hold such a coveted crown.
Another reason is that they might have just forgotten this had dialog in it. That is the most probable theory I have. That dialog really doesn’t need to be there. It would have been taken care of by having the band introduce a video with a VJ. Based on the comments section on this video, I have a feeling they edited that out so much that people didn’t know it existed till at least 2011 when this video was posted on YouTube. It wasn’t unusual for MTV to edit videos for time. That’s why there are two versions of We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister.
The last theory is that this was added in for the post. It isn’t impossible. A lot of bands have had their videos released on DVD. This could have been ripped from that DVD to post on YouTube. For example, the officially posted versions of a bunch of Golden Earring’s videos are from a compilation DVD called The Devil Made Us Do It. I don’t put much stock in this theory.
The dialog, while boring, leads into the song, which lends credence to my belief that this was meant to be the start of the video. If you look at some of the other videos that were shot at the same time–Turn Me Loose, Lucky Ones, Gangs In The Street–then you’ll notice that director Arnold Levine liked to stick something in there to spice it up, when in reality, they just filmed them performing on the same stage over and over again. Take a look at the videos. You’ll notice it’s the same stage without even having to read the quote below from lead singer Mike Reno taken from the book MTV Ruled The World:
We would play the song over and over again, and we’d bounce around like we normally did. Here’s what I thought was kind of interesting: The director would say, ‘OK, we’re going to shoot another song, now go get changed.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘You have to put on a whole new outfit, and we’re going to change the lighting a bit.’ But it was the same stage! So basically, we just had to get some other clothes, fix your hair, take a break, and then jump back on stage and do the same thing over and over again. I really felt like I was being abused a bit, but that’s the nature of the beast.
Also, consider it to be a music video or not, he directed You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth (Hot Summer Night) by Meat Loaf that has dialog at the beginning. That was done in 1978. He also did the 1982 black-and-white version of I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts that ends with people chattering at a bar. It seems like something that was already a part of his repertoire.
Singer Gary DeCarlo died this past week at age 75. Who the heck is Gary DeCarlo, you may well ask? The name may not be familiar, but the song he sang that had a two-week run at #1 in 1969 sure is:
The song was written by DeCarlo and his friends Paul Leka and Dale Frasheur in the early 60’s when they were in a Bridgeport, CT doo-wop group. Later that decade, when DeCarlo was looking for a B-side for a single he recorded, he dug up this old tune and it was put together in the studio. The band Steam in that video wasn’t really a band at all, just some dudes lip-synching DeCarlo’s hit!
“Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” was resurrected in 1977 when the Chicago White Sox organist at Comiskey Park began playing it whenever the Sox’s opposing pitcher got knocked out of the ballgame. Soon other sports…
I’m not sure how I ended up on the Australasian side of YouTube music videos. But I’m glad I did. I’m hooked on listening to Big On Love by Models.
Kylie Mole is a character created by comedian Mary-Anne Fahey. The character was so successful that she not only did a couple songs, but even wrote a book called My Diary By Kylie Mole. She is credited with popularizing the term “bogan.” According to Wikipedia, the character of Captain Boomerang “has been reinvented as a bogan instead of his typical garish personality.”
I guess that explains the AC/DC song when they introduce him in Suicide Squad and the poster in this video.
Suicide Squad (2016, dir. David Ayer)
You can also see the gun-toting panda in the background.
Suicide Squad (2016, dir. David Ayer)
What exactly is a bogan? I’m not going to try and classify it. There are sites that do it. There also appears to be a movement to reclaim the term. You can get an idea of what she is making fun of just by watching the video.
Yes, she did do some things with Kylie Minogue, such as the compilation below:
My introduction to Stone Temple Pilots was the album Tiny Music…Songs From the Vatican Gift Shop–not my recommended way to start listening to STP. I remember liking this song, but when I bought the album, it felt generic and instantly forgettable.
The video for Sour Girl on the other hand is still something I remember to this day. Apparently, despite the fact that they look like a creepy version of Teletubbies, they were inspired by a dream that Scott Weiland had. At least that’s according to the Wikipedia article that draws from the Songfacts page on the song and video. The song was written about his divorce from his first wife. I’m assuming this is the same wife who he wrote Interstate Love Song about since according to Scott Weiland’s memoir [Not Dead & Not for Sale: A Memoir]:
[About Sour Girl]: “Everyone is convinced that it’s about my romance with Mary [Forsberg, second wife],” Weiland writes in his autobiography Not Dead and Not For Sale. “But everyone is wrong. ‘Sour Girl’ was written after the collapse of my relationship with Jannina [Castaneda, first wife]. It’s about her. ‘She was a sour girl the day that she met me,’ I wrote. ‘She was a happy girl the day she left me… I was a superman, but looks are deceiving. The rollercoaster ride’s a lonely one. I pay a ransom note to stop it from steaming.’ The ransom note, of course, was the fortune our divorce was costing me. And the happy state, which I presumed to be Jannina’s mood, was because she had finally rid her life of a man who had never been faithful.”
[About Interstate Love Song]: “She’d ask how I was doing, and I’d lie, say I was doing fine.”
“I imagined what was going through her mind when I wrote, ‘Waiting on a Sunday afternoon for what I read between the lines, your lies, feelin’ like a hand in rusted shame, so do you laugh or does it cry? Reply?”
That explains the bleak video, why she is returned to a happy-looking state while in the dark world of the video, and why Weiland is left in the dark world with the creepy creatures.
Considering Weiland’s life and the meaning behind this song and video, it’s interesting that it was directed by David Slade. You might remember him as a producer and director of episodes of American Gods and Hannibal. He also directed The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010).
Yari Schutzer was the production manager. Schutzer seems to have worked on around 25 music videos as well as some movies.
Martin Coppen shot the video. He has worked on at least 25 videos. Since his credits date back as far as 1988, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are many more.
Bronni Bakke was the casting director, which I guess mean she picked out Sarah Michelle Gellar and the people in the suits. She worked on The Bogus Witch Project (2000) and a few other things. According to her IMDb profile, she “impersonates Britney Spears, Marilyn Monroe, Felicity Shagwell and Lara Croft.” From what I can find, it looks like she passed away in 2016 from breast cancer.
Back when I was in college, I came across this music video…somehow. It has Italo disco singer Moon Ray (Raggio Di Luna) dancing in an Atari game with the occasional shot of her in a ring of fire.
Seeing as this is Italo disco, there is a French description on the video. Running it through Google Translate gives me the following:
The moonbeam in question (MoonRay) invokes the Comanchero, a character with the sulphurous reputation of the mythology of the far west and films of westerns.
The rhythmic rhythm arrives abruptly with feminine voice with the well-felt climate.
A title of the Italian-dance wave in the mid-1980s that remains a summer 1985 hit.
I didn’t know there was a “moonbeam” in question, but I guess it’s Moon Ray herself. She is invoking the Comanchero by dancing with video game graphics that invoke an unfortunate Atari game into the mind of the viewer. The yellow she is wearing is important to bringing the Comanchero. The Comanchero has a reputation “of the mythology of the far west and films of westerns.”
“The rhythmic rhythm arrives abruptly with feminine voice with the well-felt climate.” That is a line that Google translated for me. That’s all I can say about it.
That last sentence simply isn’t true. This song doesn’t remain “a summer 1985 hit.” This song remains popular today, as the video below shows, people are still doing the Comanchero.
Why? I don’t know. Much like I don’t have any other information on this one.
I mainly did the video for The Romantics’ version of Talking In Your Sleep so that I could get to the Bucks Fizz version.
Bucks Fizz was put together by Nichola Martin and Andy Hill. They wanted a group that could be entered in Eurovision with their song Making Your Mind Up. The line-up ended up being Mike Nolan, Cheryl Baker, Jay Aston, and Bobby G. Martin decided to name the group after her favorite drink, Buck’s Fizz, the group won Eurovision in 1981, and it went from there.
In 1984 they retreated from the public-eye to focus on their fourth album. They emerged in August of that year with a cover version of Talking In Your Sleep. This video was released to promote the single, which did well. Trying to make sense of this video does not go well for the viewer.
Then space folds and separates to reveal two identical, but flipped buildings with a little person dressed as a baby jumping up and down in the middle of the screen.
I could stop right there. That’s already weirder than the The Romantics’ version.
Now we pan over one of those two buildings and begin to play the game of right-side up or upside-down bicycle. This time it’s upside-down.
There’s Bobby G drinking milk while half-naked at a window–as you do.
Up on the roof, we see that the baby is jumping.
We get to see the rest of the group at their windows. My favorite is Mike Nolan, who looks like he just spotted the jumping baby up in the sky.
Now Bobby is on the roof with the baby. You can see that this is the roof with the upside-down bicycle.
We get a brief glimpse of something white over where Bobby rolled the ball. Does that mean that this baby has a corporeal form as well?
The rest of the group go up to the roof. I’m guessing Cheryl was dreaming about being someplace where it made sense to be wearing heels.
Finally, the whole group is together to forget the kind of drink they are named after.
Now the baby is jumping in Bobby’s hand.
Cut from that to Jay Aston jumping up and down on the roof.
That must be the turning point because in the next shot, we can see that the bicycle is right-side up. Mike and Jay are also frozen in place. Note that Mike is now holding the ball. Are they on the other building we saw at the beginning?
We see that Cheryl is also frozen, but is reanimated by the baby pointing at her. The same is true for Mike and Jay.
In the following shots, the video seems to confirm that Bobby is indeed on a separate roof from the rest of the group as his bicycle is up-side down…
while theirs is right-side up.
The baby walks up one of the buildings.
Mike gets a great look on his face from his apartment. Is he watching the baby? Is he really there?
Cheryl appears to enter onto the Bobby G roof.
Mike appears to enter onto the bicycle-right-side-up roof.
Now the bike looks like it’s pointing in the opposite direction. Have they switched buildings? I can’t tell.
After Cheryl gives us a, help me I’m stuck in a confusing music video face,…
we see the roof upside-down to add more confusion.
Then the band is reunited on the upside-down-bicycle roof where they appear to both push and pull on the door.
Cut back to the baby jumping up and down before the buildings disappear and space returns to normal.
I’m sure other Bucks Fizz music videos make more sense than this. They would never do a music video where Cheryl runs through Christmas trees and Captain Kidd jumps into a pool of water.
Sadly, a few months after this video was released, the group ended up in an accident while in their tour bus. They were all injured pretty badly, including Mike Nolan ending up in a coma. He woke up, but the effects are still with him to this day. You can read more over on their Wikipedia page.
The group has had a rocky history since then, but Cheryl Baker, Mike Nolan, and Jay Aston still perform with somebody else to make a foursome that goes by the name The Fizz.
The video was directed by Dieter Trattmann. He appears to have directed around 80 music videos.
The Golden Path is one of my favorite songs of all time.
I’ve been listening to it a lot this weekend, while thinking about friends and loved ones who left this world far too early. On a normal day, the combination of Wayne Coyne’s sincere delivery of “How and why did I die?” and the song’s closing chorus of “Please forgive me, I never meant to hurt you!” makes me emotional. This weekend, it’s literally brought tears to my eyes.
(Interestingly enough, in an interview with the Guardian, Coyne said the following about recording the vocals for The Golden Path: “We recorded our part very quickly, almost flippantly, like we’d get a second chance. Then Tom and Ed left a message within 20 minutes of receiving the tape. You could hear them jumping up and down in the background, shouting ‘We’re ecstatic.'”)
As for the video, it’s actually pretty simple. An office drone fantasizes of a colorful world beyond his gray existence. The dreamer is played by Fran Kranz, who you might recognize as the stoner from The Cabin In The Woods. This video was the first to be directed by Chris Milk.
Through the Shattered Lens 