The latest season of Degrassi dropped on Netflix today. Val’s already watched it and I’ll probably watch it this weekend.
In honor of this occasion, today’s music video of the day comes from the Canadian band, Jakalope. Not only was Jakalope’s best-known song, Feel It, prominently featured in the classic Ghost in the Machine episode of Degrassi but Jakalope also performed Degrassi’s opening theme song from season 4 to season 7. Part of my ritual, before watching any season of Degrassi, is to spend an hour listening to Jakalope. It gets me just in the right mood. My Canadian friends understand.
Pretty Life comes from Jakalope’s debut album, It Dreams. (It Dreams was co-produced by Trent Reznor and his unmistakable influence in present in both the songs and the videos.) After watching Pretty Life, be sure to check out the videos for Feel It and Go Away.
As an extra bonus, here is Jakalope performing the Degrassi theme song during season 4:
And here is the instrumental version that was used during seasons 6 and 7. These opening credits are taken from season 7. (If the opening credits seem a bit crowded that’s because, during season 7, apparently every teenager in Canada had a role on Degrassi.)
What does this catchy song by a Swedish singer have to do with Spider-Man? Thanks to a bootleg called Spider-Man Motorcycle, the two are connected. If you turn him on, then he plays this song. I’ve included the Bootleg Zones review of it. It will take you right to the part where it is turned on.
I can’t find any other info on this, so just enjoy!
I wish there was more I could share with you about this music video. I needed something surreal, and I felt like doing the less common of the two David Sylvian videos that Anton Corbijn directed first.
Despite not finding anything out there on the video, there are still a few things I can point out. If you’re familiar with Corbijn videos, then you’ll recognize elements that he would reuse later on.
He seems to have a thing for birds.
Dr. Mabuse by Propaganda (1984)
Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana (1993)
You can also see the singer-laying-peacefully shot in this and Heart-Shaped Box.
Heart-Shaped Box by Nirvana (1993)
Corbijn is known for his use of black-and-white, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t tint on occasion.
Do I Have To Say The Words? by Bryan Adams (1992)
You can go on and on with his music videos. They all seem to connect together through the use of some shot, element, theme, technique, etc. That includes showing up in at least three of his own music videos.
A few weeks ago when I did the music video for Twilight Zone by Golden Earring, I mentioned this video and how insane it is. With that in mind, let’s enumerate over the things in this video.
A concentration camp.
Bloodfist.
Our main victim of torture.
Visible camera crew.
A whole bunch of people who have been hung.
A gun to the head.
A child who is most likely going to be killed.
Comedic interruption of someone waiting to die.
Angels.
Fire-breathing as a metaphor for death-from-above.
Soldiers playing American Gladiators.
Belinda Carlisle reference hanging above the group–Heaven Is A Place On Earth.
The Nazi dancers from Twilight Zone.
A black man being beaten by Illinois police officers.
Hitler snapping his fingers along to the music while Jesus receives his crown of thorns in the background.
The comic relief coming out of a jukebox.
Paying a visit to our guy waiting to die.
Making sure we didn’t miss the nuclear weapons reference earlier.
Hitler and Napoleon dancing to the song. It connects someone who annexed the Netherlands from his younger brother–who was the leader of the Kingdom of Holland–with someone who took the Netherlands by force. My memory of Dutch history is too weak to go into any connections between the two as it pertained to Jews in the Kingdom of Holland. I’m sure the whole thing with the invasion of the Netherlands by Hitler and the Maas river wasn’t lost on the director.
Lead-singer Barry Hay looking confused as to what he is supposed to be doing here.
May foreshadowing the appearance of the devil.
I have no idea why they are punching their fists threw glass.
Two guys I’m sure I should recognize, but I don’t want to guess.
Remember, it’s a musical! And there’s an American flag in the background.
The little girl survives, but will always carry the memory–another Golden Earring video that appears to be referencing both the film The Assault (1986) and the book De Aanslag by Harry Mulisch that the film is based on.
We see that there are many numbered rooms where people are being tortured.
The colors of the Flag of Overijssel, which represents the province of Holland. The center river shaped stripe stands for the river IJssel.
The river was a natural line of defense that had to be crossed by Allied troops to liberate the Netherlands at the end of WWII. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that a river that has to be controlled–like so much water in the Netherlands–in order for the country to exist is in this video.
The last temptation of Christ.
A reminder that things like the Bombing of Rotterdam, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki have happened.
Changing the channel from the news to a sitcom.
Hay, Castro, guy I should know, and Napoleon popping his head in to say hi.
Gunshot.
Did you know they did, or maybe still do sell Mussolini cologne? I had an Italian Studies teacher in college who brought it up, so I of course went to her office hours, and she showed me where online they sold it. The site got Neo-Nazi very fast, so we didn’t stay long.
Castro on the drums.
Hitler breakdancing.
Let them know it’s genocide out there.
I think May might be trying to remind us of the video for When The Lady Smiles.
Exit the jukebox and fade to black.
Dick Maas went on to do feature films such as the Flodder movies, Amsterdamned (1986), and the more recent, and apparently controversial film Saint (2010). It’s a killer Santa Claus movie–more specifically, a St. Nicholas killer movie. Bear in mind, this was several years before Kirk Cameron would also include a violent St. Nicholas in Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas (2014). It was still a touchy subject for people who hadn’t seen Christmas Evil (1980); Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984); and Santa’s Slay (2005). Or it was a publicity stunt as IMDb would suggest:
“Upon release the movie poster proved to be very controversial. Various organizations of concerned parents tried to boycott the poster, which features an image of a ‘zombie St. Nicolas’ as opposed to the friendly St. Nicolas the people in The Netherlands are used to. Dutch director Johan Nijenhuis became the spokesperson for the movement that tried to boycott the poster and he even went to court, claiming the poster would damage the festive season and cause trauma with young children.”
“In hindsight, the complaints by Johan Nijenhuis about the movie being inappropriate for young children seem to have been part of a publicity campaign.”
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:
Through the Shattered Lens 