Tag Archives: music video

Music Video of the Day: Hunger Strike by Temple Of The Dog (1992, dir. Paul Rachman)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

When I was a kid, we didn’t know Temple Of The Dog was even a thing at some point. I mean a super group with Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder, not to mention those who played the instruments. That would have probably been more than our little minds could have handled. You know what is still too much for my mind to take? Why the heck is Eddie Vedder standing in bushes, and why make that your thumbnail for the music video? At one point in the music video, it’s like the cameraman is stumbling upon him in the bushes. He is also staring away from the camera. Vedder is an excellent front for Pearl Jam, but he was never a performer whose talents translated that well to the short film form of a music video. That said, according to IMDb, he is playing a role in the first episode of the new Twin Peaks. People change. Michael Stipe used to be deathly shy behind the microphone.

With director Paul Rachman previously having worked on Alice In Chains’ Man In The Box, he could say he worked with three of the big four grunge rock bands of the 1990s. He just did it in an economical form.

The band was conceived by Chris Cornell as a tribute to his late friend Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone. That’s probably why the one and only other song I have from their only album group is called Say Hello 2 Heaven. Apparently Mother Love Bone did at least one music video for Stardog Champion. Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be one for Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns.

Getting back to this music video, you basically have a sad tribute where the band is at a beach at sunset belting out the song. As the song goes on, the night gets darker. There’s a sadness that rightfully permeates it because of the origin of the band and the material of the song.

I don’t think there’s anything else to say except you get to watch some of the best musicians of the early-90s all playing together, which includes two of the greatest vocalists of the period.

Even if the music video is nothing to write home about, the song is well worth the listen.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Pepper by Butthole Surfers (1996, dir. Gavin Bowden)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

Just like with Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know, Pepper by Butthole Surfers was one of those songs that came at an odd time. That brief little window between the musical renaissance of the early-90s and the musical plague of the late-90s. In between we got interesting transitional groups like Butthole Surfers and PUSA.

The music video is simultaneously dark with it’s lyrics and crime scene presentation, but then we suddenly switch gears to something that looks like a variety show and/or old commercials. Even the cops from the dark part come over to act as backup dancers for the band. On the dark side, Erik Estrada shows up as a kidnapping victim who is being rescued from the lead singer of the band. For people who are older than me, the name means the show CHiPs, which I’m sure is why he is in this music video. However, to people of my generation, he will always be Marco Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar Diego Garcia Marquez from Sealab 2021.

I honestly don’t really get it all too much. To me it’s all about contrast in how songs tend to switch gears from the verses to the chorus and back. Much like the video switches from the police scenes during the verses, then goes to the colorful portions during the chorus and back again. Sometimes it intermixes them a bit, but by and large, they are divided. That’s about all I’ve got other than that I like this song, and the video reminds me of the one for Frontier Psychiatrist by The Avalanches.

However, Wikipedia adds a little more to the story. It tells me that the reason the police and Estrada are shown eating corn from a can is a reference to how music videos are made. Apparently music video directors are told to “have this shot and that shot – how they’re spoon-feeding images to the audience.” Sounds like he is describing making any film. Except maybe Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993), which is just a blue screen while audio plays over it. There had to be more to the quote. Some context that makes the statement make more sense like that he is talking about being given direction by producers and people from the band’s record company about things they have to include.

Lisa has since added even more to the story in the comments.

Enjoy!

Rosanna! Rosanna!

Posted on by gary loggins

gary loggins's avatarcracked rear viewer

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Rosanna Arquette turns 57 today! The beautiful granddaughter of comedian Cliff Arquette (aka Charlie Weaver of HOLLYWOOD SQUARES fame) began her career in the 70’s with TV mini-series like THE DARK SECRET OF HARVEST HOME and THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG, which brought her acclaim playing Nicole Baker in the adaptation of Norman Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel based on the Gary Gilmore case.

Soon Rosanna hit the big screen, costarring in John Sayles’ BABY IT’S YOU, then her signature role as the bored housewife who takes a walk on the wild side in DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, the first major film for pop princess Madonna. Rosanna did some  good movies (SILVERADO, 8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE), then her career took somewhat of a nose dive, and she wound up in Europe a few years. Quentin Tarantino cast her as the dope dealer’s wife in the seminal PULP FICTION, and since then Rosanna has continued…

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Music Video of the Day: Closer by Nine Inch Nails (1994, dir. Mark Romanek)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

We’ve reached the end of my little journey from synthpop to industrial rock, and I think I’ve saved the best for last.

I didn’t watch MTV much in the early to mid-1990s, but I did on occasion. This was one of those music videos that would instantly stop me in my tracks. If it was on, then I was in front of the TV. At the time, it was the music video with the spinning pig’s head that seemed forbidden somehow. I also remember it being one of the most weird and best put together music videos of the time. Oh yeah, and the song is awesome. This is coming from someone who was not a fan of Nine Inch Nails either. I appreciated this song, I liked The Perfect Drug, and certainly was aware of their existence, but that still didn’t do it for me.

Today I remember Trent Reznor spinning on his back in the air more than anything else about it. The rest is filled with disturbing imagery, or at least imagery that appears disturbing when it is shown the way it is. I mean a lot of it is just stuff you would expect in a museum exhibit. One screwed up museum exhibit with the Warren Commission judging you for being there, but still. I’m also pretty sure that’s a picture of Jack Nicholson on the wall next to the monkey reminding me that I eventually have to do Jesus Christ Pose by Soundgarden. That’s really all I have to say because while I may love the song and video, I still have no real idea what it means. I just know that I want to watch it over and over till I figure it out, or it remains a mystery. Shouldn’t be too hard though, but I kind of like it just being a visual feast without any particular purpose to me.

This is one of those music videos where we know more than just the director.

Krista Montagna produced it, and appears to have produced some music videos for Madonna. She was also a production assistant on Silent Night, Deadly 2 (1987). That means the woman who produced this music video was probably there to witness Eric Freeman deliver his insanely over-the-top performance. Perhaps she was even there for “Garbage Day!”

On photography we have Harris Savides. He worked on numerous music videos. Some notable examples are Everybody Hurts for R.E.M. and Criminal for Fiona Apple. Not bad. He’s also done some work on feature films like Zodiac (2007), American Gangster (2007), Milk (2008), and Frances Ha (2012) among others. Again, not bad.

Robert Duffy edited the music video. He basically worked on other music videos that Mark Romanek made. Although, he did edit R.E.M.’s Losing My Religion. He has worked in feature films too, having edited The Cell (2000) and Self/less (2015).

Tom Foden worked as the production designer. Tom Foden did a few music videos, and what do you know, he was the art director on Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees. I didn’t expect that tie-in with what I said about Ministry’s Over The Shoulder. Foden also worked on The Cell and Self/less among other feature films as a production designer.

I guess the one we have to thank for Reznor spinning on his back in the air is Ashley Beck who did the visual effects on this and two other Mark Romanek music videos. She’s done visual effects on Romanek’s One Hour Photo (2002) all the way up to Suicide Squad (2016).

I guess I could go to Wikipedia and find out the intention of the music video, but I’m not going to do that. I’d like it to remain a mystery for me to crack for the time being.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Jesus Built My Hotrod by Ministry (1991, dir. Paul Elledge)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

Now we have reached Ministry’s industrial metal years. This is probably my favorite Ministry songs of the ones I have heard. It’s also both better in music video form, and worse at the same time. It’s worse for a minor reason. The video has him say “Jesus was the devil.” That’s not what he says in the song. In the song it’s “Jerry Lee Lewis was the devil. Jesus was an architect, previous to his career as a prophet.” The one on the song is much better. However, the video does add something I absolutely love. At about three minutes and twenty seconds we get a guy who looks like the man with the horned-rimmed glasses saying “drag racing” several times in a row. This music video seems to throw every repetitious thing they can into the pot to create this hard rocking industrial metal song. This included dialog and imagery. The imagery being something they couldn’t do in a purely audio form.

This time Alain Jourgensen seems happy. In fact, I’d say it’s almost like he’s floating on a cloud as he seemed to be doing literally in the music video for Over The Shoulder. The music video also has that tying in of everything to the theme of the song visually thing going on. This is one of those songs that I would suggest watching in music video form, and not just off of the album.

I don’t really have anything else to say about the video or the song except that I think it’s one of the best music videos I have watched for this ongoing series of posts.

Director Paul Elledge would direct a couple more music videos, but that’s all. He did an excellent job here.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Over The Shoulder by Ministry (1985, dir. Peter Christopherson)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

I have tried to stay away from repeating the same artist before I even reach 50 of these posts, but I can’t. I did Rio by Duran Duran and People Are People by Depeche Mode, so it only feels right to not only do Ministry here, but to follow it up with one of their industrial metal songs tomorrow.

I don’t know if I would call this just dark synthpop, or whether I would go ahead and call it industrial rock. It’s not industrial metal. We’ll see that tomorrow, clear as day. It certainly sounds like something Nine Inch Nails would have done though. You can hear how they have expanded the ingredients thrown into the musical pot in order to start to create this new flavor of music that is still based heavily on repetitious sounds. Just like Depeche Mode’s People Are People, it uses mechanical sounds, but here it’s done to a greater degree. Almost in an orchestral way. I know it sounds weird, but I certainly think of The Perfect Drug by Nine Inch Nails to be less of a rock song, and more of a composition a la classical music.

You can tell that Alain Jourgensen was still not happy yet. I say that because he is still faking a British accent like he did on the band’s previous album. I’m guessing that the record company or other pressures on him said, “If you are going to do this style of music, then you must sound British like Simon Le Bon or Dave Gahan!” For the record, Alain Jourgensen was born in Cuba, and grew up in Chicago. Eddie Vedder is also from Illinois, but we all thought he was from Seattle when I was a kid.

Anyways, this video isn’t that much different from the one for Revenge, which was off of their previous album called With Sympathy. Over The Shoulder was off of their next album called Twitch. It too has a dark look about it. Two of the biggest differences to me are that it looks grimy rather than stagey, and it is comprised of the kind of imagery you would expect from industrial rock/metal. In fact, it ties all of its’ imagery together with the song while actually becoming part of the song the same way that we’ll see tomorrow. They are all disposable things.

I love how the ending of this video has Jourgensen twisting around mostly naked the way Marilyn Manson and Trent Reznor famously would later on. I also love how it seems that if Jourgensen floated around that grocery store any longer, then he probably would have bumped into Thom Yorke in Radiohead’s music video for Fake Plastic Trees.

Director Peter Christopherson would go on to direct a lot music videos, which included ones by Nine Inch Nails.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: People Are People by Depeche Mode (1984, dir. Clive Richardson)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

Synthpop, industrial metal, and industrial rock are all the same music to me. The songs are made up of repetitious elements which are sung over. What makes them sound so different is the same reason one type of food tastes so different than that same food that is made a little differently. Take this song for instance compared to Rio by Duran Duran. That song uses the synthesizer as its’ ingredient. It gives it a very smooth and stylish sound that slips down the throat like cough syrup. In this music video, within the first second we see that Depeche Mode used other things like industrial sounds such as a cannon shooting off, hitting metal, and of course the synthesizer still. The repetition is as present as it was in Rio, but since the sources of that repetition have changed, the song comes across as something different when all that’s changed are the ingredients that satisfies the needs of the recipe. The lyrics of the song also take it from something that is pure fun to something that has meaning, but without much punch. It still goes down easy, but it’s a serious pill you are easily swallowing this time.

The video is a rather simple combination of war imagery with the group. The video alternates between fractured and un-fractured images in color and solid black and white. I’m not sure why they didn’t go for the obvious here. I would have had an arc in the video that moved from fractured images of the band in color to them in solid black and white that is paired with the stock footage. It would have helped to drive home that as the song is sung, the message goes from confusion to the issue being very simple, solid, and black and white. Still, it has that kind of effect anyways. In fact, you could argue that by never having such an arc, it makes sure that there isn’t a resolution to the problem despite lyrics like “people are people so why should it be, you and I should get along so awfully.”

The song itself is one I pull out anytime something tragic has happened because of hate. It’s simple too: “I’m relying on your common decency. So far it hasn’t surfaced, but I’m sure it exists. It just takes awhile to travel from your head to your fist.” Sad but true.

Music Video of the Day: Rio by Duran Duran (1982, dir. Russell Mulcahy)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

Would you believe that until a week or so ago I didn’t know we had an Olympics coming up? I only realized it because the Diet Coke cans I pulled out of the fridge had changed and had the rings on them. This is seriously my life. So is trying to figure out how to talk about a Russell Mulcahy masterpiece that everyone has seen.

I’m going to go ahead and call it now. Russell Mulcahy is the father of the music video. They existed before he started making them sure. There were films going back to at least the 1940s that were essentially music videos hung on a clothesline plot. I’m watching this music video over and over while I write this, and I have yet to see a single shot that isn’t perfectly done. The angles, the use of iris shots, split screens, the incredible use of color, and everything I’m seeing in every frame is perfect. The music video even goes into black and white widescreen as if you have suddenly stepped into The Longest Day (1962). I love the two guys playing the sax–Nick Rhodes and John Taylor–who are paired via a split-screen. There’s also the part where we think he is going to slip on a banana peel, but he misses it only to be hit by a giant bowling ball. I can only imagine being alive in 1982, turning on MTV, and seeing this. This was probably the first exposure most people had to a truly well-made short film that happened to be built around a song. It certainly would have been for a child who was lucky enough to have cable in 1982. My first exposure was Hungry Like The Wolf, but that’s another Duran Duran/Russell Mulcahy collaboration we’ll get to eventually.

This is one of those music videos where we know more than just the director. Jackie Adams produced this music video. She seems to have worked with Mulcahy on a total of five music videos, and made an appearance in Mama by Spice Girls. Those music videos range from something surreal like Billy Joel’s Pressure that starts off with a version of The Parallax View (1974) training montage to something simple like Only The Lonely by The Motels. By the way, what the heck is it with Billy Joel music videos being some of the most interesting and well-made ones that never get enough attention? Just saying that I’m looking at Pressure right now, and it is amazing.

But back in Rio, we have to mention the band itself because Duran Duran are more than just a band that stood around and played their song in this music video. This is an embodiment of their music and style. As I’m sure you all know by now, Duran Duran are a group of guys from the UK who came over to the US bringing style over substance synthpop with very well-crafted songs. We mentioned synthpop when we spoke about Ministry. I contend that we had style over substance with Duran Duran. We then made it substantive with Depeche Mode, but it was still quite radio friendly, and hadn’t shed the legacy of groups like Duran Duran. Then we had Ministry forced to try and be like them, but then had them turn to something very much on the fringes before evolving synthpop into industrial metal. Ultimately, we had groups like Nine Inch Nails who came along and broadened it into an almost orchestral sound with industrial rock. At least that’s my excuse for the next four music videos I intend to feature after this one.

Sit back and enjoy this classic music video directed by one of the best in the business with all the style and 80s dripping off your screen while a wonderful Duran Duran song plays.

Music Video of the Day: Here I Go Again by Whitesnake (1987, dir. Marty Callner)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

Happy Birthday, Tawny Kitaen! You took what would have been a high-spirited, but quickly forgettable “put the band onstage and focus on the lead singer” video, and made it one of the most memorable music videos of the decade.

She didn’t have to do much either. The bits in the car are probably the least focused on, but I have always loved the part when she grabs lead singer David Coverdale and rips him over the front seat. I really love that because she doesn’t do it easily either. She grabs him and yanks him right over the seat. You can even see her reach to grab his leg to get him completely into the backseat just before it cuts away.

Lisa being our resident lover of dance, of course loves the hood dancing part. Who doesn’t? I remember last year when someone tweeted a screenshot of it and said something about her being their second biggest crush in the 1980s. I don’t recall if they even included her Twitter handle, but she responded asking basically: “My God! Who was #1?”

Thank you, Tawny Kitaen. Not only for the video, but insuring that no one would forget what is a really good song. A song that could have been forgotten if they hadn’t made this version, and only stuck with the 1982 music video. All it took was adding dancing a little on two car hoods, hanging out a car window, and ripping Coverdale over a carseat. We’ll talk about the 1982 version next month because Kitaen and Coverdale were kind enough to have birthdays in August and September respectively.

Music Video of the Day: Epic by Faith No More (1990, dir. Ralph Ziman)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

I will keep the history lesson to a minimum. From the late 80s to the very early 90s was a weird time. The 80s were already priming themselves to be destroyed, but for a brief period we got incredibly dated stuff like this music video. Lisa loves to call certain films time capsules of an era that is no longer with us. That is this video in a nutshell. The song certainly lives up to its’ title. It is one of those underdog music videos that would sometimes make it on top lists back in the day and sometimes not. The same thing happened with the music video for Godley & Creme’s Cry.

This is one of those music videos that stirred up controversy too. It’s the fish at the end that flaps around out of water. Nothing major like the letter writing campaign that pushed Metallica’s One into late night or the one that stopped The Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up from playing anytime.

I love this song and music video. For whatever reason, I lump it together with Silent Lucidity by Queensryche. Since the 2000s, I also lump it together with the music video for Get Free by The Vines.

The music video was directed by Ralph Ziman who seems to have stuck with relatively obscure songs. Some big names like Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne, but past their prime.