Now for something completely different and not serious at all. Despite it being established several years prior by Rockwell that somebody is indeed watching you, Tiffany went ahead and covered Tommy James & The Shondells to create the definitive 80’s mall music video. Is there much to say about this? It’s so 80s it hurts. I think the only way this could be more 80s is if this were a post for The Go-Go’s Our Lips Are Sealed.
Yes, I do prefer this version to the original one. Mony Mony and Crimson and Clover are good both ways, but I really do like this one better. As for Tiffany and her sparing partner Debbie Gibson, I prefer Debbie Gibson. Something that is funny about this whole Tiffany and Debbie Gibson nonsense is that Mary Lambert who directed Mega Python vs. Gatoroid (2011) with both of them also directed a few music videos you might know such as Material Girl for Madonna. In other words, we’ll see her again. That, and “Baggage” is spelled “Bag”. You don’t need the rest of the letters any more than Tiffany needs a last name.
Now because there is no good reason that I have it, here is Tiffany’s 1990 appearance on a favorite childhood sitcom of mine called Out Of This World.
This is from the same episode where Maureen Flannigan performs Belinda Carlisle’s Leave a Light On, but that’s for a different post.
I wasn’t going to do a video for today since I wasn’t feeling well the night before, but I couldn’t hold off an extra day to follow up a Johnny Cash song with Straight Outta Compton.
There are numerous issues with the film Straight Outta Compton (2015). The biggest one being the whitewashing of their music. However, something that really pissed me off was any time someone gave a member of the group some sorta line about how no one is going to want to hear about real people’s lives, especially if it isn’t pretty. It was one thing when one of their friends who you could argue was insulated from other types of music said it. I mean the very beginning of the film does try to make you think that the music they normally heard at clubs was essentially Lionel Richie and/or The Commodores. That’s fine, but their manager should have known better and the film even gives us a wall of band names behind his desk to tell us he knows better. Every time I heard it, I was waiting for somebody to say: “Really? Sure sounds like what Johnny Cash was singing about back in the 1960s. All they’ve done is changed the window dressing and are singing about the reality around them, so sit down and shut up.” This song sure doesn’t sound a lot different from Folsom Prison Blues to me.
Remember that scene in Straight Outta Compton when they are trying to help Eazy-E find his voice? They teach him how to take words that may not exactly be his, but the power of of his voice lies in singing them as if they are. The second that clicks, it’s him. I hear that when I listen to a song like Folsom Prison Blues.
As for the music video itself, I think they did a good job of taking the Rapper’s Delight formula of a bunch of rappers shooting from one person to another for their bits, but replacing said bits with meaningful lyrics rather than ones that are just for fun. All of this while the police are omnipresent and on their tail to make sure that not only do the lyrics transport us to a place we may not be familiar with, but are visually transported there as well.
I don’t recommend seeing Ron Howard’s concert film Made in America (2013), but there is an interesting interview with Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC in it. He talks about how he was a bit of an anomaly as a kid because of where he grew up. He was just enough in one direction or another that he not only picked up the traditionally black stations, but the white ones too. As a result, he said he was exposed to a lot folk music, which resonated with him. Folk music, that just like country, is also tied heavily to rap when you just strip away the surface to reveal the core. Heck, there are even artists that explicitly fuse rap and country into a genre called Hick Hop.
The point is, I thought I couldn’t let this opportunity to try and pass on the power of musical knowledge.
This is another one where the song and video speak for themselves. A beautiful capstone on Johnny Cash’s career that breaks my heart when I hear it. It makes me want to cry when it is combined with the then relics of his life in the music video.
I remember driving to school many years ago and a DJ at our local San Francisco alternative rock station called Live 105 came on the air. He basically said this: “This is going to be kind of weird, but we don’t care. You have to hear what Johnny Cash did to this Nine Inch Nails song.” Then he played it. It was absolutely incredible to me. I don’t know what else to say.
One interesting thing of note outside of the song and the video itself is the director. You better believe we will see Mark Romanek again. He directed music videos like Lenny Kravitz’s Are You Gonna Go My Way and Criminal by Fiona Apple. Just to tie this all in together, he also directed both Closer and Perfect Drug for Nine Inch Nails. More recently, he directed Shake it Off for Taylor Swift. He has also done feature films such as One Hour Photo (2002) and Never Let Me Go (2010).
I figured it was appropriate to follow up Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire with this song.
Since I did Pearl Jam’s Do the Evolution yesterday, I thought I’d go back about 10 years to when Billy Joel did something similar. His music video didn’t focus on the worst of humanity, but more like a condensed version of The Wonder Years if it spanned many decades. As the decades fly by, it has Billy Joel in the very fake house looking like he couldn’t care less as he plays with drumsticks or a slinky while the people around him are oblivious to him being there. A very “been there, done that” attitude to what is new to the people in the house. Also, a person waiting for what they know is coming. The titular fire that will leave the house burnt.
I’m sure it was no mistake that they had Joel dressed as the man in black throughout this video. That of course being a reference to Johnny Cash’s song Man in Black. It’s probably why when we get the portions that are devoted to Billy alone at a table with a fire behind him, there is often a disturbing picture behind that fire that stands in contrast to the events inside the house.
I love how at the end, it flashes back over the decades, and the studio that was the house is left exposed just as Mom looks over at Billy for the first time now that she has caught up to his time. We are left with a final shot of the couple from the beginning leaving the house as they entered, just before Joel, sitting at the table, suddenly disappears. Yes, I’m sure the couple is a reference to Brenda and Eddie from Billy Joel’s song Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. In a way, you could call this music video a companion piece to that song.
I’m not sure if the music video is a positive or negative look towards the future. It comes across to me as reminder that a destructive force is always at our backs. It’s not necessarily destroying humanity as a whole, but it does destroy the world as we know it with each passing year as it does the house the people inside thought would never change when they were in the moment. It’s also a force that burns down the walls dividing fantasy from the reality of that room Joel sits inside at a table, or does it?
This is one of those music videos where we not only know the director, but some more people who worked on it. I was kind of hoping to avoid him for a little bit since it’s such a cliche to mention him this early. Unfortunately, he was one of the producers on this music video. That person being prolific music video, feature film, and TV director Russell Mulcahy. You could argue that he invented what we know as the fully-formed music video. He was making them back in the 1970s and even directed Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles that kicked off MTV back in 1981. I’m sure we’ll see him again.
You may or may not remember that for a while there Pearl Jam stopped making music videos. I don’t recall off the top of my head if they refused to be in them, or had a blanket ban on having them made using their music. I have to imagine that they totally stopped. I say that they probably stopped entirely because of a famous band from the 80s and several of their videos that they made, but refused to be in themselves. Luckily, Eddie Vedder came to his senses by at least 2002 and went back to appearing in music videos. I’m guessing he was as sick of all those Vedder sound-a-likes that were commonplace in the late 1990s and early 2000s as I was. Before Pearl Jam returned, we got this gloriously dark animated music video taking us through the worst of human history with some of that late-90s Internet paranoia. It was put together by famous animators Kevin Altieri and Todd McFarlane.
I have no idea what year this video was released. Obviously it was early on in the 1980s, but this was an era when MTV was still scared to have blacks on the network. I know the song was released in 1983.
I would imagine a lot of people were introduced to this song via the Rage Against the Machine cover version. I also imagine that a fair amount of people were made aware of Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force because of the inclusion of their song Looking for the Perfect Beat on the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City soundtrack. I was in both cases. I do like the Rage Against the Machine version. They stripped it down to the bare bones political portion of the song, which in doing so, made it their own. It’s something to keep in mind watching this video since you’ll see pre-Public Enemy all over it. Unfortunately, there is something else that you can’t possibly avoid having in your head while watching this music video. I mention that at the end.
Rap started at least in what we would call a fully-formed version in the 1970s with artists like DJ Hollywood, but it was never recorded until Rapper’s Delight came along. Then for a short period of a few years in the early 1980s there was a rather experimental period in rap before groups like Salt-N-Pepa, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, and N.W.A. among others would standardize it to a certain extent. One of the groups that existed during that period was Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force. There’s a lot more to this story too. I know I am oversimplifying here. The group dates back to the 1970s themselves. I’m pretty sure that’s him at the very start before we see him in costume.
This video has just about everything in it. You’ve got the Public Enemy type political lyrics. Afrika Bambaataa himself looks like he is the funky rap child of George Clinton. It starts with kids off the street being drawn towards a 2001-like monolith to be pulled into another world. It is full of life, color, history, and a damn good time. However, I love how it never pretends reality doesn’t exist with it’s beginning and end. It’s in the middle that it takes you to another place that can be lost if you let your mind fill with nothing but what you see with your eyes. This music video takes your mind on an audio-visual tour before dropping you back into your life.
Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s wonderful song The Message tosses you into cold-hard reality. Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force picks you up into the air, mesmerizes you with color and sound, delivers its message, and then asks you dance sucka, before letting you return back to reality.
Sadly, from what I’ve read just now on the night before this was scheduled to post, reality, or at least allegations, is exactly what has been coming out all over the place about Afrika Bambaataa. I actually wrote this post back on Tuesday of this week, and only came across it the night before it was scheduled to be posted. Oh, well. Just like anything else, you can’t avoid controversy and reality when talking about anything in the art and entertainment business. *Sigh*
We already looked at a video directed by someone who would then go on to make feature films. Here we have one made by a director who was already well established. That being William Friedkin. He helmed this kinky music video for Laura Branigan’s song Self Control. To my knowledge, it isn’t out there who played the man behind the mask. The video was controversial at the time. Wikipedia says it even had to be have a minor alteration made to it in order to air on MTV, which Branigan was not happy about.
This is also one of those rare videos where we know more than just the director. According to Internet Music Video Database, this was choreographed by Russell Clark who has done a few films you might recognize. The one that jumps out at me is Rockula (1990). The reason is that I reviewed it last October. It’s that other rock based horror film that has Toni Basil in it. He also did some of the choreography for Teen Witch (1989). Sadly, it seems that according to IMDb, it was not the famous Top That scene.
Also according to IMDb, famous Producer and Production Manager Fred C. Caruso produced this music video. He did movies like The Godfather (1972), Blow Out (1981), and Blue Velvet (1986) to name a few.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I was introduced to this song via the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City soundtrack.
Seeing as I did Weezer’s Buddy Holly yesterday, it seemed appropriate to do Nirvana’s In Bloom today. Instead of editing themselves into a retro TV Show, they set themselves into an actual 1960s style variety show as if they were The Beatles. Makes sense considering Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic would go on to work with Paul McCartney.
I really didn’t watch MTV in the early 1990s. I was certainly listening to Nirvana’s music on an endless repeat, but I wasn’t really familiar with any of their videos beyond Smells Like Teen Spirit and Heart Shaped Box. I like the parody on display of 1960s variety shows. I love the way the host appears oblivious at the end to what was going on onstage. As I recall, the song is about a drug dealer they knew who liked listening to their music, but really didn’t know what it meant. I’m guessing that’s who the host is supposed to represent.
The video would go on to win Best Alternative Video at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1993. That brings me to another argument I’ve had stated to me about why music videos don’t belong in movie databases. The whole thing about them not winning noteworthy awards. Obviously that’s not true, and MTV has as much vested interest in giving out such awards as the Oscars and the Grammys. They even accept music videos at film festivals. That being another argument brought up as reason for the exclusion of music videos. A simple Google search turns up such festivals.
I know I missed April already, but there’s always July 20th to do another Nirvana music video. That will also give me an excuse to link to one of Gary’s reviews as an apology for making him aware of the widely held theory that The Vapors’ Turning Japanese is about masturbation while he was just trying to help me pick out a video for the Japanese holiday Ocean Day.
What is there to say about this video that everyone doesn’t already know? There was no way I couldn’t eventually hit it. I might as well do it now. It kind of seals the deal on what I do tomorrow seeing as Weezer was hardly the only major band of the era to do this kind of thing. That said, I do have two things to bring up:
1. Spike Jonze is a prime example of a director who got their start in music videos, then went on to make feature films. One of the arguments I have had launched at me for why music videos shouldn’t be in a movie database is because directors like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry evolved into feature film directors after making music videos. I don’t know how this is different than any other director starting with short films, then moving into features, but it apparently was for this database admin. I guess they were thinking of it like shedding a skin or something. Of course, as I’m sure you’ve guessed or already knew, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry never stopped making music videos. In fact, he did Weapon of Choice for Fatboy Slim two years after making Being John Malkovich. If anything, I would imagine that it just made them more prized directors to get to direct your music video.
2. Microsoft included this music video on the installation disc for Windows 95 back in the day to show the operating system’s video playing capabilities. I’m pretty sure that was the first time I saw it.
This song and video never really get old to me. If I need a little pick me up, then I put it on.
It was either this, or Twisted Sister’s We’re Not Gonna Take It. I figured I might not have a good excuse to feature a video from X any other way while the other is easy to post for any day that can be associated with civil rights and/or independence. It’s interesting that a band known for emerging from the L.A. punk rock scene with songs like Johnny Hit and Run Paulene would go on to do a bluesy rock song like this. Then again, The Replacements went from songs like Johnny’s Gonna Die to Achin’ To Be, so maybe it isn’t so weird after all. When you take out the very 80s effects, you get a simple video of them performing to a small audience while fireworks go off. I like the relative darkness of the video because it adds to the idea that they are performing at a place where fireworks are going off with reflections cast upon them and the walls. It also adds to the intimacy of the performance. Look for the ‘X’ that appears in his eye at the very beginning of the video before they show the one on the ceiling.
Edit: I’ve since found out that editor Glenn Morgan edited this music video.
Through the Shattered Lens 