Tag Archives: music video

Music Video of the Day: Losing My Religion by R.E.M. (1994, dir. Tarsem Singh)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

This is what I get for doing my recommendation worm nonsense to pick out some music videos to feature. That means I was on Zombie by The Cranberries and this was the first music video that YouTube recommended as a result, so I picked it out next. I can guarantee you that this is the first time I have actually sat through this entire thing. I’ve had the video playing many times though because it is an excellent song. The music video itself is a different matter.

My memory is screaming at me that “losing my religion” is Southern slang for losing your temper, and Wikipedia agrees with me. Makes sense since R.E.M. is from Athens, Georgia. Yet, director Tarsem Singh decided to film it like Zombie and Heart-Shaped Box. I like the parts with Michael Stipe. He actually seems to know what to do, and how to convey the meaning of the song. But then it has a bunch of cutaways to religious imagery that I’m not sure had anything to do with it.

There are definitely things to love about this music video, but then we get the religious imagery that feels out of place except for the tie-in with the perceived meaning of the title. According to Wikipedia, Singh was going for a Caravaggio/Tarkovsky thing, but I’m quite sure it has nothing to do with the meaning of the song. If you haven’t seen it, then it is required viewing for 90’s music videos. Just don’t expect something particularly good visually beyond the Stipe parts.

This time around we have more than just director Tarsem Singh. However, it is noteworthy that Tarsem Singh would go on to direct The Cell (2000), Mirror Mirror (2012), and Self/less (2015).

David Ramser was the producer on this music video, but I can’t find anything else that he did.

Larry Fong is credited for “photography”, and went on to do a few music videos after this. He was also the cinematographer for some movies like 300 (2006), Watchmen (2009), Sucker Punch (2011), Super 8 (2011), and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016). Not bad.

On editing, we have the return of Nine Inch Nails’ Closer editor Robert Duffy. We’ll see him again soon since he also did the editing on the Nine Inch Nails’ song The Perfect Drug. He appears to have followed director Tarsem Singh since he too worked as an editor on the same films I mentioned above.

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Zombie by The Cranberries (1994, dir. Samuel Bayer)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

Wow. That was a pretty terrible music video. Again, I thought I was done with Ministry, but I apparently had The Cranberries’ Zombie picked out to spotlight after 4 Non Blondes’ What’s Up. If you don’t know, The Cranberries were very much a college rock band with their album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? before moving on to the album with Zombie on it. The first album has the songs you have most likely heard such as Dreams and Linger. Good stuff, but nothing like the go for the jugular songs such as Zombie or Salvation. Too bad this video doesn’t go for the jugular. I started watching it, and just wanted to take Dolores O’Riordan away and wash that gold stuff off of her.

Let’s talk about the director of this music video for a moment because he is the one behind some of the best known music videos of the era. Samuel Bayer directed Smells Like Teen Spirit, No Rain, and Bullet With Butterfly Wings to name a few of the more than 70 music videos he has done. He is also the director of the 2010 version of Nightmare On Elm Street. According to IMVDb, he made a music video as recent as this year for the group Jesse & Joy. What happened here?

It’s a simple song about the IRA. Why is it getting Heart-Shaped Box in my Cranberries? The kids around her look like those creatures from the music video for Schism by Tool. The best parts are when it is simply the band performing while intercut with black and white footage of the streets with soldiers on them. Simple! But no, we need O’Riordan panted gold and kids on the street who look like they are laughing at times. Not because that’s what they are supposed to be doing, but I believe because of what they were being asked to do. That’s great considering I would imagine the group intended this song to be taken quite seriously. Heck, this came out only a year after In The Name Of The Father (1993).

I guess this is what the music video for Steve Perry’s Oh Sherrie might have looked like if they had stuck with the one they were filming at the start of the actual video. It’s ridiculous and unnecessarily artsy just to be artsy. If this were a feature film, then I would say skip it, but this is only about five minutes. So behold, one of the worst music videos I have done a post on.

Music Video of the Day: What’s Up by 4 Non Blondes (1993, dir. Morgan Lawley)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

This isn’t just the four o’clock in the morning insomnia speaking. I have no real idea what to say about this music video except that there is so much 90s college rock onscreen I can barely take it. It’s a good, but overplayed song. If you can figure out what exactly director Morgan Lawley was going for, then I’m all ears. It looks like the intent was to capture it to make it look like it is taking place at a local college music destination. That’s my best guess. If you haven’t heard this song before, or wasn’t aware that there was a music video for it, then have a look.

Music Video of the Day: Creep by Radiohead (1993, dir. Brett Turnbull)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

Here I thought I was done with Ministry for the time being, but no. We are back to a group that was perceived to have undergone a metamorphosis, but really didn’t. I love that Thom Yorke comes right out and says: “I don’t belong here.” You certainly don’t, Thom. You aren’t in a car chasing a Hungarian yet.

I didn’t really get into Radiohead till the early 2000s when I picked up a copy of OK Computer, but I was well aware of them before that. OK Computer came out while I was in high school, and I distinctly remember the music video for Paranoid Android. I also remember that despite Radiohead evolving into a group that took the flag from Pink Floyd, the radio would always play this song instead of stuff off of OK Computer or any of their albums that followed. The song isn’t very remarkable at all. It’s a simple little rock song. That’s why they played it. Not sure why Paranoid Android or Karma Police wouldn’t work, but maybe it was a lyrical or runtime issue.

The music video is as unremarkable as the song. It’s the group playing in what appears to be a small club. There isn’t even any particular style to the way it’s done. It’s just a throwback to when Radiohead was considered to be another one of these British Invasion bands like Oasis before they produced what some consider the greatest album of the 1990s with OK Computer. I personally think it’s a little like trying to come up with a greatest album of the 1960s. In other words, ridiculous.

I can’t think of anything else to say, so just enjoy a major group in its’ early stages with Creep by Radiohead.

Music Video of the Day: Breaking The Law by Judas Priest (1980, dir. Julien Temple)

Posted on by Valerie Troutman

I have a live performance of Judas Priest performing Grinder. At the start, Rob Halford begins by stating that there are “13,000 Heavy Metal Maniacs” in the audience. You would have never in the past and never will in the future find me in such an audience. In fact, I didn’t even get into heavy metal till around the mid-2000s. That being said, it’s a little difficult to be 32 years-old, and to have not heard Breaking The Law as a kid.

You know the deal with Judas Priest by now. They were second wave British Heavy Metal as noticeable by their speed and the absence of the blues in their sound. You all know that Rob Halford is gay, and probably could write a better review of The Submission of Emma Marx (2013) than the one I did. Finally, the date on this implies it was shown for the first time in 1980. Both IMVDb and mvdbase agree on that date. In fact, mvdbase says that it aired in June of 1980. That makes it the first pre-MTV music video I have spotlighted so far.

The music video is so simple that if you go to it on Wikipedia it’s simply a description of the plot as if there is no other content. Well…um…to be fair, there isn’t much other content. Everyone probably knows the story of the origin of Black Sabbath, but I’ll recap. They weren’t necessarily anti-hippie, but where they lived was in stark contrast to the images they saw of them on TV. The group co-opted the title of an Italian anthology horror film and decided to play dark music to scare the hippies.

This Judas Priest music video plays to harsh beginnings as they break into the bank, not to steal money, but to take their gold record for British Steel. That is the album, which includes not only Breaking The Law, but other great songs like Living After Midnight and The Rage. Then Halford holds it to the security camera and screams “YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE!” before an explosion is set off, and they are back in the car where they began their one bank crime spree. Like most heavy metal, once you think about it, you realize it isn’t what your knee jerk reaction told you it is about. The music video is about coming from a difficult place. It expresses the difficultly of reaching a place where you have a gold record, but then it is locked away from you in the hands of someone else such as a record company. I’ve always loved that record companies would do such things, and still let the group make such songs as Breaking The Law.

Notice that the group had two guitarists. Having two meant they could do things groups with a single guitar couldn’t do. You can hear this prominently at the beginning of the song The Rage. I’ve included the song below.

If you haven’t seen this music video, then watch it. It’s not really for people that already know and love the music video that I write for, but for those who have never heard it.

Enjoy it, and check out the British Steel album. It’s a helluva a heavy metal album.

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!