Lisa asked me to pick a music video for today and I was so excited that I yelled, “Backstreet Boys!”
Who was your favorite Backstreet Boy? I liked Nick!
Trivia about this video? AJ McClean didn’t know the lyrics for the song until he showed up for the video shoot. That tells you everything you need to know about the Lou Pearlman boy band era.
Enjoy!
What better way to celebrate Halloween than with the original horror rocker himself, Alice Cooper? Welcome To My Nightmare is one of Alice Cooper’s signature tunes. This video comes from the 1990 concert film, .Alice Cooper Trashes The World.
Enjoy and Happy Halloween!
Bed of Nails is from Alice Cooper’s 11th studio album, Trash. It was the album’s second most successful single, despite not even being released as a single in the U.S. Maybe some of that success was due to this music video, in which Alice the singer performs over and in a bed of nails while women in leather walk through the studio and play the cello.
This video was directed by Nigel Dick, who directed videos for anyone who was anyone. If Nigel Dick has not done a video for you, you are not really a rock star.
Enjoy!
There are actually two versions of this video. Both of them feature model Rana Kennedy as the mysterious woman looking over Alice Cooper. One version features shots where the woman is meant to be topless. (A body double was used in those shots). The MTV-friendly version excises the toplessness and is less focused on torture than the first version.
Director Nigel Dick was one of the big music video directors of the MTV era. He worked with everyone who was anybody. Alice Cooper definitely was and still is somebody. It’s funny how he went from being the rocker that parents feared to being a beloved cultural institution and he did it while, for the most part, still remaining true to his original act and persona. All the kids who used to get yelled at for listening to Cooper grew up and kept listening to him and Alice turned out to be a pretty smart guy.
Enjoy!
This song is the epitome of Oasis.
The video was filmed at the band’s Live By The Sea gig at Southend-on-Sea while the off-stage scene were filmed at Southend Pier,. Anyone who has ever been a rock ‘n’ roll star has been directed at least once by Nigel Dick.
Enjoy!
Sometimes, the most difficult thing is just making it to the audition in time. That is the theme of the video for R.E.M.’s At My Most Beautiful, which follows a cellist as she tries to make it to her audition for R.E.M.
The cellist is played by Rain Phoenix. Rain was the younger sister of River Phoenix, who was a friend of R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe. Rain had previously been a member of River’s band, Aleka’s Attic, and she also served as a back-up singer with the Red Hot Chili Peppers shortly before she appeared in this video.
Director Nigel Dick is another one of those music video directors who worked with almost everyone. If you were a successful musician, Nigel Dick probably did at least one video for you.
Enjoy!
Even music videos get special director’s cuts nowadays.
Enjoy!
Oh look, it’s another Nigel Dick-directed hair metal video.
And it’s another Cinderella video featuring the band doing their version of rocking while being watched by a bunch of hot woman who were probably hoping Bon Jovi would show up instead.
But wait? Who’s that? It’s Wayne and Garth!
This song appeared on the Wayne’s World soundtrack and the video was shot to promote the film. Dana Carvey and Mike Myers show up as the duo who, at the time, were America’s favorite cable access hosts. Wayne and Garth were Cinderella fans? Guys, even Beavis and Butthead knew better than that!
Enjoy!
Rest in Peace, C.J. Snare. The lead singer of FireHouse passed away on April 5th.
FireHouse is interesting in that it was a glam metal band that hit it big right before the start of the Grunge revolution. While a lot of other glam metal bands, many of which had been around far longer than FireHouse, tried to change their sound to compete with Nirvana and the other Seattle superstars, FireHouse stuck with its glam metal roots.
This video was directed by Nigel Dick, who has done music videos for practically everyone.
Slang was the title track from Def Leppard’s sixth studio album. The album had the misfortune to come out in 1996, when Grunge was still in full swing and Def Leppard’s style of arena rock had gone out of style. It was Def Leppard’s first album to fail to achieve platinum status in the United States, though it was more successful in Europe. Of the album’s tracks, the title track is the only one that is still regularly played in concert by the band.
The video for the song was filmed in Los Angeles, at Occidental Studios. The video feels like a slicker version of the video for Rocket. Jimmy Swaggart makes a cameo appearance, crying as he announces that he’s sinned. This video was filmed 8 years after Swaggart’s infamous “I have sinned” speech and its inclusion here really does make Def Leppard seem like a band stuck in time. It’s still a rocking song, though.
This video was directed by Nigel Dick, who directed videos for everyone.
Enjoy!
Through the Shattered Lens 