Love and Rockets is definitely one of those 80s bands that should have been bigger than they were. Basically made up of every member of Bauhaus except for Peter Murphy, Love and Rockets was responsible for some of the best songs of the decade.
No New Tales To Tell is from their third studio album, Earth, Sun, Moon. Thanks to this music video, which was put in heavy rotation on MTV, the song did manage to reach number 18 on the U.S. charts. The video was directed by the very prolific Tony van den Ende and it features a few shots of the band in their Bubblemen costumes. (The Bubblemen were a side project for several members of the band. They performed while dressed as friendly bees.)
Just try to get that chorus out of your head after listening to Nemesis. Everybody happy as the dead come home!
Director Tony can den Ende has also done music videos for The Proclaimers, Meat Loaf, Melissa Etheridge, Joe Cocker, Thomas Dolby, Manic Street Preachers, and Guns N’ Roses.
Love and Rockets is definitely one of those 80s bands that should have been bigger than they were. Basically made up of every member of Bauhaus except for Peter Murphy, Love and Rockets was responsible for some of the best songs of the decade.
No New Tales To Tell is from their third studio album, Earth, Sun, Moon. Thanks to this music video, which was put in heavy rotation on MTV, the song did manage to reach number 18 on the U.S. charts. The video was directed by the very prolific Tony van den Ende and it features a few shots of the band in their Bubblemen costumes. (The Bubblemen were a side project for several members of the band. They performed while dressed as friendly bees.)
I figured that after doing a video from jazz fusion artist Herbie Hancock, I would follow that up with an acid jazz band. The Brand New Heavies get classified in other categories, but acid jazz is one of them. The video kind of reminds me of a cross between something I would expect from Deee-Lite and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. The band is still around today, and released a new music video at least as recent as 2013.
I did a second video by prolific music video director Steve Barron yesterday. Today I thought I would do one by a different prolific director of music videos that we haven’t hit yet. The song I Ran of course is about as well known as You Spin Me Round (Like A Record). There’s no need to discuss that here. Especially not when there is a fascinating music video to focus on.
There are four parts to this video for me:
1. The video was intended as a homage to the album cover for Robert Fripp and Brian Eno’s album (No Pussyfooting).
2. The cameras are clearly visible in the mirrors. They aren’t in the original album cover, so I’m assuming they either were rushed, or they did it on purpose. I’m going with it being done on purpose. Just like a music video that deliberately doesn’t have the band members lip sync, this is an interesting way for the video to be self-reflexive. In this case, you are literally seeing the video you are watching being made right before your eyes. Or, to look at it in another way, you are seeing the band unable to escape the camera as a tie-in with the theme of the song.
3. Probably the best known experimental film that director Chantal Akerman made was La Chambre (1972). It was mostly comprised of a series of 360 degree pans showing us the interior of a room along with Akerman herself on a bed. One of the two parts of this video takes that idea of using those 360 degree pans, but instead attaches the group to the pan, so that once again, they can’t escape the camera. I have to wonder if he was thinking of her film.
4. While people remember the 360 sequences the best, there are the hallway portions as well. Those play into the theme of the song in that the band can’t escape the ladies, but also because of the way those ladies move. It’s almost as if they are high fashion zombies. Zombies being the monster that will inevitably catch up to you no matter how far, or how long you run.
It’s music videos like this that I love to look at because it’s obvious that a fair amount of thought went into crafting them.
Through the Shattered Lens 