Taking Tiger Beat (By Strategy)
Well I sure clocked in about, oh say, 2 hours total bed rest this morning. Slightly less loopy than I was all night long, and still just too rainy to go walk off the remaining pent-up nervous energy. And I have the day off since it was expected of me to have been at work all night last night, but here I am with no money, too rainy to walk down to Mt. Trashmore, comic book stores don't open 'til 11:00 am, which would be pointless anyway since, again, no money. And still wired. Um, kinda.
Times like these I'm grateful for the existence of the Youtube, where I spent most of last night searching for weird-n-wacky music videos that I remembered from the early 80's and basically wiled away the wee hours just laughing my ass off. I first got MTV back in the summer of 1983 so most of my first impressions of the channel came from what was being shown at the time; new wave and glam metal lipsynched by alarmingly unattractive white people (although Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video was just starting to break the surface on the top-of-the-hour rotation cycle). So out of utter self-indulgence or sheer boredom (you decide) I selected 15 videos dating back to that memorable Summer of 1983 when I was 14 years old and spent most of those three months plopped down in front of the telly, knees tucked under my chin, unable to move to eat or sleep or use the potty in deadly fear of missing what just might become the newest in modern cutting-edge Toni Basil video technology.
1. "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats. The whole Renaissance Fest motif of this video reminds me of that part of the English village in Busch Gardens Williamsburg where everybody is dressed just like this, dancing in the streets and with maypoles and lutes and shit. My friends and I used to walk through the town square shouting "Bring out yer dead" which I imagine most of you nerds who have walked through that very same Ren Square have done countless times yourself. Also I used to have a friend named Sheryl who looked exactly like the spastic blonde chick in this video and whenever she wore a skirt she'd grab the hem of it and dance around just like this, much to all our amusement. And you know that part near the beginning of the video where she waves to the singer and smiles like a retard? Sheryl could do the perfect imitation of that. Most often in public places. I have the strongest memory right now of her running down Atlantic Avenue at the beach that summer waving to the traffic on the strip just like that.
2. "New Frontier" by Donald Fagen. Love everything about this video. The cinematography. The editing. The delicious sexual tension between the shy boy and the girl with a "touch of Tuesday Weld" and the lips that spell Y-E-S. The late-50's Cold War aesthetics of bomb shelters, Brubeck albums, and Picasso's Three Musicians posters springing to life. Love the song, too. Sharp, lively animation from Cucumber Studios who did a large amount of the animation for music videos at the time (Elvis Costello, Tom Tom Club, etc.). And the part where Fagen sings "Yes we're going to have a wiiiing-diiing...." for some reason always made my friend Jeanne burst into hysterics.
3. "AEIOU Sometimes Y" by EBN-OZN. Another one that strangely enough also reminds me of being at Busch Gardens with my friends back in the summer of 1983, sitting on the edge of that water fountain right at the entrance of the park spouting out quotes from this song like "CALL me if you WANT to!" or "Hey! Do You wanna go OUT-tah?" Mostly another hot-for-teacher scenario, especially since the teacher looks to be somewhat of a cross between sultry, lippy European actresses Anna Karina and Lysette Anthony. Unfortunately the main protagonist looks more like David Lee Roth in a wifebeater and ultra-bad rat tail haircut who if had actually started following me down the sidewalk and running circles around me and acting like an all-around arrogant tool probably would have gotten instantly decked on the spot. In fact I kind of like mentally picturing it all going down that way. So yeah, we all thought this video was a real stitch, although we were all a little worried about that one very disturbing little boy in the classroom who for some never explained reason looked as if he had been repeatedly punched in the face.
4. "New York New York" by Nina Hagen. My first glimpse of this shocked-headed East German chanteuse with the vocal range vacillating between Brünnhildesque Teutonic bombast to head-spinning-and-pea-soup spewing Linda Blair daemonica. I have memories of Jeanne quickly scrambling away from the television set, pointing and sputtering "What the hell is that?" the moment her Kabuki-like visage invaded our screen and subsequently our previously sheltered teenage suburban existence. Didn't stop me from later rushing out to collect nearly every single album she ever put out on vinyl. All of which I still have to this day (one of which I actually found a Salvation Army thrift store for 75 cents).
5. "Do You Wanna Hold Me?" by Bow Wow Wow. It should therefore be no surprise that my girlfriends found Annabella Lwin's toned down, more commercial, and frankly much cuter version of Nina Hagen's look a lot more accessible, as we all went through a brief period of Annabella idolatry that summer, spending afternoons trying to fix each other's hair and make-up just likes hers. I think I might still have an audio tape of myself and my friends, including Sheryl mentioned above, singing this song, all of us dreadfully out of tune and arguing in between verses over interpretations of muddled lyrics. Honestly... how abstruse can such simplistic lyrics as these possible be?
6. "I Eat Cannibals" by Total Coleo. Oh my word. Bad, bad dancing. Even worse hair. And please bring back the subtlety and delicate nuance of Nina Hagen's make-up over these morbid raccoon eyes and blood-red wide mobile mouths. Refresh my memory what any of this has to do with eating cannibals. And again it bears repeating: Bad, bad dancing. What's worse is that I used to own the single to this song.
7. "Greetings To The New Brunette" by Billy Bragg. No, this video doesn't date back that far, but I can never get tired of watching this gorgeous piece of work. And the song brings instant tears to my eyes. Too bad they so very rarely showed it. Guess they needed more space devoted to that Total Coleo video. Payola's a bitch, baby.
8. "Paranoimia" by The Art Of Noise. Okay I know this video also came out around the mid-80's, but I was hugely into and influenced by The Art Of Noise all throughout the early 80's as well. Although I found the Max Headroom persona vaguely entertaining for less than 2% of that time during the decade. Released at the height of Headroom hysteria, I used to find this video mildly amusing with only a hint of the creepiness inherent in everything Max Headroom is and does, but now I just find the whole thing out-and-out nightmare inducing. "Am I dreaming? Nooo. Then where am I? In bed? Then what am I doing? T-t-t-t-talking to myself..." {{shudder}}
9. "Screaming In The Night" by Krokus. Ooooh, I have got to send this link to my brother. He and I used to laugh so long and hard over this ridiculously overwrought metal opera that must have rocketed waaaay over budget for what was being put out there at the time. What video vanguards these Krokus fellows once were! Like all metal videos of their time, the plot seems to revolve around the lead singer and his girlfriend getting trapped into this John Norman Gorean-like dimension that appears to be located in the attic of some greasy spoon diner, if any of that makes any sense, and it shouldn't. And what's really pathetic is that back then I used to think this video was like OMG sooooo romantic and saaaad. Oh noes! Girlfriend dies horribly! Now she's a VJ on some cheesy MTV knock-off channel! See her heartbroken lover stomp all over people's food as he rudely strides across the lunch counter to scream into the television set, as if she could actually hear him from beyond the grave! Why don't they make more freakin' videos like this anymore??
10. "Why Me?" by Planet P (Project). I once got in a heated debate with Sara Trexler over whether or not this band was called Planet P first before changing their name to Planet P Project, since I have both original albums on vinyl and I could have sworn that the first album was just called Planet P (am I wrong? cpg, where are you when I need you?). Well the video seems to refer to them as Planet P so I'd like to think I'm still right, either way. So anyway, I do dig this video. I've always been fascinated by the whole concept of astronaut's wives. Gazing worriedly to the heavens as her beloved embarks on the absolutely unknown. It really must be one of the loneliest and terrifying kind of marriages I could ever imagine.
11. "Jeopardy" by Greg Kihn Band. I know you gotta remember this'un. A nice day for a white wedding, until {{gasp}} weird, lo-budge special FX and gratuitous ball-n-chain allegories abound, complete with plenty of things to scare, like zombie attacks and Kihn's feathered mullet. Like if David Lynch tried to direct a sitcom written by David Cronenberg. Only slightly less pretentious.
12. "Hyperactive!" by Thomas Dolby. I think this video came out in 1984, really. But I tend to actually remember it more from watching Friday Night Videos than seeing it on MTV in those days. Another one of those what-the-fuck-am-I-watching concept pieces involving psychiatry, Mummenschanz inspired tear-away head boxes, and very disturbing headless dancing ventriloquist dummies. No less traumatizing 22 years later, as I've just discovered.
13. "You Don't Want Me Anymore" by Steel Breeze. Now this video actually pre-dates MTV for me, as back in 1982 or so local popular handlebar-mustachioed disc jockey Mike Arlo had a half-hour video program 8:30pm Sunday nights called Mike Arlo's Video Radio of which I remember this delightfully mondo-craptastic synth-driven piffle spun out in heavy rotation wedged between the offerings by KISS and The Scorpions. This has almost everything that my copy of Michael Shore's book The Rolling Stone Book of Rock Video claims makes a rock video successful: decadent sets, filtered lenses, tricky editing (love the old Model-T inexplicably teleporting every few feet ahead of itself at the beginning of the video for no apparent reason), scantily clad women, objects breaking, water splashing, and things blowing up real good. And yet it still... fails, somehow. Oh, well. At least they seem to have fun making it.
14. "O Superman" by Laurie Anderson. Goddam am I glad to see this video again. As far as the medium goes this to me is as near to perfection as any I've seen to date. No flashy visuals to overwhelm the minimalistic craft of the song itself. Just Laurie's striking face, charismatic persona, and a single white spotlight on the wall behind her. Fuck, I love this woman.
15. "Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy" by Kid Creole & the Coconuts. Alright, I fibbed. I've never seen this video before until today. But it's still going up here because, dammit, it's Kid Creole! With Coconuts! And two decades later he is still the Mack Daddy. Oooo, snap!
Times like these I'm grateful for the existence of the Youtube, where I spent most of last night searching for weird-n-wacky music videos that I remembered from the early 80's and basically wiled away the wee hours just laughing my ass off. I first got MTV back in the summer of 1983 so most of my first impressions of the channel came from what was being shown at the time; new wave and glam metal lipsynched by alarmingly unattractive white people (although Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video was just starting to break the surface on the top-of-the-hour rotation cycle). So out of utter self-indulgence or sheer boredom (you decide) I selected 15 videos dating back to that memorable Summer of 1983 when I was 14 years old and spent most of those three months plopped down in front of the telly, knees tucked under my chin, unable to move to eat or sleep or use the potty in deadly fear of missing what just might become the newest in modern cutting-edge Toni Basil video technology.
1. "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats. The whole Renaissance Fest motif of this video reminds me of that part of the English village in Busch Gardens Williamsburg where everybody is dressed just like this, dancing in the streets and with maypoles and lutes and shit. My friends and I used to walk through the town square shouting "Bring out yer dead" which I imagine most of you nerds who have walked through that very same Ren Square have done countless times yourself. Also I used to have a friend named Sheryl who looked exactly like the spastic blonde chick in this video and whenever she wore a skirt she'd grab the hem of it and dance around just like this, much to all our amusement. And you know that part near the beginning of the video where she waves to the singer and smiles like a retard? Sheryl could do the perfect imitation of that. Most often in public places. I have the strongest memory right now of her running down Atlantic Avenue at the beach that summer waving to the traffic on the strip just like that.
2. "New Frontier" by Donald Fagen. Love everything about this video. The cinematography. The editing. The delicious sexual tension between the shy boy and the girl with a "touch of Tuesday Weld" and the lips that spell Y-E-S. The late-50's Cold War aesthetics of bomb shelters, Brubeck albums, and Picasso's Three Musicians posters springing to life. Love the song, too. Sharp, lively animation from Cucumber Studios who did a large amount of the animation for music videos at the time (Elvis Costello, Tom Tom Club, etc.). And the part where Fagen sings "Yes we're going to have a wiiiing-diiing...." for some reason always made my friend Jeanne burst into hysterics.
3. "AEIOU Sometimes Y" by EBN-OZN. Another one that strangely enough also reminds me of being at Busch Gardens with my friends back in the summer of 1983, sitting on the edge of that water fountain right at the entrance of the park spouting out quotes from this song like "CALL me if you WANT to!" or "Hey! Do You wanna go OUT-tah?" Mostly another hot-for-teacher scenario, especially since the teacher looks to be somewhat of a cross between sultry, lippy European actresses Anna Karina and Lysette Anthony. Unfortunately the main protagonist looks more like David Lee Roth in a wifebeater and ultra-bad rat tail haircut who if had actually started following me down the sidewalk and running circles around me and acting like an all-around arrogant tool probably would have gotten instantly decked on the spot. In fact I kind of like mentally picturing it all going down that way. So yeah, we all thought this video was a real stitch, although we were all a little worried about that one very disturbing little boy in the classroom who for some never explained reason looked as if he had been repeatedly punched in the face.
4. "New York New York" by Nina Hagen. My first glimpse of this shocked-headed East German chanteuse with the vocal range vacillating between Brünnhildesque Teutonic bombast to head-spinning-and-pea-soup spewing Linda Blair daemonica. I have memories of Jeanne quickly scrambling away from the television set, pointing and sputtering "What the hell is that?" the moment her Kabuki-like visage invaded our screen and subsequently our previously sheltered teenage suburban existence. Didn't stop me from later rushing out to collect nearly every single album she ever put out on vinyl. All of which I still have to this day (one of which I actually found a Salvation Army thrift store for 75 cents).
5. "Do You Wanna Hold Me?" by Bow Wow Wow. It should therefore be no surprise that my girlfriends found Annabella Lwin's toned down, more commercial, and frankly much cuter version of Nina Hagen's look a lot more accessible, as we all went through a brief period of Annabella idolatry that summer, spending afternoons trying to fix each other's hair and make-up just likes hers. I think I might still have an audio tape of myself and my friends, including Sheryl mentioned above, singing this song, all of us dreadfully out of tune and arguing in between verses over interpretations of muddled lyrics. Honestly... how abstruse can such simplistic lyrics as these possible be?
6. "I Eat Cannibals" by Total Coleo. Oh my word. Bad, bad dancing. Even worse hair. And please bring back the subtlety and delicate nuance of Nina Hagen's make-up over these morbid raccoon eyes and blood-red wide mobile mouths. Refresh my memory what any of this has to do with eating cannibals. And again it bears repeating: Bad, bad dancing. What's worse is that I used to own the single to this song.
7. "Greetings To The New Brunette" by Billy Bragg. No, this video doesn't date back that far, but I can never get tired of watching this gorgeous piece of work. And the song brings instant tears to my eyes. Too bad they so very rarely showed it. Guess they needed more space devoted to that Total Coleo video. Payola's a bitch, baby.
8. "Paranoimia" by The Art Of Noise. Okay I know this video also came out around the mid-80's, but I was hugely into and influenced by The Art Of Noise all throughout the early 80's as well. Although I found the Max Headroom persona vaguely entertaining for less than 2% of that time during the decade. Released at the height of Headroom hysteria, I used to find this video mildly amusing with only a hint of the creepiness inherent in everything Max Headroom is and does, but now I just find the whole thing out-and-out nightmare inducing. "Am I dreaming? Nooo. Then where am I? In bed? Then what am I doing? T-t-t-t-talking to myself..." {{shudder}}
9. "Screaming In The Night" by Krokus. Ooooh, I have got to send this link to my brother. He and I used to laugh so long and hard over this ridiculously overwrought metal opera that must have rocketed waaaay over budget for what was being put out there at the time. What video vanguards these Krokus fellows once were! Like all metal videos of their time, the plot seems to revolve around the lead singer and his girlfriend getting trapped into this John Norman Gorean-like dimension that appears to be located in the attic of some greasy spoon diner, if any of that makes any sense, and it shouldn't. And what's really pathetic is that back then I used to think this video was like OMG sooooo romantic and saaaad. Oh noes! Girlfriend dies horribly! Now she's a VJ on some cheesy MTV knock-off channel! See her heartbroken lover stomp all over people's food as he rudely strides across the lunch counter to scream into the television set, as if she could actually hear him from beyond the grave! Why don't they make more freakin' videos like this anymore??
10. "Why Me?" by Planet P (Project). I once got in a heated debate with Sara Trexler over whether or not this band was called Planet P first before changing their name to Planet P Project, since I have both original albums on vinyl and I could have sworn that the first album was just called Planet P (am I wrong? cpg, where are you when I need you?). Well the video seems to refer to them as Planet P so I'd like to think I'm still right, either way. So anyway, I do dig this video. I've always been fascinated by the whole concept of astronaut's wives. Gazing worriedly to the heavens as her beloved embarks on the absolutely unknown. It really must be one of the loneliest and terrifying kind of marriages I could ever imagine.
11. "Jeopardy" by Greg Kihn Band. I know you gotta remember this'un. A nice day for a white wedding, until {{gasp}} weird, lo-budge special FX and gratuitous ball-n-chain allegories abound, complete with plenty of things to scare, like zombie attacks and Kihn's feathered mullet. Like if David Lynch tried to direct a sitcom written by David Cronenberg. Only slightly less pretentious.
12. "Hyperactive!" by Thomas Dolby. I think this video came out in 1984, really. But I tend to actually remember it more from watching Friday Night Videos than seeing it on MTV in those days. Another one of those what-the-fuck-am-I-watching concept pieces involving psychiatry, Mummenschanz inspired tear-away head boxes, and very disturbing headless dancing ventriloquist dummies. No less traumatizing 22 years later, as I've just discovered.
13. "You Don't Want Me Anymore" by Steel Breeze. Now this video actually pre-dates MTV for me, as back in 1982 or so local popular handlebar-mustachioed disc jockey Mike Arlo had a half-hour video program 8:30pm Sunday nights called Mike Arlo's Video Radio of which I remember this delightfully mondo-craptastic synth-driven piffle spun out in heavy rotation wedged between the offerings by KISS and The Scorpions. This has almost everything that my copy of Michael Shore's book The Rolling Stone Book of Rock Video claims makes a rock video successful: decadent sets, filtered lenses, tricky editing (love the old Model-T inexplicably teleporting every few feet ahead of itself at the beginning of the video for no apparent reason), scantily clad women, objects breaking, water splashing, and things blowing up real good. And yet it still... fails, somehow. Oh, well. At least they seem to have fun making it.
14. "O Superman" by Laurie Anderson. Goddam am I glad to see this video again. As far as the medium goes this to me is as near to perfection as any I've seen to date. No flashy visuals to overwhelm the minimalistic craft of the song itself. Just Laurie's striking face, charismatic persona, and a single white spotlight on the wall behind her. Fuck, I love this woman.
15. "Annie, I'm Not Your Daddy" by Kid Creole & the Coconuts. Alright, I fibbed. I've never seen this video before until today. But it's still going up here because, dammit, it's Kid Creole! With Coconuts! And two decades later he is still the Mack Daddy. Oooo, snap!
posted by Melissa at 9:45 AM
2 Comments:
Nina Hagen - unbeschreiblisch weiblisch.
And you remind me that it is time to get Ms. Anderson's "United States" on CD and/or DVD. Vinyl in the basement is doing nobody any good.
Hey Randy, I think I still have a used copy of that at my work. If you ever decide to get yourself a copy let me know and I'll pick it up for you and send it because I know it's gotta be cheaper than paying full price for that box set. I Have United States on LP too but the CDs are way out of my budget at the present.
Is there a DVD of that too?
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