Showing posts with label visual synergy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label visual synergy. Show all posts

Saturday, August 16, 2008

visual synergy: sham on you


Sam the Sham (and the Pharaohs)!


Shampoo!


The Shamen!


Sham 69!


ShamWow!

Sham 69 - Borstal Breakout (from a 1978 single; collected on the re-issue of Tell Us the Truth, 1978) - Sure, it's dumb as hell, but this driving blast of street punk never fails to grab me by the short hairs and set my blood a'pumping...and that's what really matters.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

visual synergy: the revolution will be synthesized

This Korg Poly-61 kills fascists! New wavers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your oversized shoulder pads!



Re-Flex - The Politics of Dancing (from The Politics of Dancing, 1983) - Are you now doing, or have you ever done, the hokey-pokey? I have in my hand a list of 57 highly-placed individuals who have put their left feet in and shaken them all about.



Duran Duran - New Moon on Monday (from Seven and the Ragged Tiger, 1983) - So the moral of the video is that the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the Prague Spring in late 1960's Czechoslovakia would have succeeded if the pro-democracy forces had access to Simon Le Bon's pouty lips and Nick Rhodes's groovy hair?*

*Providing that the counterrevolutionary forces were armed with neon vibrators and not Kalashnikovs and Soviet tanks, of course.

Thursday, February 21, 2008

visual synergy: come and get your cheer on

Such is the cheertopian power of Bring It On Week that I've decided to make a second contribution to Chris Sims's celebration of all things cheertastic with a post spotlighting some music videos with a pronounced pro-pom-pom slant.


Toni Basil - Mickey - Though I featured this video in a previous visual synergy post, there was no way I could omit posting it given its historical importance in the development of cheer-crossover entertainment.


J. Geils Band - Centerfold - No, that's not former MTV VJ Martha Quinn. For a more in-depth discussion of the song's impact on a pre-pubescent Andrew, read this.


Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit - I liked this song better when it was titled "More Than a Feeling" and performed by Boston.


Nada Surf - Popular - THIS JUST IN: High school is a clique-dominated sharktank. Shocking, isn't it? Also, isn't there supposed to be something about how Sasha plays with Britt in there somewhere? And that we need to always wear sunscreen?


Narcotic Thrust - I Like It - Those stories about what goes on at Montessori schools? All true, I'm afraid.

The Moog Cookbook - Smells Like Teen Spirit (from The Moog Cookbook, 1995) - Come as you are to the Korova Milk Bar, my be-flanneled and bowler-hatted droogies. The first round of drencrom is on me.

Racey - Kitty (from The Best of Racey, 2004) - True fact: Toni Basil's "Mickey" is actually a cover song. It was originally penned, with the title "Kitty," by the Chinn and Chapman songwriting team for the bubbleglam act Racey. When adapting the song to fit a female vocalist, Basil opted to go with "Mickey" -- a reference to Monkee Mickey Dolenz, who the dancer/choreographer had worked with in the 1968 movie Head.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

visual synergy: let's get minimal

It's been a while since my last visual synergy post. To be honest, I'd pretty much given up on the concept. Compiling the last couple of installments turned out to be kind of a chore, which undermines the intended "lazy themed music video post" rationale.

I was driving down South Border Road this morning and marvelling at the post-snowstorm landscape. The Middlesex Fells Reservation had been recast in stark, dazzling monochrome. The forest of evergreens, the ground, the granite outcrops -- all rendered in the darkest of darks and the brightest of whites set beneath the battleship gray of an overcast sky. It got me thinking, in my usually elliptical manner, of the old school music video aesthetic where performers were plunked down before a plain white (and frequently overlit) backdrop and filmed in high contrast glory.

It's a striking effect and leaves little doubt as to where the viewers focus ought to be...and there's also the fact that it's far easier on the promotional budget than group trips to Sri Lanka or multiple JetSki rentals are. Though it's not as common a practice in these days of overpolished music video productions, the visual style still does crop up here and there every so often. And why not? It's visually compelling, cheap, and serves as a perfect bit of retrological shorthand.


Elvis Costello - Pump It Up - Back when Declan MacManus was pop music's Angry Young Man, and before his unfortunate transtion into the Adult Alternative radio format's answer to Perry Como.


Toni Basil - Mickey - I was watching Village of the Giants the other night and was once again startled by Ms. Basil's preternatural ability in avoiding time's withering clutches. I'm not discounting the effects of good lighting and heavy make-up, but those only go so far in explaining the phenomenon.


The Specials - A Message to You, Rudy - Suppose I found a magic lamp which contained a djinn who was willing to offer me three wishes. After I accidentally squandered my first two wishes by not paying proper attention to the terms of the offer, my third and final wish would be for my eyebrows to resemble Terry Hall's in Romulan-tasticness.


Missing Persons - Words - Here singer Dale Bozzio applies the minimalist aesthetic to her choice of costuming, as well. There are many reasons I love Missing Persons, but high up there on the list is the fact that Ms. Bozzio retained her distinctive Medford (Massachusetts) accent in her singing voice. "Do you heah me? Do you cay-yah?"


The Soviettes - #1 Is Number Two - Monochrome never sounded so good.


Puffy AmiYumi - Boogie Woogie No. 5 - In Japan, it's pronounced Ga-pu.


Elastica - Stutter - I remember whispers that Elastica singer Justine Frischmann's then-boyfriend Damon Albarn was the actual mastermind behind the band's first album. True or not, I do know that I find their work far more appealing than this sorry nonsense.


Marsheaux - Popcorn - We end this rather long video playlist on a transcendentally high note, with the Greek electropop duo's outstanding version of a switched on classic.

The Soviettes - #1 is Number Two (from LP II, 2004)

Elastica - Stutter (from Elastica, 1995)

Marsheaux - Popcorn (from E-Bay Queen, 2004)

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

visual synergy: all's fun at the fair

"It's guaranteed to make you puke." Not a statement usually used to pitch a product or experience, but twelve-year old boys are a different species entirely. The engine of induced regurgitation being referenced was the Tilt-A-Whirl, one of many lurid and potentially dangerous attractions at the annual Boys' Club carnival. (The club only sponsored the event, the administration of which was handled by those semi-nomadic purveyors of fried dough, chancy rides, and rigged games of chance colloquially known as "carny folk.")

The arrival of the carnival at the vacant lot abutting the Northeast Trade Center in North Woburn was always a time of wonder and delight, though never so much so as in the spring of 1984. Previous trips had been made under the watchful eyes and tight purse strings of parents or other adult chaperones, but having turned twelve, and thus standing at the crossroads of childhood hijinx and adolescent angst, this marked the first time my friends and I were able to attend the carnival alone and unsupervised, free of admonishments about our sugar and trans fat intakes, the no-win nature of the midway games, and our suitability for trying out the coolest and most dangerous-looking of the rides.

Even better, the fairgrounds were less than a mile from the neighborhood where we lived, well within easy biking distance. The only thing that prevented us from attending the carnival every single night it was in local residence was the lack of parental largess once we had burned up our initial stores of ready cash.

While our money lasted, though, we wandered the stalls and attractions in hopes of winning a amateurish reproduction of a Led Zeppelin or Blue Oyster Cult LP cover painted onto a sharp-edged sheet of glass (which one of the older kid's told me were for sniffing cocaine of off, making it the peaked-in-high-school set's equivalent of a gold-plated spoon) from the goldfish game, or to check out the assortment of hard-used and dated arcade machines (Joust! Berzerk!) set up in an army surplus tent on the edge of the lot overlooking the Zayre's parking lot. The carnival had a open city vibe to it, where groups of kids from different parts of the city would meet up and form temporary alliances.

It was one of the kids from the subdivided hinterlands near the Burlington line, a classmate of mine (due to Woburn's unintuitive boundaries for elementary school districts) who made the above case for the Tilt-A-Whirl's superiority vis-a-vis the Flying Bobs, the Round-Up, or the giant ferris wheel with enclosed spinnable cars. "It's guaranteed to make you puke," he said, and the unspoken challenge contained in his endorsement could not be denied. So the members of our group paired up and gave it a shot.

Rumors about that "kid from two towns over" who lost an arm in the ride aside (and those rumors were as ubiquitous to the carnival's atmosphere as the smells of frying medium and whiskey breath*), a ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl doesn't really instill roller coaster levels of adrenalin-spiked terror. Functionally, the ride is only a step or two up from the kiddie merry-go-rounds featuring bright plastic race cars in place of horses, with a stiff dose of centrifugal force to add some kick.

And it's that force, acting upon a belly packed to the esophagus with junk food and soda, that produces the effect my classmate vouched for. At the ride's conclusion, my friends and I staggered off the exit gantry, and one by one proceeded to lean over and spew forth steaming primitivist murals of half-digested candy apples and popcorn onto the blank canvas of dust and trampled grass before us, all to the oohs, ahhs, and ewwws of the other kids watching. There was even a pointed critiquing session of our efforts, in which I fared rather poorly.

Lack of texture and poor spread radius. It's the story of my life, really.

Wow, that ran longer than planned. Are you ready for a music video thrill ride of thrills. excitement, and cheaply made teddy bears filled with styrofoam pellets? The management asks that you keep your arms and other appendages inside the car at all times.


Dire Straits - Tunnel of Love - The Warsaw Pact's superiority in bumper car technology was completely offset by NATO's fleet of state-of-the-art canal barges.


Depeche Mode - Get the Balance Right - Now watch as we go from moody...


Madness - House of Fun - ...to joyously goofy...


Lush - Hypocrite - ...to gloomy introspection in the course of this non-stop merry-go-round called "life."

Madness - House of Fun (from Madness, 1983)

Lush - Hypocrite (from Split, 1994)

* Maura, who did grow up two towns over from Woburn, says that there was a bona fide carnival-related mutilation back in the day, which could very well be the ur-text from which the stories sprung.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

visual synergy: meet the press

Wait, there's a war going on in Iraq? I was too busy watching Bill O'Reilly discuss the cultural significance of "Firecrotch." This a brave new age of journalism, brothers and sisters! Deboned, defanged, and with record levels of cross-promotion! Why not segue from a report on new prosthetics for war amputees, complete with footage of the new Bionic Woman series, to a Big Pharma-sponsored health report on the dangers of EEBPS -- Excessive Eye Booger Production Syndrome -- and how you can ask your doctor about Sleepiseedimox to cure it? (Side effects may include diarrhea, eye rot, or excessive production of eye boogers.)

Others may lament this sorry state of affairs, but not I. I get my news from music videos.


Ice T - Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous - "Mr. Ice? What was it like working with Judd Nelson and Richard Belzer? Do you still have 'your twelve gauge sawed off'? Any word of a Body Count reunion tour?"


The Tubes - Talk To Ya Later - Suddenly I'm feeling a strange urge to fire up the Atari 2600 and play some Megamania.


Don Johnson - Heartbeat - Here we see an actor pretending to be a musician pretending to be a reporter pretending that The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart never happened.


Adam Ant - Goody Two Shoes - A music video classic featuring the familiar (and portentously tragic) Antean theme of persecution, as well as an appearance by Bond Girl/scream queen Caroline Munro as the female reporter sporting the insanely huge pair of spectacles.


Naked Eyes - Always Something There to Remind Me - "Switched on Bacharach" or "Soft Cell minus the sleaze," if you will.

For me, this song is a most potent nostalgia-inducing totem, its synthesized bell peals are capable of evoking a flood of half forgotten childhood memories, including the location of the AT-AT Driver action figure I misplaced when I was eleven. I'd stop by North Woburn and retrieve the poor thing, but the tree stump I hid it under has been cleared away to make room for a massive subdivision.

Naked Eyes - Always Something There to Remind Me (from Burning Bridges, 1983; also available on The Best of Naked Eyes, 1991)

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

visual synergy: heavy concepts

I remember riding my bike down Forest Park Road in the spring of 1985, and finding a massive bundle of issues of Circus and Hit Parader put out with someone’s trash. It seemed like a fantastic score, until I had lugged the stack home and began to actually read the magazines. The band profiles, reviews, and whatnot seemed so utterly calculated, even to my thirteen year old self, to exploit the frustrations and yearnings of blue collar teenage boys. Dee’s dad wanted him to attend the voc-tech to earn a plumbing apprenticeship – but Dee wanted TO ROCK!

Confronted with the Tiger Beat-dressed-in-studded-wristband reality, my rockitude went into dormancy for almost half a decade, until it was briefly resuscitated by thrash metal’s promise of being the real, dangerous deal. Alas, it was a promise better fulfilled by punk rock, which, despite its own set of intrinsic paradoxes, placed a greater emphasis on outrage and sentiment than on the hollow artistic wizardry of the power ballad or the eight minute guitar solo. Metal’s confusion between technical proficiency and musical greatness is not far removed from the pop music notion that a great singer is someone who can hold a note through an entire Minnesota winter. The American Idol concept of greatness holds no place for Tom Waits.

My rocky relationship with the genre aside, I have a certain fascination with heavy metal culture, in so far as it clearly articulates a particular and common enough strain of adolescent maleness. The key word here is “adolescent.” In recent years, there has been a trend among critics, comedians, and other evangelists of the popcult zeitgeist towards redeeming and ennobling the concept of RAWK and metal, either as a facile camp touchstone or in a celebratory, unironic sense.

The former are easily enough understood, as there is no retro artifact so unassuming that it cannot be dusted off, polished, and sold at a premium to the self-consciously hip. The latter, however, apart from a handful of old fans who didn’t stop believing (Whoa-oh-oh!), seem to be of the arrested development school of contemporary masculinity where “manhood” is a chimera formed from equal parts teenager, frat boy, and film/game/music geek. Is that hypocritical, coming from a man creeping towards age forty who dwells in a state of retrological limbo? Maybe, but as I’ve said whenever friends bring up the notion of “wanting to go back,” if the passing of years has done nothing else for me, it has given me a sense of perspective and cleared any illusions that personal tastes equal inherent quality. There is a world of difference between deciding what to hold on to, and refusing to let go.

Wow, that was a long introduction to a lazy music video post, but sometimes one must follow where one’s muse leads them. Continuing the last week’s Apocalypse Rock theme, here are some pinnacles of the music video art form, heavy metal concept video subcategory, post-apocalypse silliness subset:


Krokus - Screaming in the Night - "Krokus," because Iris, Delphinium, and Portulaca were already taken.


Queensryche - Queen of the Reich - I think this sums up my assertions about the genre and its target demographic pretty well. Listen close you can hear the rolling of polyhedral dice and the crack of the Rifts manual's spine in the background.


Grim Reaper - Fear No Evil - While the song lacks the magnificent bombast and oh-so-quotable title line of the band's earlier "See You in Hell," the video more than makes up for it.

Honestly, though, if I want to watch art-directed, fyoo-cha-riss-tik music video excess, I'd go with this simultaneously ahead of its time and hoplessly dated gem:


Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11 - A testament to the power of one good gimmick, mesh fabric, and super-hold hairspray.

Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Love Missile F1-11 (from Flaunt It!, 1986) - Maura hates it. I love it. What more do you need to know?

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

visual synergy: the biggest thing since World War III

We're not about to let a trivial thing like nuclear Armageddon keep us from rocking, are we?


Deep Purple - Knocking at Your Back Door - I want to be an archaeologist.


Rick Springfield - Human Touch - Along with with rats and roaches, we'll have to add "embarrassing dance routines" to the list of things capable of surviving an atomic holocaust.

I have used that "feigning to stumble" trick on several occasions to get into a hot chick's cyro-pod. It works every time.


Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - You Got Lucky - I've never been much of a Tom Petty fan. I remember my metalhead coworkers at the hospital going ga-ga for Full Moon Fever while I was discovering the joys of Entertainment! (which they classily deemed as "tuneless art-fag crap"). Negative personal associations and my apathy for his music aside, Petty did put out some pretty interesting music videos back in the day.


INXS - Listen Like Thieves - Well, if one band was going to survive the Bomb, one could do worse than INXS. Tragically, singer Michael Hutchence didn't even manage to outlast the 1990's, much less the obliteration of civilization as we know it.

INXS - Listen Like Thieves (from Listen Like Thieves, 1985) - I was aware of INXS and their string of Top 40 hits, but never really listened to the band until I started dating Maura and bought their entire back catalogue (at the time, which was 1992) from a used record shop at the reasonable price of 99 cents per LP. I won't pretend that their material is high art, but I've grown to appreciate their infectiously listenable pop/arena rock sound.

...and because it fits the theme, and you probably would never come across it otherwise:

The Reactors - World War Four (from World War Four, 1980) - One of (at least) three punk bands who went under that moniker in the late 70's/early 80's, these Reactors were a female-fronted act who hailed from San Bernadino. Their LP, like a lot of punk rock obscurities from the era, has become something of a collector's item, commanding prices vastly out of proportion to its aesthetic value. Don't get me wrong; I think it's swell, but not worth missing a mortgage payment over.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

visual synergy: let's get hitched

Wedding season is in full swing, so here's a music video tribute to nuptial bliss...


Nick Lowe - Cruel to Be Kind - Featuring Lowe's then-wife (country singer and Johnny Cash's step-daughter, Carlene Carter) and his Rockpile bandmates.


Billy Idol - White Wedding - Featuring Idol's then-partner Perri Lister, an exploding toaster, and asses shrinkwrapped in black latex.


The Greg Kihn Band - Jeopardy - She seemed like such a catch -- from old Innsmouth stock, dual master's degrees in marine biology and comparative religion, an Olympic level swimmer -- and then she took you to meet her family...


Pet Shop Boys - Heart - So Gandalf is not only the mutant master of magnetism, he's also a vampire? The fanfic/slashfic potential is staggering.

Pet Shop Boys - Heart (from Actually, 1987) - Whenever I listen to or post something by Pet Shop Boys, I feel the disembodied head of Kevin Church peering down over my left shoulder. One out of three times, it's just my overactive imagination at work.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

visual synergy: for the benefit of mister ego

Is "doing stuff for Africa" still the celebrity cause du jour? I ask because I had to close my eyes for a second, and in that space of time the beautiful people might have moved on to another subject of fashionable activism...like stopping cat juggling. Speaking out about starving kids, ethnic strife, and the other trappings of colonialism's putrid legacy is fine and all, but it's important to stay current in one's shallow efforts at advocacy. Darfur may be the new Tibet, but when even lampreys on the underbelly of celebrity culture like K-Fed mention an interest in the cause, it's time to seeks something a little more now. The slum clearances in Mumbai look rather promising in this regard, I'm told.

It makes me long for a simpler time of superficial dabbling in fashionable causes, when all it took to stroke one's ego save the world was a really shitty pop song and spot-the-famous-person music video. The Brits kicked off the trend with the not-terrible Band Aid track "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in 1984, the brainchild of Bob Geldof and Midge Ure, produced by the then-ubiquitous Trevor Horn:



Not to be done by their cousins across the pond, a veritable pantheon of American rock and pop stars came together in 1985 to do it right, and by "right" I mean excruciatingly self-indulgent and unbearably cheesy. As Greil Marcus pointed out, it's rather...odd...how the line "It's a choice we're making" in USA For Africa's "We Are the World" echoes Pepsi's "Choice of a New Generation" ad slogan, considering the song's composers, Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, just happened to be pitchmen for the beverage at the time. "We're saving our own lives" has to set a record for obliviously narcissistic toxicity levels in a pop song.



Canada then responded with its own homegrown effort, which to this day I'm still half convinced is really a hoax perpetrated by the SCTV crowd. (Martin Short as Mike Reno, John Candy as Randy Bachman, Eugene Levy as Joni Mitchell...) When the reality is Northern Lights' "Tears Are Not Enough," satire becomes redundant:



That's all well and good, but where is the type of music that would speak to Andrew circa 1985? Where is the call to compassionate action targeted towards "the kidz." specifically the ones rocking their air guitars to Out of the Cellar and making laminated pentagrams in shop class? Have no fear, Hear n' Aid has got you covered with "We're Stars." (Hey! Who invited that dude from Journey?):



Every good popcult trend needs a corresponding parody, and The Ramones ably stepped up to the plate with the video for "Something to Believe In" (Maura's favorite Ramones track), featuring a quite awesome list of "celebrity" guest appearances:



The high point of this popcult ripple? Hands down, I'd say that honor goes to Artists United Against Apartheid's "Sun City," which featured a diverse roster of musicians (including Joey Ramone and a slew of old school rappers) and senses of conviction and geopolitical awareness sorely lacking in the other efforts. Keep an eye out for "possessed by the Devil" Bono (Maura's description, not mine):



Artists United Against Apartheid - Sun City (from Sun City, 1985) - How times have changed since then. Nelson Mandela has been freed, apartheid is no more, and a stay at the Sun City resort was the grand prize on the last season of Celebrity Fit Club.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

visual synergy: getting medieval on your videos


Men Without Hats - The Safety Dance - Having gotten their synthpop groove on, the merry residents of Summerisle then proceeded to the shoreline to sacrifice Sergeant Howie to their heathen gods.

Adam & The Ants - Ant Rap - "It was incredibly stupid, yet we danced to it." - Maura, Queen of Animals and lapsed Antperson

Real Life - Send Me an Angel - When Chewbacca met that one gal who works at Hot Topic and insists her name is "Countess Natasha" even though her name tag says "Bernice." Also: Check out Little Lord Fauntelroy on keyboards.

Real Life - Send Me an Angel (from Heartland, 1983; also available on New Wave Hits of the 80's, Volume 11, 1995) - I mock, but I do happen to like this bit of Aussie new wave. I could have done without that odd rock riff near the end, though.

According to Wikipedia (which I admit carries the same weight as "according to that street person who rants about Perry Como and black helicopters"), there have been no fewer than seventeen versions of this song released by the band in the past quarter-century. My personal favorite is the 12" kazoo and helium extended dance mix given away as an incentive for prospective Betamax machine buyers. It edged out the Macarena Fiesta dub mix by the slimmest of margins.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

visual synergy: we're an animated band

A neat visual gimmick? A statement about the artificiality and superficiality of modern pop music? The basis for this week's lazy music video post?


a-ha - Take on Me - The cartoon bits are what everyone remembers, but few people realize that the live action sequences were filmed using a then-experimental process known as Mentos-Vision.


Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood - Other bands may dabble with the whole cartoon thing, but the Gorillaz took it all the way. I really, really want a hand puppet of the rapping ghost from this video. Anyone want to make one for me?


Bloc Party - Helicopter - I get odd flashes of déjà vu whenever I listen to modern indie pop bands. It's not flashes of historical awareness (like being able to detect traces of Roxy Music in Duran Duran's "Hungry like the Wolf") or obvious sources of inspiration (like with Marsheaux and the Human League and OMD), but rather a feeling of false nostalgia, that I've heard these songs before, but can't place where.


ABC - (How to Be a) Millionaire - I can't get past how much animated Martin Fry looks like my brother in this video. All that's missing are a pair of spectacles and a Captain America t-shirt.

ABC - (How to Be a) Millionaire (from How to Be a...Zillionaire!, 1985) - Such a perfect embodiment of an era in musical form, made even more entertaining by the way my brain overlays Eddie Murphy's "You've got no ice cream, 'cause your on welfare" on top of the "I've seen the future/I can't afford it" parts. Given the choice, though, I'd rather listen to the band's more substantial Lexicon of Love LP.

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

visual synergy: accidents will happen

Hamm: All is…all is…all is what? (Violently.) All is what?

Clov: What all is? In a word? Is that what you want to know? Just a moment. (He turns the telescope on the without, looks, lowers the telescope, turns towards Hamm.) Corpsed. (Pause.) Well, content?

- Samuel Beckett, Endgame

Here's to a childhood spent in the clutches of apocalyptic dread and 80's pop music...


Nena - 99 Luftballons (English Version) - Andrew's Dating Do's and Dont's:

Do: find an activity that both you and your date enjoy
Don't: accidentally cause a nuclear war


Fishbone - Party at Ground Zero - Bunker parties are always chancy affairs. No matter how ausipicous a note they begin upon, the festivities will inevitably brought down by cyanide, self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or the spectre of radioactive death showing up unannounced.


Men at Work - It's a Mistake - What is this term "mistake?" Some sort of archaic nonsense word like "responsibility," "accountability," or "contrition?"


Ultravox - Dancing with Tears in My Eyes - Nuclear power doesn't kill people. Lethal doses of ionizing radiation let loose by mechanical or human error kill people. So have a bit of faith, people. Why shouldn't the same utility industries who can't resolve a simple billing inquiry be allowed to tamper with the fundamental forces of nature?

Supernova (well, one of the many acts using that name) recorded a techno/dance cover of this song a few years ago. I considered using it as the token music track for today's installment of "visual synergy," but why settle for a saccharine imitation?

Ultravox - Dancing with Tears in My Eyes (from The Collection, 1984)

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

visual synergy: table for eight, please

I'm feeling a bit peckish. Anyone else fancy a bite to eat? There's plenty of room at the table...


Peter Gabriel - Games Without Frontiers - Exposing the machinations of the global Parcheesi conspiracy. Peter Gabriel's pioneering work in posing dramatically while holding a giant flashlight would have a massive influence on Frankie Goes to Hollywood a couple years down the line.


Ratt - Round and Round - You bring the D-Con; I'll bring the glue traps.


INXS - The One Thing - It's like that one scene from Fielding's Tom Jones, but run through an early 80's low budget music video filter.

Don't listen to the naysayers; cat fur makes everything taste better.


Tenpole Tudor - Swords of a Thousand Men - I'm happy to say that I've never eaten at one of those medieval-themed restaurants, nor ever had the desire to eat at one. I also make it a point to steer clear of Renaissance "faires" on general principle. If I have to see a bunch of people in period costumes acting foolish, I want some oddball punk rock thrown into the mix, which is where these guys come in. Frontman Edward Tudor-Pole has also had a long and interesting acting career, having starred in such films as The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle (where he sang "Who Killed Bambi"), several Alex Cox productions, and the utterly abysmal adaptation of Colin MacInnes's Absolute Beginners.

Tenpole Tudor - Swords of a Thousand Men (from Eddie, Old Bob, Dick and Gary, 1981)

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

visual synergy: Private Hudson goes MTV

Because nobody else had the stones to do it, this week’s lazy music video post features the glory that is Bill Paxton.

“Why Bill Paxton?” you may ask, to which I must respond “Why not?” He’s a man whose acting career has featured such high points as getting killed by an Alien, a Terminator, and a Predator. His role in Near Dark inspired my younger self to attach spurs to my punk boots, thus leading to all sorts of escalator-related hi-jinx. He managed to channel the dignified demeanor of Norville Rogers while fending off hordes of chitinous nightmares (though none so nightmarish as his Big Love co-star Chloë Sevigny) on the surface of LV-426.

Any man willing to take second billing to a flying CGI cow is all right in my book. Plus, he had a small part in Streets of Fire, which automatically puts him beyond reproach as far as I’m concerned. (Don’t look at me that way.)



Paxton directed and appeared in this video for Barnes and Barnes’ classic novelty song “Fish Heads.” Barnes and Barnes was a collaborative project between Robert Hamier and former child star Billy Mumy, and their musical output is the most damning indictment yet of a childhood spent in the company of a slinky-armed robot and ne’er-do-well scientist with a penchant for alliterative insults.



Jumping ahead a couple years to the golden age of big budget, high concept music videos, here’s the video for Pat Benatar’s “Shadows of the Night,” featuring Paxton as a Nazi officer. According to the IMDB, Paxton learned to speak German in preparation for his role. How does one say “Game over, man!” auf Deutsch? (And, yes, that’s Judge Reinhold in there as part of Benatar’s crew. He'll pop again before this post is over. Trust me.)



Besides appearing in other people’s music videos, Paxton starred in couple of his own as the frontman for Martini Ranch, an oddball pop band reminiscent of Wall of Voodoo, Oingo Boingo, and Devo. The above video for 1986’s “How Can the Labouring Man Find Time for Self-Culture?” was directed by James Cameron, and features cameos by fellow Cameron regulars Michael Biehn and Jenette Goldstein, as well as appearances by Anthony Michael Hall and Judge Reinhold. (See, I told you.)

Historical (and celebrity) curiosity value aside, the song is a fun bit of 80’s pop, and features the Devolutionary talents of Mark Mothersbaugh. (Musically, it reminds me a lot of China Crisis’ “Working With Fire and Steel.”) It’s hardly a “classic” by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s still far better than the overreaching and frequently painful efforts of current-gen actors/actresses-turned-pop musicians.

Martini Ranch - How Can the Labouring Man Find Time for Self-Culture? (from a 1986 12” single)

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

visual synergy: left of the cacklefruit

It's a balmy Tuesday in May, and the clock on the wall says "It's time for another lazy music video post." Our special for two day is two eggs served over easy, with just a dash of pretense:



Front 242 - Headhunter - "A year here and he still dreamed of ovoidspace, hope fading nightly. All the Lipitor he took, all the shells he'd cracked and the pans he greased in the Big Coop, and he'd still see the matrix in his dreams, bright yellow circles of yoke unfolding across that sticky, colorless void... "



The Cure - Let's Go to Bed - "Lol, when Robert Smith asks you to share an apartment with him, you say "NO!!!"

I know there's something I've missed, but that's just as well. I ought to keep a close eye on the cholesterol intake, right?