found in the pile of old stuff

[calimac]

Some people have been watching new TV shows. I've been watching old music videos.

There was a brief period in the early 80s when I listened to pop radio frequently, because for some mysterious reason songs that I actually liked were getting airplay. It suddenly occurred to me yesterday that most of those songs probably had music videos, although I never saw any of them. (I did see MTV sporadically, usually in hotel rooms during SF conventions, but I rarely found a song I liked there.) Now that I have access to YouTube, I can catch up on what I missed.

And my guess for the reason for a few songs I actually liked making it to the charts is that they were assisted by having really good videos - weird stuff, back when weird stuff of this kind was a novelty. I'm especially taken with the surreal silliness in Men at Work's "Down Under" and Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want To Have Fun". I admit skepticism at the implied message in the latter, which is that if everyone would just stop being so uptight, the way they'd all like to have fun is by dancing at a crowded, noisy party in Cyndi's bedroom, but as with the equally dubious message of the film Shakespeare in Love (writers can't really make anything up, but can only write their own biographies), it's presented with such winning wit and joie de vivre that you can't really object.

This may all be 25-year-old news to you, but while I've known these songs all that time, the videos are genuinely new news to me. Anyway it makes a pleasant break from the grinding task of finding a new rental home, a job I'll write about after it's finished.

Comments

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

Jennie discovered MTV at like 5 (1979) and the rest was Harrigan household silliness. Especially the Weird Al versions of all those videos.

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

Ah, I hadn't ever seen "Down Under," and hadn't seen "Girls" for years. I noticed that near the end of the latter, when the parent open the door to her room, they re-do the end of the "stateroom" scene from A Night at the Opera.

A video I'd love to produce would be to Al Stewart's "Night Train to Munich," and I told him so when I got to speak to him at his concert in Ross a few months back. It's the sort of thing I'd like to throw money at if money was no object, just because I can see the storyboard for the video and we'd get to play with European steam trains.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

Ahhhh. Good stuff. You might see if you can find Men Without Hats's "Safety Dance," one of the bloody silliest videos of all time that isn't a parody. (WAY did parody the song, but not the video, putting the lyrics to "The Brady Bunch" to it.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Found it. Yes, that is very silly, and I dimly remember the song as well, amazingly enough.

I also listened to the Weird Al version. I love the way he put the Brady Bunch lyrics to this, and note his inclusion of part of Gilligan's Island in "Amish Paradise". Does he do that sort of thing - setting famous lyrics to totally different tunes - often?

By the way, while poking around in the course of this, I came across this awesomely ridiculous LOTR film mashup.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

He's done it a couple of times. The other one that comes to mind is his fitting "Beverly Hillbillies" to Dire Straits's song "Money for Nothing".

If that mashup had gone on a minute longer I believe they would be picking my brains off the walls. But at the length it was it's delightful.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I found another good one.

Remember the Lego version of the "Knights of the Round Table" song from Holy Grail?

This is even funnier, I swear.