Music Video Review
Simple Music Videos
Not So Simple Origins
June 23, 2018


Some of the most iconic music videos are also the simplest: a face, a set of faces, a set in a white room, a set in white but not a room, and a set in a public bathroom.


A Face
A music video can be career defining. Sinéad O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2U was that kind of video. It's mostly just O'Connor's face as she passionately sings the song written by Prince, with a locked-off camera and a black background. The John Maybury directed video seems to be shot in one take, with added scenery video at the beginning, middle, and end, with shots from her I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got album cover. At about 3:50, O'Connor teared up, as she thought of her mother who had died in 1985 from a car accident.


A Set of Faces
A music video can launch an industry. Music videos were fathered by silent films with locally added music (piano, organ), cartoons designed to sell songs (Looney Tunes, Merry Melodies, Fleischer Screen Songs...), musicals, and The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night. But there was only one Mama. Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody was scheduled to be performed at Caird Hall in Dundee, Scotland, but the band was concerned about trying to lip sync such a complex song, so they created a video in the evening of November 10, 1975. Inspired by the drummer's idea to bring their second album cover to life, director Bruce Gowers started shooting after work at 7pm and finished in time to hit the pub before it closed at 11pm. Other than fading transitions, all video effects were done on film at the time of the shooting. The effect of Freddie Mercury's face cascading away (during the echoed words “magnifico” at 3:27  and “go” at 3:56) was video feedback by pointing the camera at a monitor. The honeycombed illusion (repeating between 3:18 and 4:12) was created by filming with a six-sectioned honeycomb lens. After five hours of editing and a total cost of less than $7,000 (£4,500), the video was aired on BBC's Top of the Pops. At six minutes from start to gong, the song did not fit the mold for a successful single. The success of Bohemian Rhapsody made record companies take notice of promotional videos. It also led to Bohemian Rhapsody by the Muppets and Bohemian Rhapsody on handbells.


A Set in a White Room
Life is a do over. Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al with Chevy Chase was a replacement music video. The first video was a monitor view of Simon performing the song on the Saturday Night Live stage at Rockefeller Center. It was dull. You Can Call Me Al debuted on Billboard's Hot 100 at 83 and only made it to number 44 before dropping back down the 1986 charts. SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels helped Simon by talking to Chevy Chase. The revised video is set in a white room with pink lighting. The door at the back opens. Simon and Chase enter at the same time and briefly get stuck in the door. They sit down, shake hands, and Chevy Chase lip sync-interrupts Simon, taking over the song. Simon mostly sits and waits to join in on the chorus as a backup singer or to play an instrument. Simon leaves the room three times. Directed by Gary Weis, Chevy Chase's head is partly out of the frame several times in the video, as if the shots had been framed for the shorter Simon. At 1:59, Chase drops a cup of water through the drum holder. At 2:15, Chase catches the penny whistle tossed by Simon and pockets it. At 3:45, Simon fakes the impossible bass guitar riff. The impossible bass guitar sound was performed by Baghiti Khumalo on May 10th, 1986. Simon extended the sound by adding the recording forward and backwards. At 4:20, Simon cracks up at turning to sing into Chase's trumpet.

The story behind “and Betty when you call me, you can call me Al” came from a running joke between Paul Simon and his then-wife, Peggy Harper. They were at a party with fellow guest Pierre Boulez, the French composer-conductor. As Boulez prepared to make his exit, he tapped Simon on the shoulder. “Sorry I have to leave, Al,” he said with civility. “And give my best to Betty.”


A Set in White but not a Room
Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) by Beyoncé has her and two other dancers in black leotards and heels dancing in a white studio. A simple, choreographed dancing video inspired by the Bob Fosse-choreographed 1969 performance of Gwen Verdon and two other dancers in “Mexican Breakfast,” which had gone viral on the Internet in 2007. The 2008 Single Ladies, directed by Jake Nava, became its own Internet sensation with copies and parodies.


A Set in a Public Bathroom
As a location on a budget, nothing beat the Los Angeles city hall women's bathroom on a Sunday, partly because the men's room wasn't big enough for the crew filming Jewel's Save Your Soul. Geoff Moore directed the video and hired friends to play characters at $50 each.

Jewel told Entertainment Weekly, “The bathroom idea was my concept. I had read a bunch of treatments, and realized none of them were necessarily me. I grew up outdoors and in nature, and I found the only place in cities I could be alone was the bathroom. I would honestly go in there just for breaks. And I always loved the people watching. All different economic groups have to use the restroom: poor people, rich people... I would go into my little stall and be overwhelmed, and I had dirt from Alaska that I carried in a little Tupperware container, and I would smell it. And I had cottonwood balm that smells like the valley where I’m from, and it was just a little place of meditation. That’s why I made one of the stalls in the video an altar with candles and vines growing up the sides. It was my only way of centering myself.”

Another good version of Save Your Soul was from a karaoke bar featuring Karen from frozen foods who only sings at Christmas parties.

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Music Associations: Sinéad O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2U, Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody, Paul Simon - You Can Call Me Al, Beyoncé - Single Ladies, and Jewel - Save Your Soul.


















Music Video Review
The Dark Side of the Rainbow
June 21, 2018


What I've been doing is providing a spectrum of juxtaposition. To me, there are distinct categories and histories that help to understand music videos. While I'd love to just highlight the finer colors of music in action, national issues darken many discussions.

Yes Please Productions and ABKCO Music & Records created a music video 50 years late for the Rolling Stone's most joyful song, She's A Rainbow. Better late than monochrome.

Not all music videos are record industry productions. Some clever people matched up Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon album with the Wizard Of Oz from 1939. They created a video and called it the Dark Side Of The Rainbow. The album has to repeat about two and a half times to match the movie, but otherwise the juxtaposition is interesting... for at least the first hour.

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Music Association: Rolling Stones - She's A Rainbow














Music Video Review
This Old Heart
June 19, 2018


This Old Heart Of Mine was an Isley Brothers song twice remade by Rod Stewart. The second remake was in 1989 with Ron Isley. The music video of Rod Stewart and Ron Isley was directed by David Hogan. Not a great deal of care was taken in the making of this video and that might be why I've always liked it.

When I think of this video, the first thing I think of is Rod Stewart's dancing. I like Rod Stewart, I know some of his in-laws, but I'm being generous by calling his bug stomping “dancing.” I have sympathy for Ron Isley.

The second thing I think of are the backup dancers in green vinyl. They are steps above the models in Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love from a few years earlier.

Lessons were learned.

The backup dancers were not given weapons (the guitars) to bop the singer in the back of the head. And just to be safe, the models were moved waaaaaaaaaaaaay back. If Ron and Rod were in the Twin Cities, the backup dancers were in Wisconsin, for insurance purposes.

The backup dancer in the blonde wig was South African actress Musetta Vander. She was one of the three sirens in O Brother Where Art Thou. Vander was also Zander's teacher who was actually a preying mantis in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (oops spoiler -- men lost their heads).

The video doesn't take itself too seriously. It employs oodles of green screen cutouts as if it were the last lesson learned by film student editors. If you watch the video about six to ten times, you'll see little odd-ball moments like Rod and Ron marching to the side, and Ron looking to the director incredulously.

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Music Association: Rod Stewart & Ron Isley - This Old Heart Of Mine











Music Video Review
A Hit With A Guitar
June 18, 2018

Patrick Nagel was an iconic pin-up artist of the early 1980s. Nagel painted ink-black haired women with thin gray lines as highlights. The women of his paintings had chalk-white skin, cherry-red lipstick, four-to-six inch earrings, in front of angular cool backgrounds of Payne's gray or periwinkle in an acrylic marriage of art and Nouveau Deco graphic design. Nagel's work looks effortlessly simple. It appeared in Playboy, Architectural Digest, and on Duran Duran's Rio album in 1982.

His assistant Barry Haun once asked the tall, quiet Vietnam vet what it was like to be shot at, and Nagel replied, “You learn to not take it personally.” His health plan of cigarettes, coffee, cheeseburgers, candy bars, and Pepsi caught up to him when he offered to do aerobics for the American Heart Association. He jumped around on television for 15 minutes, left, and died of a heart attack in his car. He was 38.

Nagel's art influenced media after his death in 1984.


Thirawit Boonthanakit was born in Thailand, grew up in Kenya, and moved to New York in 1978. Boonthanakit was the Nagel-inspired artist of the 1986 comic book series Micra.


While Duran Duran was on hiatus, guitarist Andy Taylor joined Robert Palmer (who quit his graphic design job in 1968) for the 1986 Riptide album. The album featured the song Addicted To Love, which was supposed to have been a duel with Chaka Khan.

For the music video, British photographer turned director Terence Donovan stylized five women with Patrick Nagel art-inspired makeup and hair. The models were told to act like mannequins but were also given guitar playing instructions and wine. The musician instructor quit after an hour. Standing in place and having her makeup retouched, model Mak Gilchrist accidentally hit Robert Palmer in the back of his head with her guitar, causing him to hit the microphone with his face.

The overall look of Robert Palmer singing in front of Nagel-like models was repeated for Palmer's music video's I Didn't Mean to Turn You On (from 1986 with 9 models), Simply Irresistible (from 1988 with 13 models),  and Change His Ways (from 1989 with animated model ducks). The style of these videos was repeated and parodied over and over by many others.

Robert Palmer died in a Paris hotel room from a heart attack after recording a television retrospective in 2003.


Music videos and TV appearances introduced a problem with music that radio never had -- seeing the musicians.

Replacing the band with models was one way of addressing the reality of musicians. It made some sense in the years before Vevo and YouTube.

André 3000 of Outkast took that to a whole other level (see previous post). This year's Girls Like You by Maroon 5 took that to a whole other level (see June 1st post).


And all of this has to make more sense than Bizarro-President Trump's immigration policy of separating 2,000 children from their parents and warehousing the children in former big box stores.

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Music Association: Bonnie Tyler - It's A Heart Ache














Music Video Review
Look-alikes
June 16, 2018


As a writer who makes his own greeting cards, it's weird that I was in a store recently looking at greeting cards. Even weirder still was my looking at Father's Day cards and Graduation cards without good reason for either. Back and forth I read between the neighboring card sections, until I lost track of which cards were which. I found it easy to turn a Father's Day card into a Graduation card with just a few words or letters changed.



The original card says:

The slightly altered card says:

I also drew a graduation cap on the camouflaged deer, but otherwise the revised card was nearly alike to the original.

If I were to categorize my favorite music videos, many of them have look-alike backup singers or backup dancers. Backup singers and dancers are often lost on stage at concerts but can be perfectly supportive of the bands in music videos. Not always, sometimes they wack the singer in the back of the head or they become a preying mantis or something, but I'll get to all that in a later post.

Often the backup singers and dancers look alike to some degree and have a less-than-Olympic level of synchronization. They don't always dance like they have had a rehearsal. They are not necessarily of one mind.

One of my favorite music videos and my first DVD ever was Hey Ya by Outkast, directed by Bryan Barber. The music video has backup singers, The Love Haters, who are dressed alike, to help them look alike, which was easy because all three were played by André 3000 (plus all five band members). It wore him out. He started by playing lead singer André “Ice Cold” 3000, the most dynamic of the eight performers and ended with guitarist Johnny Vulture being cool sitting on a stool. The back story was the royal green Love Below band was leading the American music invasion of Britain. More than 100 screaming female extras were cast as the audience, who stayed past their parts to watch André performing the song some of 23 times from start to finish.


Hey Ya became the most downloaded song on iTunes in 2003, when iTunes became Windows-compatible, making it the first song with Platinum (one million) downloads.

It led to a revival of the Polaroid company, who gratefully and gently reminded customers that shaking a Polaroid can damage the picture.

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Music Association: Outkast - Hey Ya










Music Video Review
Bridge of Change
June 14, 2018


The MPR raccoon (#MPRraccoon) that climbed a 24-story St. Paul building (with nap and stretch breaks) was rescued and will be released on private property in the southwest suburbs (not necessarily a paisley park).

The MPR raccoon seemed like an ideal photo-op for a nature photographer, yet my motto is usually let nature be natural. You know... wild not zoos, support habitats, no radio-collars... hang on while I swat a mosquito... so instead last night was a last hour visit to the 24th Street pedestrian bridge over 35W. The 24th Street pedestrian bridge, with its elevated view of the Minneapolis skyline, will be closed tomorrow and torn out. Something lower - less scenic is planned.






Watching the sunset from the bridge were people on bikes, people in strollers, some dogs, and people with cameras... not just cellphones... actual cameras, while drivers below honked “Hello.”

Small gold-fuzzy bumblebees were on the west end of the bridge, trying to kick people off. Apparently they think it's their bridge.

In music, a bridge is an interlude between two main parts of the composition. The guitar lick in Aerosmith's Walk This Way is not a very good example of a bridge. The music video of Run-DMC's Walk This Way is a good example of a bridge between Rap music and Rock music, rising stars and setting suns. The 1986 video shows a seemingly solid wall between two practicing bands: Run-DMC and Aerosmith. Technically, it's not Aerosmith, just Steven Tyler and Joe Perry with other musicians in the shadows. It's the Aerosmith that Run-DMC could afford. Both bands practice their versions of Walk This Way. Tyler breaks through the wall and ends up performing with Run-DMC. The Jon Small directed video effectively empowered Aerosmith for a new generation, as it was Tyler who broke the wall, not Run-DMC, who were more like Tyler's backup singers.

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Music Associations: Aerosmith - Walk This Way & Run-DMC - Walk This Way















Music Video Review
Earthquake Dance
June 9, 2018


Elaine May was talking to Mike Nichols on-stage at the Walter Reade Theater in New York.

They talked about making movies, the Weinsteins, Giuliani, a Presidential administration ignoring Truth, and possible changes through the upcoming Congressional elections. It was 2006.

For awhile, Nichols dominated the conversation by asking four to five-part questions, with a whining voice clearly appropriated by Bill Maher. When Nichols finally lets her respond, what does he do? He gets out a white tablecloth from his pocket to wipe his eyes and nose.

About twelve minutes later Elaine May says, “We adapt very quickly to being treated very badly.”

Right. That is partly the salvation of humanity... and its horror.

We should expect the best and hold people to a higher standard than they give us, instead of accepting school shootings, Presidential tantrums, democracy breaking, and calling it the New Normal. Who is more wrong: the people who freak out on planes or everyone who accepts bad behavior from airlines and airports?!? A dear friend in his 90s was on a flight to Hawaii to see his family. The flight attendants took away his oxygen tank. His health deteriorated rapidly, and he died within months.

Music videos dance in an upside-down world.

• In 1951, Stanley Donen directed Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding, which has Astaire dancing on the walls and the ceiling to the song “You're All the World to Me.” Elaine May has been dating director Stanley Donen since 1999. Donen says he has proposed to her “about 172 times.”
• In 1986, Stanley Donen directed Lionel Richie's music video “Dancing on the Ceiling,” which used a bigger room and had more people dancing on the walls and ceiling but wasn't half as good. The light fixture, furniture, and doors of Royal Wedding made the room more believable, more normal.
• In 1997, Jonathan Glazer directed the “Virtual Insanity” music video for Jamiroquai, with what appears to be a giant moving floor, but really it's the walls and the ceiling and the camera that are moving as one piece.
• In 2016, Damian Kulash and Trish Sie directed the “Upside Down & Inside Out” music video by OK Go. The band and two acrobats are floating and spinning in zero gravity on many Russian S7 Airline parabolic flights.

In hindsight, it turns out we were always “head over heels” and “head over feet.”

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Music Associations: Alanis Morissette - Head Over Feet
                            & Tears For Fears - Head Over Heels














Music Video Review
Think
June 6, 2018


President Trump thinks he can pardon himself, and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has reacted saying, “No one is above the law.” Trump started asking around if he could pardon himself at least as early as last July. The President really ought to think.

Bringing us to the second best song from the 1978 movie The Blues Brothers, Think by Aretha Franklin. It's a strong song. Sure, her lip-syncing is off, but she's concentrating on hitting her marks, while explaining things to Matt “Guitar” Murphy. Freedom means enjoying a system of checks and balances.

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Music Association: Aretha Franklin - Think







Music Video Review
It's A Cartoon World
June 4, 2018


It's a cartoon world when the President thinks he can go pardon himself. (That's not what we told you to go do to yourself, Donnie.) He says what he thinks, and he's wrong, but he doesn't listen, and never learns, and continues to be wrong. He is Mr. Opposite. Everything he says and does is the opposite of right. When he is unsure, he contradicts himself to make sure he's wrong at least half the time.

He's like that character in Superman comics. No, not Superman, not Clark Kent, not Jimmy Olsen, not Lex Luthor... Bizarro.

Bizarro is a creature of destruction and opposites, either a villain or a hopeless idiot, take your pick. There is no in between.



The related music video for today is a crumpled cartoon distortion of reality in the squiggled lines of black and white absolutes, from 1985, A-Ha's Take On Me. We get dragged into a rotoscoped motorcycle race and chase by Steve Barron, who had also directed Michael Jackson's Billie Jean and Money for Nothing by Dire Straits. That's Steve Barron, not to be confused with Steve Bannon, who dragged us into a whole crappier crumpled cartoon (pardon my language).

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Music Association: A-Ha - Take On Me











Music Video Review
The Internet World Votes
June 2, 2018


The entire world is not on the Internet, but a whole lot of the world is.

The top YouTube videos are almost exclusively music videos. And the top YouTube video by far with 5 billion views is Despacito by Luis Fonsi, featuring Daddy Yankee, and directed by Carlos Pérez.

Despacito is a video celebration of Puerto Rico and Latin American culture, showcasing the La Perla neighborhood of San Juan, while focusing on Luis Fonsi and Zuleyka Rivera. The rocky Atlantic coast, the colorful buildings, graffiti, chickens, dominoes, haircuts, and dancing are the daytime backdrop, while Fonsi and Rivera pose in the foreground. At nighttime, it's all about the dancing. Zuleyka Rivera is a telenovela actress and the 2006 Miss Puerto Rico and Miss Universe, who gave birth to her son in 2012 here in Minnesota.

The lyrics of the Latin pop-rap song are about a man... let's say, romancing a woman with innuendo: “Let me trespass your danger zones, until I make you scream, and you forget your last name.” It's either romantic innuendo, or it's comedy, or it's sexual harrassment. It all depends on the place, the people, and the moment. Despacito means slowly.

The music video was filmed in December 2016 and was released in January 2017.  By August 2017, it had 3 billion views. On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico as a Category 4 hurricane with gusts of 113 mph hitting San Juan. La Perla was largely destroyed. To make a bad situation worse, FEMA had plastic tarp contractor problems and longstanding rules preventing them from giving aid to storm victims who don't have title to their homes as is often the case in La Perla. The music video became more of a record of what once was. And slowly became more of a description of FEMA and hurricane recovery.

Slowly might also describe money from YouTube, which doesn't pay creators based on views even though it charges advertisers either by views or ad clicks. Either way, if Luis Fonsi and UMG - Universal Music Latino aren't making millions, they should legally knock on YouTube's door.

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Music Association: Luis Fonsi ft. Daddy Yankee - Despacito










Music Video Review
Maroon 5 - Girls Like You
June 1, 2018


Music videos can go in two directions. It can be all about the music or all about the video. Maroon 5's Girls Like You is the sort of song that is good, but the music video elevates it.

Adam Levine sings while a camera spins around him with a variety of famous women rotating out from behind him.

The women are Camila Cabello, Phoebe Robinson, Aly Raisman, Sarah Silverman, Gal Gadot, Lilly Singh, Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, Trace Lysette, Tiffany Haddish, Angy Rivera, Franchesca Ramsey, Millie Bobby Brown, Ellen DeGeneres, Cardi B, Jennifer Lopez, Chloe Kim, Alex Morgan, Mary J. Blige, Beanie Feldstein, Jackie Fielder, Danica Patrick, Minnesota's own Ilhan Omar, Elizabeth Banks, Ashley Graham, Rita Ora, and Levine’s wife and daughter.

Cool video. The best I've seen in a while.

The video was released yesterday and was directed by David Dobkin.

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Music Associations: Maroon 5 - Girls Like You & Smithereens - A Girl Like You






Landmine Hopscotch

Superman

Cambridge Analytica's proxy war for Spanky

Impact Investing



Holiday Gifs of Cats and Kittens Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5  


Southdale Hennepin Library

Wonder Woman

Food Fraud