Music Video Review
Make A
Statement
June 30, 2018This
month I've reviewed 27 music videos with 8 additional music videos
mentioned plus several movies in 14 posts for the
Hopes and Dreams - Music Video
Spectacular. I'm not done. Next!
The
Cars' music video
Drive takes
a short ride of emotions.
A group of
people were listening to the unreleased music for the
Heartbeat City
album at Cars' manager Elliot Roberts' house in 1984. Next-door
neighbor and actor Timothy Hutton was there. The next day Roberts asked
Hutton what he thought of the new music. Hutton talked about
Drive
and what he visualized for a music video. Roberts talked with Ric
Ocasek and the next day told Hutton they wanted him to direct the music
video. For two days the next month Hutton was directing the video
at Astoria Studios in New York, with The Cars and model
Paulina
Porizkova.
Starting from a pool table pocket, the
video surveys
a closed bar. A man sings while sitting at a table. A woman in
a
white shirt dress draws on the white wall behind her while
sitting in a heap. Another man in a smoking jacket smokes a
cigarette. The bar people are mannequin memories. The woman plays with
her hair until she sees a masked figure. The man in the smoking jacket
asks the woman a question. She answers emotionally. He responds
angrily. The view from above spins them backwards. She sits and cries.
She laughs but cries. The Cars are only mannequins on stage. Signs say,
“
Happy
Hour 5-7pm” and “
Oldies
Nite.” The woman watches from a window and turns away.
It's
one of those music videos that oddly needs the music to understand the
visuals. When put together, the
you
in the song is the woman, Paulina Porizkova. She's the
poor thing
that needs to be cared for, driven home, picked up, and paid attention.
The upshot of all of it was it brought Porizkova and Ocasek together,
presumably to have him take care of her in all those ways.
Some music
videos have high ideals, using their platform to address the
issues of the day.
In 1995, the HIV
epidemic and illegal drugs were the
subjects of TLC's
Waterfalls
directed by F. Gary Gray. In the slot canyons of the city, a mother
pleads with her son. He leaves and his drug deal goes bad. As he lays
on the sidewalk, his mother's spirit cries over him. Amidst the throaty
lyrics, a couple has unprotected sex. He's not looking well. A picture
frame slideshows a medley of her boyfriends. The son's ghost tries to
hug his mother. The boyfriend disappears. The girlfriend disappears.
From
2017, Logic's music video
1-800-273-8255
is about the lack of support for a young man struggling with acceptance
due to his sexuality. Ultimately, he calls for help.
The
video had 276 million hits, and calls increased to the suicide hotline.
(He
took too long to call.)Sometimes
the ideals are smaller in scale.
United Breaks Guitars
is the 2009 story of how United Airlines baggage handlers broke
musician
Dave Carroll's guitar. The full break down is at the
United
Breaks Guitars wikipedia page.
That's
about it.
Now
we're at 31 music video reviews for a month that only has 30 days. One
extra! And yet I barely mentioned Michael Jackson and am only now
mentioning either Britney Spears or Madonna (
Borderline
&
Vogue).
Music Association: Madonna -
BorderlineMusic Video Review
Campy
June
29, 2018A
smoking, black 1969 Chevrolet Camaro sped down Ghost Town Road between
Calico and Barstow, California. A big white star highlighted each of
the two doors, while a wealth of bullet holes decorated the driver's
door. Stylo in silver ornamented the front grill. The subsequent lack
of air-flow required
(let's
say) a tri-butterfly hood scoop to feed an
otherwise choking V8 engine. Murdoc drove, while 2-D rode shotgun
(let's say).
In the back seat, Cyborg Noodle dealt with a bullet hole in her
forehead. They are chased by a cherry-red 1968 Chevrolet El Camino
driven by a shiny-headed Bruce Willis, who gives the camera a look.
This
is the 2010 Gorillaz music video
Stylo,
directed by Jamie Hewlett & Pete Candeland.
Where
are they going? I don't know. Why are they being chased? I don't know.
Why is Bruce Willis involved in this? Because he's Bruce Willis, dammit.
Some
music videos are just campy fun.
Bruce
Willis gives a look. If he were purple, he'd be Thanos. You
don't have to understand.
The
Swedish Chef from the Muppets doesn't always speak clearly enough for
anyone to fully understand. I used to know a guy who looked like him.
The Swedish Chef provided an instructional
Popcorn
music video with performance assistance by Bill Barretta in 2010.
Popcorn
was once performed by Hot Butter and was made available through K-Tel's
22 Explosive Hits - original hits by the original artists - album.
Except Hot Butter was not the original artist of Popcorn.
Gershen
Kingsley was the composer of Popcorn on a Moog synthesizer. I used to
know the president of Moog, but that doesn't change my revulsion at
The Princess Bride synthesizer soundtrack
by Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits. An old woman in the crowd of peasants
cried out, “
Boooo!”
This is starting to sound like a VH-1 Pop-Up
video... informative... in a word association kind of way.
Music
videos often handle romance in a naturally campy way.
A
man met a woman and invited her to take a ride on his yacht. So then he
rowed her in a rowboat named, “
Myott.”
They capsized, a shark approached, and they end up on a deserted island
about ten miles from Paradise Island.
The 1986 Huey
Lewis And The News music video for
Stuck With You,
directed by Edd Griles, had everything: adventure, comedy, romance, and
danger.
The junglescope filmed
Roar by
Katy Perry from 2013 has all of that too, plus 2.5 billion views.
Directed by Grady Hall and Mark Kudsi,
Roar
was a strong message for women but at the expense of animals. Animals
are not props, especially not elephants. Nature does not need to be
out-roared.
Music Association: Gorillaz -
StyloMusic Cues
Star Wars
June
27, 2018Movie
directors are like people... regular people... they do things in all
sorts of different ways. Some directors just tell composer Danny Elfman
to do what he always does at the regular price. Some directors tell
composers or sound directors some specific music they want at specific
points in the movie. Sometimes the
music
cues are given in a written form, sometimes it's pre-mixed
digitally, or decades ago it was shared on tape.
Star
Wars lore has a great deal of information and many documentaries about
the making of
Star
Wars
(A New Hope). The weakest points in the behind-the-scenes stories are
about
the final
edits with Marcia Lucas and about the music cues given
to
John Williams.
If I were
interviewing George Lucas, I would have a gazillion questions about
these two subjects (2 gazillion total). It has been said that George
Lucas wanted
Gustav Holst's
The Planets
as the Star Wars soundtrack, and John Williams talked him out of just
using
The Planets
as a reference. Having read and heard about all the other aspects of
the decisions behind Star Wars, I doubt it was that simple.
Here
are some guesses about original
music cues
for Star Wars:
Star
Wars - Main Title
= Erich Korngold -
King’s Row
1942 film (
theme link,
comparison
link)
Star Wars - Rebel Blockade Runner
= Gustav Holst -
The Planets - Mars,
the Bringer of War (
1:24)
Star
Wars - Dune Sea
=
Igor Stravinsky -
The Rites of Spring
(
16:32)
Star
Wars - Dune Sea (Sandcrawler) =
Sergi Prokofiev -
Peter
and the Wolf (grandfather = bassoon) (
11:11)
Star
Wars - Rescue of the Princess
= Igor Stravinsky -
The Rites of Spring
(
4:06)
Star
Wars - Last Battle (X-Wings)
= Leighton Lucas -
Ice Cold in Alex
1958 film (
1:20)
Star
Wars - Last Battle
= Gustav Holst -
The Planets - Mars,
the Bringer of War (
6:56)
Star
Wars - Throne Room
= William Walton -
Orb and Septre
(
0:02,
1:45)
Star
Wars - End Title
= Erich Korngold -
King’s Row
1942 film (
0:53)
(The
numbers in parentheses are time marks in minutes and seconds, with
links to that part of the music on YouTube, for your convenience.)
I
could easily be wrong about all of these inspirations. If nothing else,
this list could further discussions.
Hole In The Wall film from 1929 with Cinnamon Bun hair might have provided inspiration for Princess Leia's hair.
Darth
Vader directed the
Rochester
Symphony performing the Imperial March from Star Wars last
year in Rochester, Minnesota. The audience appreciated Mr. Vader's work.
Music Association - Mecco - Star
Wars MedleyMusic Video Review
Classic
June
26, 2018My
favorite songs are never my favorite music videos. Too much of
me
is in my favorite music for music videos to try to capture. I could
make (and I have made) my own videos to my favorite songs, but what
would be the point of talking about them, since I certainly couldn't
share them without violating publishing rights? Most favorite songs are
stuck with the visuals of imagination.
I
always have songs
or clips of songs running through my head. It is how I communicate with
myself (and others). Some people think. Some people talk. I play mental
music. It's my way of thinking.
There is usually a
music message
in the mental music, a correlation with something going on with me even
if not entirely conscious -- a music association -- like free
association but with musical tools and scraps. It has provided a very
relevant soundtrack to my life. Music is my soul, the building blocks
and language of who I am. All kinds of music are used without
discrimination, but lyrics are used much more than instrumentals.
If
having 24/7 music associations running through your mind were a
desirable feature, I would be the master craftsman of music. What has
surprised many people who know me is that I am not constantly listening
to music. It's tough to explain. I am and I do, it's just not music
that they can listen to too. Oh, I could provide a running commentary
of the music in my mind, but it can be hard to keep up at times and can
be far more emotional than I appear to be.
This is
why I don't
criticize other people's music. It's like criticizing other people's
heartbeats. It's their music. It's their heartbeats. I don't have to
listen. And it makes them go.
It's weird.
Music
is the bread of my life, and humor is the butter or honey. At times, it
almost seems the other way around, but I can't imagine functioning
without music. Even in a coma, there would be fragments of songs.
So
when you read my posts on music videos (posts that have already been
posted) I hope you'll understand that what I don't explain is the
humor. Explaining humor is poking a balloon with a pin. It is un-fun.
Fun with Classical
MusicClassical
music videos are not necessarily boring any more than contemporary
music videos are necessarily interesting. Classical music can be fun.
When
the Danish National Symphony Orchestra played the theme to the movie
The Good, The Bad, & The
Ugly, they had a body hanging from a rope as a
nearby reminder to stay in key... even on the Wa-Wa's.
Ennio Morricone's
music conducted by Sarah Hicks is interesting to watch at least partly
due to the vocal percussions, guitars, chorus, bells, and the guy on
the wood boards. Morricone really threw the kitchen sink into this
work, giving it a richness that in someone else's hands could
have
easily been a cluttered yard sale.
Wet fingers make
the music of
Pyotr
Tchaikovsky's
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
on a glass armonica played by William Zeitler in 2007. The glass
armonica is a weird collection of bowls spun on their side that was
invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1761, based on the Italian word
armonia, which means
harmony. Franklin
described it as having “
tones incomparably
sweet beyond those of any other.”
Tchaikovsky's
Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
from the Nutcracker in 1892 sounds like it was written for the
armonica, but it was written for the celesta, a piano-looking
instrument which Tchaikovsky described as having a “
heavenly sweet sound.”
The Nutcracker only gained popularity in the late 1960s in North
America.
Ludwig
van Beethoven used
Ode
To Joy
in the fourth movement of his Ninth Symphony from 1824. Beaker of the
Muppets, performed by Steve Whitmire, took on Beethoven's
Ode To Joy
in 2008.
Music Association: Ludwig van
Beethoven - Ode To JoyMusic Video Review
Simple
Music Videos
Not So Simple Origins
June
23, 2018Some
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 FaceA
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 FacesA
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,
Blackboard
Jungle, 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 RoomLife
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 RoomSingle 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
BathroomAs
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.
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, 2018What
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.
Music Association: Rolling
Stones - She's A RainbowMusic Video Review
This Old
Heart
June 19, 2018This
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.
Music Association: Rod Stewart
& Ron Isley - This Old Heart Of MineMusic Video Review
A Hit With
A Guitar
June 18, 2018Patrick
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 duet with Chaka Khan.
For the music video, British
photographer turned director Terence Donovan stylized five women with
Patrick Nagel
art-inspired hair and
makeup by
Martin Pretorius. 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.
Music Association: Bonnie Tyler
- It's A Heart AcheMusic Video Review
Look-alikes
June 16, 2018As
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:
One Great DAD
You're the kind of dad who's
always there with just the kind of love and support his family needs.
You're exactly the kind of dad
today is meant to celebrate.
Happy Father's Day
The
slightly altered card says:
One Great GRAD
You're the kind of grad who's
always there with just the kind of love and support their graduating
class needs.
You're exactly the kind of grad
today is meant to celebrate.
Happy Graduation Day
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.
Thank God for Mom and Dad
for sticking to together
'cause we don't know how
[the
bridge - André 3000] - Hey, alright now
Alright now, fellas...
(Yeah?)
now what's cooler than bein'
cool?
(ICE COLD!)
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.
Music Association: Outkast - Hey
YaMusic Video Review
Bridge of
Change
June 14, 2018The
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.
Music Associations: Aerosmith -
Walk This Way & Run-DMC - Walk This WayMusic Video ReviewEarthquake
Dance
June 9, 2018Elaine
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.”
Music Associations: Alanis
Morissette - Head Over Feet
& Tears For Fears - Head Over
HeelsMusic Video Review
Think
June
6, 2018President
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.
Music Association: Aretha
Franklin - ThinkMusic Video Review
It's
A Cartoon World
June 4, 2018It'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).
Music Association: A-Ha - Take
On MeMusic Video Review
The
Internet World Votes
June 2, 2018The
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.
The Four
Most
Viewed Videos on YouTube:
1. Luis Fonsi -
Despacito
(2017, director Carlos Pérez) 5 billion views
2.
Wiz Khalifa -
See You
Again (2015, director Marc Klasfeld) 3.59 billion
views
3. Ed Sheeran -
Shape Of
You (2017, director Jason Koenig) 3.54 billion views
4.
Psy -
Gangnam
Style (2012, director Cho Soo-hyun) 3.16 billion
views
Music Association: Luis Fonsi
ft. Daddy Yankee - DespacitoMusic Video Review
Maroon
5 - Girls Like You
June 1, 2018Music
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.
Music Associations: Maroon 5 -
Girls Like You & Smithereens - A Girl Like You
Voter
SuppressionMusic
VideosLandmine
HopscotchSupermanImpact
InvestingHoliday
Gifs of Cats and Kittens Part 1
Part 2
Part
3 Part
4 Part
5
Southdale
Hennepin LibraryWonder
WomanFood
Fraud