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NOTE:
So my “instant” Grammy column hasn’t yet materialized. It’s been
a long week and, let’s face it, that was one puzzling awards ceremony.
Just when you think it’s going to be Let’s Suck Eminem’s Dick Night, the
codgers from Steely Dan come out to claim their Album of the Year trophy.
It will hang on the wall of the Pasadena old folks’ home with pride, I’m
sure. Anyway, I turn 23 tomorrow, and I’m on one of those Damn, has
it really been eight years since ‘Rumpshaker’ by Wreck-N-Effect came out?
kicks, and I’m thinking it’s cool to actually be proud of this site again.
I was phoning in my performance there for awhile, but the music video medium
and my participation on the sidelines thereof has been a genuine pleasure
for me lately. And I’m getting more letters as time goes on from people
who are right there with me. Be sure to e-mail your comments, positive,
negative and trivial, to a_hicks@hotmail.com.
I may not reply within the week, month or decade, but I promise to read
and ruminate on every single e-mail. On to the reviews…
friends.
A.
Badly Drawn Boy – Once Around the Block
(***) I’ve got a friend back in Columbia
who stays on top of the modern-rock scene in a way I could only aspire
to. Besides, when it comes to new music, I’m a lot better at keeping up
with the hip-hop and soul side of things. (Which can seem totally dead
for up to a year at a time and then surprise you with a burst of new, bombass
shit.) So Eli tells me about the new one from Blur or Oasis or the Smashing
Pumpkins album you can only get on the Internet, and he plays cuts from
Coldplay and Badly Drawn Boy that I don’t hear about through my usual channels
for another few weeks or months. Eli played me the entire Badly Drawn Boy
album around Thanksgiving, during a weekend some friends and I spent at
a vacant, enormous family farmhouse, and MTV2 is only just now lighting
on its single, “Once Around the Block,” as a candidate for heavy rotation.
It’s good – they’re good, the song and video both. They both have
that light, playful quality you don’t see enough of in music videos. Most
of “Once Around” is spent in the car, where two young lovers joyride and
flirt in a 1991 Camry or Corolla or something. And, in the era of thongs
and borderline-pornographic booty shots, the protagonists actually create
sexual energy through their G-rated actions. Until they pull off the road
and fuck. But the innocent qualities are fun while they last. –Andrew
Hicks
Bowling For Fish – The Bitch Song
(**½) I taped most of this video
from MTV2 a couple weeks ago and haven’t seen it since. I assume it’s a
newly released single, but I can’t say for sure, since the channel’s veejays
have the tendency to pull out obscure music that’s several years old from
time to time. (Though, sadly, not as much as they used to back in the day.
M2 follows a more rotation-heavy regimen than it was established with.)
I’m guessing “The Bitch Song” is fairly new, though, because it seems like
some record company’s second-generation reaction to Blink 182. But it’s
a hell of a lot more entertaining, with a chorus every redblooded American
male can relate to (“You’re a bitch, but I love you anyway”) and a comic
video borne of the cliché assumption that, in prison, you have to
become somebody’s bitch to thrive and survive. So we get shots of the individual
band members coming under the submission of their kinky cellmates, one
of whom is the midget from Friday and Me, Myself and Irene and
another of whom sports a tied-off t-shirt and forces the 450-pound bass
player to dance in a tutu for him. Meanwhile, directors Smith N’ Beth (don’t
ask, I don’t know) cut to flashback shots of the lead singer lewdly making
out with his girlfriend. If this doesn’t sound like your comedic cup of
tea, by all means, spare yourself any involuntary loss of dignity, but
if not… hey, this entry from Bowling For Fish is short, and it’s pretty
funny. –AH
Dick Dale – Nitro
(**) I have no idea how old or new this
video is, and I don’t even want to attempt at guessing its year of origin,
so I’m putting it in with the reviews of new videos. It’s new to me, anyway,
this comeback attempt from the king of instrumental surf rock. With the
Deltones, Dick Dale brought the world “Misirlou,” the badass opening theme
from Pulp Fiction, and I’m guessing what happened was, that song
thrust Dick out of the Holiday Inn lounge gigs and back into the public
life for a time, and some merciful bastard at the record company allowed
him back into the studio for another album. Which promptly tanked. (Picture
me now inquiring, in an obnoxious voice lifted directly from Sam Kinison,
Am I gettin’ WARM HERE ASSHOLE?!) All I have to go on, timeline-wise,
is the patchwork video for “Nitro,” which lasts less than three minutes
and inserts second-unit social clip art like shots of unpaved country roads,
windmills and a black-and-white room full of rented models boogeying to
his shit. It’s not a bad song, “Nitro” – it just sounds like your typical
instrumental surf rock number – and it’s certainly fascinating to watch
Dale’s fingers slide up and down the electric guitar with such fierce precision.
But, damn, how about a little more creative effort next time? Looks like
the director and the record company both knew this one would get nothing
more than the scant VH1 airplay of any unmuscled comeback-type curiosity.
Some ‘blast from the past,’ if you will. If none of this makes any sense
to you, blame Quentin Tarantino. –AH
The Doors f/Ian Astbury – Whiskey Bar/Backdoor Man
Medley (from “VH1 Storytellers”)
(**) No, this isn’t currently being
rotated as a video on VH1 or VH1 Classic, but I happened upon the “Storytellers”
special with the surviving members of The Doors teaming up with the vocal
likes of Scott Weiland and Astbury, lead singer of The Cult. Some of the
performances were embarrassingly unnecessary, the type of self-indulgent
shit that doesn’t do the ghost of Jim Morrison justice, but all of them
seemed somehow fascinating to me. Astbury, with his wraparound shades and
gel-shiny hair, struts around the stage and shows off his leather jacket.
He’s all wrong for the assignment, but it’s hard to ruin “Whiskey Bar,”
a 1929 German folk song the Doors covered back in the day (how can you
deny any song with the lyric, “Show me the way to the next little girl
/ Oh, don’t ask why”?) or Willie Dixon’s “Backdoor Man.” And the Doors
themselves, mercifully, are allowed plenty of time to jam on the instrumental
side of these old favorites. When the camera and the focus shift away from
Astbury and toward the surviving members of the venerable band, things
get good. But – pity – it only happens a few times. –AH
Incubus – Drive
(***) This is video three from Incubus,
and I’m still nothing short of impressed with the group. Though I haven’t
yet bought the band’s album – it’s been the second tier of my mental list
for a few months and doesn’t seem to be edging its way up to the surface.
But you’ve got to admire the video for “Drive,” which begins with a burst
of classy sepia-toned animation that has the lead singer literally drawing
himself in charcoal pencil. Then we get the live-action segments, which
take place in a vast loft with hardwood floors and high ceilings. The band
is simply hanging out, the singer drawing in his sketch book and spending
most of the time with his shirt off like his last name was Keidis. Just
in time for the guitar solo, the camera spins 180 degrees and has the band
(seemingly suspended in mid-air) playing upside-down. “Drive” is no epic,
but it’s about as good as a casual, sit-around-the-house-and-look-at-all-my-Ikea-catalogue-bought-me
video like this gets. –AH
Mudvayne – Dig
(*) Cartoon metal began with KISS, a
band which I realize has its share of fans. I don’t count myself among
them, and I can’t get into Gwar, Slipknot, Marilyn Manson or Powerman 5000.
I don’t need my music from guys in Army gas masks and 5 and Dime costumes
and, really, the only act in this vein I can stand is White Zombie, though
I still can’t allow myself to take Rob & Co. seriously. Anyway, the
latest entry in over-the-top, shock-rock oblivion comes from Mudvayne,
a growl-heavy band whose members bear Insane Clown Posse makeup and Prodigy
devil horns popping out of heads. The intended effect, I suppose, is that
parents will feel threatened and kids will eat the shit up, buying records
in droves. Hell, it at least throws a bone to fans of death metal until
the next coming of Pantera. The video for “Dig” is abrasive, slap-happy
shit taped on a white-backdrop soundstage. I dare you to sit through this,
all the way through this. –AH
Jill Scott – A Long Walk
(***) I figured the video for “Gettin’
in the Way” wasn’t fully representative of what Jill Scott had to offer.
It was a catchy little soul song, but it went down the well-traversed road
of ultimatums from wronged girlfriends. (“Sistergirl, ya gotta understand
/ He’s my man.”) The music for “A Long Walk” is similar – breezy, Brown
Sugar-esque synths, stuttering rimshots and lyrical acrobatics from
Scott. Instead of playing the pissed-off queen of revenge here, she spends
the whole video with a wide smile on her face, wandering a black-and-white
world as the only person in color and addressing the camera in the second
person. The whole thing goes down in one take, or it appears to anyway,
and occasionally a hand comes out from the camera, turning everything it
touches to color. It seems a subtle approach at first, but watch out –
Jill Scott may win you over when you least suspect it. It happened to me…
–AH
Tamia – Stranger in My House
(***) I thought at first that “Stranger
In My House” would just be a BET curiosity, the kind of video you come
across during Midnight Love Videos or something. But MTV has hold of it
now, and it’s a hell of a pleasant video to watch. Director Paul Hunter
has flipped the hip-hop and R+B cliché of the half-naked woman on
its ass, if you’ll pardon the expression. Tamia, who is absolutely gorgeous
and must have graduated cum laude from the University of Sensual Looks,
wades into a reflecting pool wearing a glistening-wet outfit with an ultra-firm
grip on the dark, rich skin beneath it. In other words, this is one of
those videos that’s a Maxim spread come to life, and it totally
makes me forgive the fact that “Stranger in My House” sounds a little too
Diane Warren-esque. The vocal performance is entrancing and the photography
tasteful and resonant, but let’s face it, this is a half-step away from
Friday-night Cinemax porn and for that ever will hold my attention span.
Put this and Fiona Apple’s “Criminal” back to back, and you can’t lose.
Unless, of course, you don’t happen to have an unhealthy lust for the female
form. –AH
GAY
VIDEO OF THE WEEK
Bee Gees – How Deep Is Your Love (1978)
(*½) In the same vein as last
week’s selection from Gloria Gaynor, here’s a primitive clip for one of
the most Muzacky ballads of all time. This is certainly some gay, gay shit,
but, yeah, I have to admit my friend Justin with the often questionable
music taste is right: “How Deep Is Your Love” is just a great song. It’s
probably the type of song that should be remade every ten years or so by
a worthy artist so it doesn’t become horribly dated. Which the Bee Gees
performance certainly has. And which the video probably already had ten
minutes after it was filmed. Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb (a.k.a. The
Brothers Gibb, a.k.a. the Swedish Suckmasters) begin the video standing
back-to-back in a brotherly triangle while bright lights in different colors
are flashed at them and camera-circled ad nauseum. Then they’re out walking
the street, passing silhouetted bystanders and taking turns lip synching
to the camera in extreme close-ups, the placid emotion on their blown-up
faces looking creepy and unconvincing at the same time, and you notice
for the first time exactly how big Barry’s hair really was in the year
I was born. I mean, a man shouldn’t be walking around with that much hair…
with that much body… that Michael Bolton, lion’s mane shit. You know what
I’m talking about. –AH
CLASSIC
VIDEOS
D’Angelo – Brown Sugar (1995)
(***½) D’Angelo’s six-year-old
release Brown Sugar is one of my most treasured R+B albums, full
of songs that never seem to age or get tiresome. He’s the Prince the ’90s
needed, drawing from ’70s soul and adding hip-hop sensibilities without
allowing them drown out the music itself (i.e. no bargain-basement interludes
from rappers with names like Tony M. and Scrap D). And the video for the
album’s title track, an irresistibly funky and sensual number, wisely focuses
less on D’Angelo’s reputation for sex appeal (i.e. doing videos in the
nude) than the artistry of music itself. We see the soul man seated behind
his keyboard while his backing band plays and an uncommon amount of hot
women writhe on the nightclub’s dance floor. The color scheme is rich but
not overwhelming, and the whole affair is appropriately classy. –AH
The Police – Don’t Stand So Close To Me (1981)
(**½) This week is the first
I’ve seen of the video to this Police staple that invokes Nabokov and has
a teacher faced with the sexual temptation of one of his most voluptuous
students. (“Her friends are so jealous / You know how bad girls get / Sometimes
it’s not so easy / To be the teacher’s pet.”) Sting, for his part, actually
looks somewhat distinguished as the teacher. He’s wearing those no-prescription
glasses that are just there to make you smart, like Sylvester Stallone
and Dan Quayle used to don, and he conveys well the natural frustration
and curiosity of the teacher’s situation. But, damn, did they have to put
in all those shots of Sting, wearing a tank top and one of those perfect-square
graduation caps and determined to embarrass himself with his too-white
dance moves? What’s more, since this must have been a potentially volatile
clip to get past the MTV censors back in the day, there are never any clear
shots of the female student in question. We see the lower two-thirds of
her walk away from Sting’s desk toward the beginning, and she kind of looks
like Olive Oyl. And, as we all know, there’s nothing quite as enticing
as a teenage Olive Oyl. –AH |