I’ll go ahead and assume this is a Nike commercial, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable.

“Wolves, Lower” (Youtube) This video had to either be a favor from a guy with a tape-to-tape editing system, or a University of Georgia video class project. Either way, it’s a pretty good first go, though the backlight might be too bright on the performance clips. The ultra-slo-mo footage of Stipe dancing in a circle I could watch for at least fifteen more minutes, and the superimposition montage over the guitar freak-out section is nice. The first example of Bill Berry in a white, buttoned-to-the-neck-shirt.

“Radio-Free Europe” (Youtube) Okay this one, very garden-y (folk artist Howard Finster’s house, actually–see comments), has always reminded me of the clip for either “Paperback Writer” or “Rain” (or both?) that the Beatles sent to Ed Sullivan because they couldn’t be there in person. It’s got all the signs of the arty amateur video project, too—guys walking around aimlessly in a really pretty and sorta creepy environment. Could Mike Mills’ bass line be any greater, especially during the verses? Again, Berry with buttoned-up white shirt.

“Talk About the Passion” (mp3) One of their greatest songs, one of their worst videos (made four years later). With the stark, black and white imagery and footage of tenement buildings and homeless people, the clip could only have been released during the Reagan era. It casts a different light on the song’s lyrics, though, which is fine, but I’d rather just listen to this one on headphones.

“Radio-Free Europe” and “Talk About the Passion” (live on The Tube, 11.18.1983)
So I’ve never heard of this show before, but the audience paid to stand in front of the stage could not be lamer. They’re not dancing—they’re barely moving—and they keep looking at the camera as if it has come into their bedroom while they’re doing homework. But the band marches on (and yes, they’re actually playing, not syncing), especially Pete Buck (the “rock star” of the group), who prances erratically around the stage during “Radio” like a fey-er Pete Townshend. It’s a great version of the song—tons of energy and a near-complete ignorance of the audience. As for “Passion”, it’s still better heard through headphones.

“South Central Rain” Their prettiest video to this point, for their prettiest song. It’s shot on pretty 35mm instead of video, and Stipe’s hair is long and pretty. There’s not much here in terms of content, which is fine, because the song takes precedence. The next time you hear this song, consider it in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which I do. It’s a new song then.

“Left of Reckoning” A headache-inducing collage of 16mm footage of the band goofing around. You can seriously 16x through this one—it’s like 20 minutes.

“Pretty Persuasion” (live on The Old Grey Whistle Test, 11.20.1984) Also available on the Whistle compilation DVD (buy) (which is awesome by the way). The sound mix is off on this clip, but maybe just on my speakers. Stipe’s got long, long hair, and Berry’s wearing a beret. Again, Mills’ bassline rules the school, and Stipe blows some harmonica, son.

“Can’t Get There From Here” Far and away their dumbest and funnest video. What else can one do with a song this ebullient and goofy, but make a greenscreen video with spliced-in home video footage? (see also: Pavement) I don’t know what the R.E.M. fan consensus is on the song, but I’ve always loved it–especially the chorus, where it’s “I’ve been there, I know the way” under “Can’t get there from here,” like what you’d get if you pull off the road in the rural South and ask directions from two old men sitting in front of a gas station.

“Driver 8” (Youtube) Starts off with Stipe trying to sound as good ol’ boy as he possibly can, over some film footage of trains and stuff. Then, oh! that Pete Buck guitar phrase is one of the most solemn, gorgeous things from the 80s. Video—meh. Trains and stuff with occasional Stipe.

“Life and How to Live It” (mp3) Sometimes, this is my favorite R.E.M. song. I’m usually opposed to the blurry, stop-motion concert footage trope, but it somehow manages to work here, underneath one of the band’s most high-energy, danceable songs.  And that bridge…ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

“Feeling Gravity’s Pull” Another one of my all-time faves, and the song that gives the DVD its title. Unfortunately, same spiel as the previous video. Man, the things I could do with this song. Fun fact: the line “it’s a Man Ray kind of sky, let me show you what I can do with it” is one of Stipe’s best lyrical moments.

“Can’t Get There From Here” (live on The Tube, 10.25.1985) The crowd’s a little more lively, but not much. But we do get to see an early example of Stipe-Dance, which is a marvelous thing. Hands operating independent of anything, arms bent at the elbow, head shaking, feet sort of moving. Buck is in full Keith Richards mode here, and Stipe is fabulous with pink eyebrows and gelled-up, blonde hair.

“Fall on Me” (Youtube) When I was a kid, this video blew my mind. And the contrast of the lime-green letterboxing and the orange letters over constantly moving black and white footage of urban decay is still striking. The fact that the video is essentially a lyric sheet for the song is nicely subversive, too. This was the first time I’d ever heard of R.E.M., and don’t think I didn’t notice Mike Mills’ contrapuntal voice in the background, either. It’s a wonder.

“Swan Swan H” I’ve always been on the fence with this song—I have very mixed memories associated with Life’s Rich Pageant, and I’m not a big fan of waltzes. But the video is just marvelous. The band makes a stage in a church undergoing massive renovations, and re-records the song for the video, which is always nice. And it’s prime, prime, prime mid-late 80s R.E.M. fashion, too—Mills has his glasses now, Buck has the long hair, Stipe’s going with the hats and blazers, and Berry’s still rocking the Victorian shirts that cover the neck. It’s the best visual translation one could hope for with this song. They’re all growed up and on the cusp of being HUGE.

“The One I Love” (Youtube) I realize because of this DVD that the performance clips in this song are pretty much the same as they were in “Wolves, Lower,” only more technically realized. Again, it’s a gorgeous video, and their artiest yet, with the shot of the guy with his head in the woman’s lap, same woman walking through the forest at night, and the firecrackers on the ground superimposed over the washbasin. And I still get goosebumps when the guy mouths the word “Fire!” It’s Southern Gothic Surrealist psychedelia, and it’s easily one of the greatest videos of the 1980s. This is the one that also always confused the VJs on MTV at the time. It was awesome enough to get mainstream rotation, but still weird enough to leave Adam Curry speechless.

“It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” (Youtube) Don’t tell me you didn’t keep trying that one-hand handstand with a skateboard, no matter how stupid you feel about it. Because you know you did. It’s obvious the song owes its structure to “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (and earlier, Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business”), and the video works well as an update, with a single figure (the skater kid) rummaging through a house full of junk, trying to make sense of it and turn it into performance. The thing, you know, that’s easier to do with a bunch of cue cards and Allen Ginsberg. And the dog face closeup during “Leonard Bernstein” still makes me smile.

“Finest Worksong” One of Buck’s most electrifying guitar moments, and a fitting tribute to both Socialist ideology and Futurist imagery (standing with hammer over shoulder). The setting looks like the leftovers from “End of the World,” with the dude here just smashing up whatever the band didn’t want to take to Goodwill. It’s also, with the smashing and the fire and the what-not, a fitting ending to the first phase of the band’s career.

“The Cutting Edge” (October 1983 and June 1984) Apparently, this was a local show from Athens (?), and they did an extended feature on R.E.M. right as the band was becoming cult heroes. Seriously, this is the thing that should make you buy this DVD, or Netflix it at least. Maybe it’s just the former video-geek side of me, but there’s so much more history and sentimentality contained in these 45 (yes, 45!) minutes than in the whole of all of the videos on the DVD. The guy in the Pylon t-shirt that starts the clip ends his segment by predicting that the band would become the biggest thing in the world. He was just kidding then, I’m assuming, right? The show is standard package format—interviews, b-roll and performance footage—and the interviews, especially the ones with Peter Buck, are priceless. Buck comes across as a cocky indie geek—name-dropping as many of his idols as he can squeeze in (he did work at Wuxtry Records, remember)—Sky Saxon from the Seeds, Neil Young, the “brave” new Black Flag record, and then a comparison to Hank Williams to boot. Which leads to the part when the entire band starts dropping names of current bands (the dBs, Let’s Active, Husker Du, Wire Train, Fleshtones, Love Tractor, etc.). It dispelled a lot of the mythology I’d built around the band, revealing them as music geeks like anyone else. Mills also talks about the spontaneity of the recording sessions, and the stellar, very blue-cast (and extensive) performance footage supports this—they just whip out these songs, sometimes starting them over, usually talking to the videographers as they’re going. And Buck, during this session, which is included in full, demonstrates why he’s just one of the greatest and most underappreciated guitarists of his generation. And they play “Don’t Go Back to Rockville.”

Buy When the Light is Mine here.

But the video is what’s still incredibly intriguing–reappropriating the jerky rhythms of breakdancing through a house full of sentient limbs in as Freudian a manner as the battle with female mannequin parts at the end of Kubrick’s The Killer’s Kiss. The torso-less female legs led by a jib through a living room, the omnipresent kicking legs and the violently rising and falling bed denizen. The strangely calm faces of the mannequins. The cheesy back-and-forth editing along with the scratching. All dated, sure. But they’re subsumed by the larger theme of the piece–a decidedly domestic environment populated not only by non-humans, but very visibly mechanized things that are made to look human, and the only person allowed inside (Hancock) is transmitted via television, because MTV was afraid to show black people not named Michael Jackson. It’s Uncanny Domestic Robot Hip-Hop. And I should only mention in passing that this gave me weeks of nightmares after I first saw it, but I still managed to send weekly postcards to MTV, requesting it.

]]> http://www.marathonpacks.com/2006/03/herbie-hancock-rockit-video/feed/ 0 http://www.marathonpacks.com/2006/03/eagles-of-death-metal-i-want-you-so/ http://www.marathonpacks.com/2006/03/eagles-of-death-metal-i-want-you-so/#comments Mon, 20 Mar 2006 09:29:00 +0000 marathonpacks http://174.132.200.226/~marathon/mpax/2006/03/eagles-of-death-metal-i-want-you-so-hard-video.html Eagles of Death Metal is a side project’s side project–longtime pals Jesse Hughes and Josh Homme coming together under the rubric of playing riffy, cartoonish Motorhead biker-metal with all of the deadly seriousness and blatant irony that comes with such an endeavor. Mainstream rock hasn’t been even remotely threatening for about 25 years, and Hughes knows that: the devil horns that have long been relegated to the same pop-cultural recycling bin as the safety pin and mohawk once again adorn the new EoDM album cover, and the band’s music remains the minimalist, grinding greaser approach to hard rock long ago established by Eddie Cochran and periodically revived, but never quite this well. The first video (dir. Akiva Shaffer) from new record Death by Sexxy, for “I Want You So Hard (Boy’s Bad News)” (mov stream) is a grin-inducing paint-by-number rock-cliche-fest.

The song, complete with ubiquitous baritone voice of authority, is a direct descendant of Cochran’s “Summertime Blues”, with elements of George Thorogood (whom I believe has a copyright on the word “bad”) and Loggins and Messina’s (by way of Poison) “Your Mama Don’t Dance”. The riffs are as tight as Hughes’ jeans, which combined with the handlebar mustache and aviator shades channel Rob Halford, which makes it all the more hilarious when he blows the clothes off a girl with a guitar solo. Cameos from Jack Black and Dave Grohl should be expected at this point; both have established themselves as the dual-headed saviors of all things Hard Rock and Metal. It’s sort of great that something this supposedly tossed off is bound to be one of the best rock records this year.

20. CocoRosie “Noah’s Ark” (Kai Regan)
As weird and affective as the song itself. Strangely, I enjoy the basketball imagery–it actually drew my attention to the strong hip-hop elements in the song.
19/18. (tie) Junip “Black Refuge” (Andreas Nelson) and Tom Vek “I Ain’t Saying My Goodbyes” (Muscle)
A look so great it was done twice.
17. Sigur Ros “Hoppipolla” (Arni & Kinski)
Overly cutesy, sure–but it’s great if only to affirm that Sigur Ros are humans.
16. Deerhoof “Wrong Time Capsule” (Martha Colburn)
Updated “Sledgehammer” collage-style.
15. Franz Ferdinand “Walk Away” (Scott Lyon)
Slickly presented Hitchcock homage–the best thing about FF this year.
14. Jason Forrest “War Photographer” (Joel Trussell)
Swell animation that rhythmically complements one of the best tracks from a swell album. I can’t get enough of Blood Sweat and Tears’ “Go Down Gamblin’”.
13. Clor “Good Stuff” (Fraser Jamieson)
A dance-off between an emaciated man and a crudely disguised werewolf, shot in green-tinted night vision in a forest. Check, check, and check.
12. Roisin Murphy “Sow Into You” (Simon Henwood)
The sexiest mechanized female video since Bjork’s “All is Full of Love”.
11. Gorillaz “Dirty Harry” (Jamie Hewlett)
It’s kind of unfair to include Gorillaz here because the band is wholly predicated on its visuals, but their videos are just so great. This one’s the best of the three they released this year. I was close to picking “Dare” (the best song), but I couldn’t look at Shaun Ryder’s bloated head any longer.
10. OK Go “A Million Ways” (OK Go)
A dumb song, but a perfect mix of Busby Berkeley and “America’s Funniest Home Videos”. And any video that got 10 times the attention of the band, or the song, has to be included here. But the song still sucks.
9. Broadcast “Tender Buttons” (Ramon Bloomberg)
An elegant, icy one-take wonder.
8. My Morning Jacket “Off the Record” (Waverly Films)
There’s always room for a tight conceptual piece–and this one works on the same level as Radiohead’s “Just”, but more directly connected to the lyrics. And I called that folded-paper thing a “cootie catcher” when I was a kid. Is there another name for it?
7. Stephen Malkmus “Baby C’mon” (Lana Kim & Andy Bruntel)
For Pavement, the only passable visuals connected to the music were contained within the album covers. Which didn’t matter, because they were Pavement. But solo, Malkmus has taken big steps toward making great videos, and “Baby C’mon” is the best yet. Stop-motion animation implemented perfectly.
6. Smog “Rock Bottom Riser” (Picturedrift)
Delicate animation that perfectly complements the song instead of doing its own thing. Ranked so highly because it made me interpret the music differently. Chad Van Gaalen took a similar approach for “Clinically Dead”.
5. LCD Soundsystem “Tribulations” (Dougal Wilson)
Multi-layered/multi-format/laterally moving and effortlessly executed video, for a great song that deserves this level of concept.
4. The Decemberists “16 Military Wives” (Aaron Stewart)
The most accessible song the Decemberists have issued yet–and clearly their best video. Nothing overly mind-blowing, but a nice political allegory, Rushmore style. Like Belle and Sebastian, they’re erudite, but still know how to have fun.
3. Beck “E-Pro” (Shynola)
Wow. Amazing. New standard for cutting edge CG videos. Song sucks, though.
2. Doves “Sky Starts Falling” (Reuben Sutherland)
A stunning work that simultaneously awed and terrified me. The remarkable CGI coupled with the quaint film grain and sublimely apocalyptic theme combine for a really, really, good video. Much, much better than the piece for “Black and White Town“, which, perhaps on purpose, drains all the emotion from the fantastic song.
1. The White Stripes “The Denial Twist” (Michel Gondry)
The best video director alive (and perhaps ever) makes one of his best yet. What Gondry does organically with perspective is mindblowing and gorgeous. I can’t stop watching this one, still.

Fresh from his hott #2 ranking on Dodge’s year-end best-of list, blog-tastic singer/songwriter Jose Gonzales offers up the first video from his new project Junip, for the song “Black Refuge” (mov). I got word for this from Robot Blair, who never manages to astound me with his appreciation of all manner of music that I happen to dig. This is a fantastic video, perfectly complementing the song’s barely contained darkness with interesting superimpositions, z-axis movement toward the viewer, and, of course, that rich bi-chromatic presentation. A little smoky ambience doesn’t hurt, either.

Next, fresh from their equally hott (and somewhat surprising) #2 ranking on Gorilla vs Bear’s year-end list, Sigur Ros’ adorable video for “Hoppipolla” (wmv stream). The album is a nice step toward mass acceptance from (), and the video is surprisingly accessible as well, in a less mawkish Waking Ned Devine sort of way.

Finally, I’d be disappointed in myself if I didn’t make mention of the video that most of you no doubt have seen already–for Kanye West’s “Heard ‘Em Say” (wmv stream). A quick recap–this video was released in lieu of a much more involved one from marathonpacks Hall of Fame inductee Michel Gondry. I’m thinking that there’s one reason for this–post-production is going way over on the Gondry piece, and this Bill Plympton vehicle was released as a hold-over to keep Kanye on the lists of holiday shoppers. Needless to say, this is far from Plympton’s best work–pretty disappointing, really, considering his stellar resume, including that “Your Face” piece that used to air between videos (!) on MTV.

John Vanderslice’s strange delivery isn’t too far from Callahan’s–it’s a lot less rich and a good deal more nasal, but he still foregrounds it at the front of every mix. Which is a good thing when his lyrics are as great as they are on “Exodus Damage” (mov). Vanderslice has gotten flak in the past for preferring crystal production technique over good songwriting, but he’s created a minor masterpiece with Pixel Revolt, incorporating his hermetic tendencies with a much stronger songcraft. This is far and away my favorite track from this great album, and while director Brett Chesanek seems to have had this 16mm visual treatment in the can, ready to apply to any song, they work well with this one.

Conversely, I absolutely love the new Franz Ferdinand video, for “Walk Away” (wmv), solely because of its numerous Hitchcock references.

Finally, one of the coolest videos I’ve ever seen (thanks Pete for the tip), the new one for “The Denial Twist” (.mov) directed by, in my opinion, the best ever in the form, Michel Gondry. He’s always been able to visually represent the unrepresentable in a manner that’s both accessible and mind-blowing. This video is no exception, taking off from the band’s appearance on the Conan O’Brien show.
]]> http://www.marathonpacks.com/2005/11/monday-morning-music-videos-5/feed/ 0 http://www.marathonpacks.com/2005/10/monday-morning-music-videos_31/ http://www.marathonpacks.com/2005/10/monday-morning-music-videos_31/#comments Mon, 31 Oct 2005 12:44:00 +0000 marathonpacks http://174.132.200.226/~marathon/mpax/2005/10/monday-morning-music-videos-4.html I’m not a huge fan of the Eels–I’ve always found Mark Everett to be the premiere sufferer of that young, male disorder that disallows non-clunky expressions of angst, despair, and relationship problems (see Bright Eyes, Death Cab for Cutie). However, the band’s videos have always pleased me, from the floating in the air clip for “Novocaine for the Soul” to this one, a primitive conceptual piece for “Hey Man (Now You’re Really Living)” (mov), one of the better songs from this year’s (meh) Blinking Lights and Other Revelations.

Perhaps with his next record, we can expect a Devendra Banhart-style sharpening of Ariel Pink’s distinctive, Freak Out/We’re Only In It for the Money-style primitivity, but I hope not, because I enjoy being baffled by him. This video, for “For Kate I Wait” (mov) from 2004’s The Doldrums, sums up his bizarre, androgynous visual style best.

It shouldn’t be surprising anymore that Gorillaz release another high-concept, beautifully animated music video. It’s kind of their thing. “Dirty Harry” (wmv) fits in the group’s trifecta of perfect singles, three of the best from 2005.

Finally, for Halloween’s sake, is one from Goblin Cock, a goofy, GWAR-ish side project for one of the guys from Pinback. The video for “Bagged and Boarded” (mov) is hilarious, featuring the faceless “band” in black hooded robes browsing a comic book store. D from Grey Will Fade turned me on to this one–he’s got the song here.