Remember When MTV Played Videos 1

At Luna, a nightclub in Royal Oak in which I found myself this last Thursday night, Jim Object suggested that mayhaps I ought to review music videos.  This sounded like a pretty good idea, though some explanation may be in order.

MTV stopped playing music videos so long ago that, no, most viewers watching MTV today do not remember when they played videos.  That shit pretty much ended sometime in the early 1990's.  Sure, bands still made videos, but so what?  By 1999, videos were usually attached as bonus content to CDs.  Remember CDs?  No?  Okay - let's stay on track.

Like setting your radio to 98.6 - KILL

A music video is like a short little movie that goes along with a song.  These little movies fall into a few broad categories:

1) Concert Videos:  A concert video mostly shows the performing band in-concert performing the song you are listening to.  The point of a concert video is to show how much the band rocks live, and how you should go buy a ticket to see their live show.  Motley Crue's "Wild Side" video is a great example. 


2) Jam Videos: A jam video highlight's the band's hard-working but fun-loving dynamic. This shows that even though the band has attained superstar video-making status, they're all just guys who like to work hard and have fun.  This video is best typified by Great White's "Once Bitten, Twice Shy."

80's videos had the hottest chicks

3) Story Videos: When a song tells an important story, the video will often be a scene-for-scene representation of that narrative.  This is a story that the band or singer feels needs to be told, and the video attempts to remove any ambiguity.  These were really popular in the very late 1980's, frequently stretching a 3-minute song into a 7-minute video presentation (a la Nelson's "After the Rain") but one of the best executions of this premise can be found in Warrant's "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

4) What the Fuck:  A lot of bands consist of guys who met in college, discovered they had similar musical tastes, and a comparable level of talent. They also went to all the same parties, and so as a consequence they all met, at the same party and at the same time, the same guy from the visual arts department.  He was the only one on campus with a video camera, and he had a hot girlfriend willing to be in his projects, so they hired him as their video producer.  However, once Chad or Bob or Guenther or whoever got behind the camera, he had some very interesting ideas about the band's direction. Almost none of these ideas had anything to do with what the band was doing or what the song was saying.  Although it's a really kick-ass video, Front 242's "Headhunter" is a WTF video.

It's pronounced "truh-FOE"

4) Total Career Suicide:  There aren't many of these, which is a shame, because it makes reviewing videos easier.  In fact, only one immediately comes to mind:  Billy Squier's "Rock Me Tonite."

Billy Squier had a huge mega-hit in the early 80's with "The Stroke," a song originally written as a critique of the music business, but which is so obviously about masturbation that nobody bothers to listen to the lyrics, which are lame, because they're a critique of the music business, which nobody wants to hear about in the middle of a song about masturbation.

Can't a guy get any privacy around here?

Billy's follow up was "Rock Me Tonite," a song which is apparently about wanting to be rocked at a very specific time, to wit: tonight. By rocked Billy probably means "engaged in sexual intercourse," but there's also a lot of stuff about taking chances, living for the moment, and the power of karate.  It's a confusing song, and the video doesn't help.

The video has three distinct components - prancing gaily, prancing even more gaily, and prancing gaily with a band.  To clear up any confusion, "gaily" is the correct adverbial form of "gay," but I don't mean "merry," unless by "merry," you mean "flamboyantly gay," and by "gay," you mean "Very very very homosexual." 

The video starts with a half-naked Billy Squier lounging about his bed between pink-ish satin sheets.  At this point, you may think "hey, maybe he's like James Bond and he just woke up in the sexy layer of some sexy super-villainess with a pink fetish," and you would be wrong.  Those are Billy's sheets.  Billy likes pink sheets.

Now that I think about it, it could just be his pink lamp making his white satin sheets LOOK pink

Billy gets out of bed and starts enumerating his desires, namely: 1) to be rocked, 2) tonight.  But it is not enough that Billy say what he want - no, Billy is going to prance.

As soon as Billy gets out of bed, he puts on a girl's off-the-shoulder Esprit tank top and begins to dance. Billy starts with a choppy finger-snapping display that looks a bit like a toddler knocking food off the tray of his high-chair.  His facial expression can only be described as "dangerously constipated." 

Billy has three signature moves in this sequence.

First:  Crawling around like an extra from the Broadway musical "Cats":

Meow!

Second: A deep pelvic thrust from a reversed prone position:

Guess Billy's religion!

Third and finally: skipping like a twelve year old girl, who is making fun of a thirty-five-year-old gay man.

Something for the ladies

Billy rips off his off-the-shoulder Esprit and replaces it with a slightly more conservative pink-and-white tank, which he wears for the rest of the video.  This commences the "prancing even more gaily" segment of the video, in which Billy continues to march around like a little majorette, flop and kick on his bed, and - holy shit! - pole dance.

Daddy didn't pay enough attention

The final segment consists of Billy prancing gaily with his band.  Everyone in the band looks like the love child of Richard Marx and Lita Ford, and they all apparently visited Debbie Gibson's hair, makeup, and wardrobe people right before coming to Billy's loft.  Appropriately coiffed, the whole band frolics about (Billy tries to knock the drummer off his stool - hilarious!) playing the last 45 seconds of "Rock Me Tonite" before forming a little impromptu kick line - fade to black.

The puzzling thing about this video is that there are, like, 500 steps in the video production process. How is it that at no point, anywhere, in that whole chain of creative command, did anyone say "Hey, Billy?  This looks kind of gay."  I have three theories:

Theory one:  Billy was trying to come out of the closet, but then changed his mind roughly 30 seconds before the video aired.  We all go through phases, and it's distinctly possible that the end of Billy's journey of sexual self-discovery coincided with the peak of his rock-and-roll career.


Theory two: Everyone at the video production house, at Capitol Records, and at MTV hated Billy Squier's guts, and so they said nothing, and have maintained their silence to this day.


Theory three:  Billy, high on his own success, thought he could do whatever he wanted and nobody would say anything.  This is also known as "Emperor's New Clothes" syndrome, or more practically, being Eddie Fucking Money.  Billy Squier is not Eddie Money, and so Billy Squier's career tanked.

Will gallivant for food

I don't really know which theory is correct.  If it's number one, let me just say that it's okay to be gay!  Nobody can choose who they love, and I wish all the best to those brave men and women who struggle with adversity and prejudice every day.  If it's theory two, man - sucks to be you Billy, sucks to be you...but if it's theory three?  Then Billy's career crash is well deserved.  Nobody gets to do this to my eyes and get away with it, Billy - nobody.

Seeing is believing: