The Wonder of the One Hit Wonder
Premise; I love one-hit wonders and obscure music. Some of my favorite music of all time is stuff that crossed the ether to me on some lonely drive across the prairie on some lovesick night back in 1982; a ghostly, static-y hook from some AM station in Chicago or Cincinnati or Edmonton that grabbed my consciousness for a few moments, brought a flash of joy or lust or self-realization, and disappeared, never to be heard again.
In fact, it's almost better that way; sometimes when you do hear them again, it's just so...pedestrian.
Going to college in North Dakota in the early-mid '80s, before MTV came to the area, the great Friday/Saturday night ritual for those of us who didn't have either girlfriends or money to go drinking was to flop in the dorm TV lounge and watch WTBS' "Night Tracks", a three-hour program (11PM-2AM, then repeated until 5AM) that showed the latest videos. When I finally got to watch MTV, it was almost anticlimactic; "Night Tracks" was a lot more adventurous with their three hours a week than MTV was with 168, it seemed; they threw out a lot of very cool music...
...some of which I saw once, on a cold, lonely, exhausted weekend evening 20-odd years ago, and and never again.
Until now, thanks to Elder.
There are a lot of reasons to ding on Elder: his lutzes are atrocious, and his son keeps beating me at one-on-one and Horse - but after this, all is forgiven. Or not.
Youtube.com is an amazing internet resouce. Dang near any video footage you're interested in is available for your viewing pleasure.
News footage? 'awkey fights? Sure.
But of course, I went for the music videos.
The golden age of the music video was between about 1983 - when video producers figured out that point-by-point literal representation of the song was not a "plot", and that full-length shots of people playing guitar solos (or, for the most part, live concert videos) weren't really all that interesting - and probably the early nineties, when everything had officially been done.
There was a lot of experimenting going on back then; a lot of it didn't suck.
Early in rock video history, it was possible to take a really great song, slap a cheezy yet pretentious video on top of it, and basically ruin everything. Dire Straits' "Romeo and Juliet", from Moving Pictures, is one of the most acheingly lovely songs of all time (and one of the most deeply satisfying acoustic guitar songs I know). I remember the video from some lonely night back in '82 or so as being kind of cool, the one time I saw it. Boy, was I wrong; it's painfully literal, almost like watching someone pantomime the lyrics.
Of course, early tries to disconnect the concept from the lyrics didn't always work, either. "Gloria", from U2's sophomore record October, is one of the most, er, glorious songs ever; for a late-teen Christian who played rock and roll, it was the mission in three minutes, plus the closing coda is the most riveting piece of anthem in rock history. Unfortunately, video makes the song look like a trip to the Gulag - in fact, may have been a piece of "black" parody propaganda done by East German filmmakers...no, I'm making that part up. It takes way too much skill to take such a wonderful song and make it so utterly...tedious? Of course, this long-lost fave of mine shows U2 figured out the concept video, eventually. I always loved that one.
It wasn't hard to see why the best English bands didn't come from England; this and this and a ton of others
Attempts to be slick didn't always work, but sometimes crude was blazingly effective; The Sex Pistols and this gloriously lo-fi Clash home movie from some bar in New Jersey were fun finds.
I'll never figure out why the hair metal fad of the late eighties happened at all, with Hanoi Rocks (especially "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", the best bumper song in the history of talk radio) available.
Oh, yeah - and this one was part of the soundtrack of most of my Twenty Years Ago Today series...
Grr. Curse you, Elder. And thanks!
Posted by Mitch at
March 6, 2006 12:26 PM
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"Romeo and Juliet" may be a great accoustic tune, but that electric guitar at the end is sublime.
The great Literal Era of Videos may have reached its early apotheosis in "Bette Davis Eyes," when everyone slapped each other to accompany that famous blown-out handclap sound.
Posted by: Lileks at March 6, 2006 12:49 PMSublime, yes.
There's something about that riff on the acoustic, though; you're tuned to open G, so your guitar gets this big, glorious, wide-open sound that just sucks you straight in. It's one of my favorite songs to play.
The electric bit at the end is the cream on the sundae.
And I'd almost completely blocked out the "Betty Davis Eyes" video. And the song. Actually, the song irks me doubly because Kim Carnes had a couple of songs when I was in junior high that I kinda liked - and then BDE came out and ruined it all.
Posted by: mitch at March 6, 2006 02:10 PM""Romeo and Juliet" may be a great accoustic tune, but that electric guitar at the end is sublime."
Personally I think the harp sounds great on this song IF you don't tread on the guitarist and give the singer plenty of front room.
One of the bands I play with does it electric, the other does it acoustic. I prefer the acoustic, but fortunately they both have room for harp.
I don't cross on it, but just take the G-harp and play third position. Gives the guitar player plenty of room, but really fills it out without getting too sweet.
Posted by: jackscrow at March 6, 2006 03:01 PMMitch is dead on about Romeo & Juliet. How is it possible for a person who's wrong about politics about 95% of the time to be right about almost everything else?
Posted by: angryclown at March 6, 2006 03:14 PMActually the man responsible for your video flashback is the suddenly sober JB Doubtless. I expect PB to scribble seven or eight paragraphs taking you task for your error.
Posted by: the elder at March 6, 2006 05:08 PMAssclown said:
"Mitch is dead on about Romeo & Juliet. How is it possible for a person who's wrong about politics about 95% of the time to be right about almost everything else?"
This ephiphany would have most thinking people looking into their own political views for obvious flaws....
...but then again most people don't spend the dayight hours burrowed into a colon to the shoulders.
heh.
Posted by: swiftee at March 6, 2006 07:39 PM