It’s hardly news that, in rock ’n’ roll, an ego as big as all outdoors has never done its owner any harm. Indeed, a degree of extremism has always been part of the nature of the beast. In previous times, often mercifully for us consumers, the worst excesses of egomania were confined to the concert hall and, basically, if you didn’t want to watch Ted Nugent’s special effects crew simulate full scale, global nuclear war right on stage, you could always stay home with a good book. Today, however, thanks to the miracle of cable TV and courtesy of MTV and its rivals, we can have the silly fantasies of rock stars piped straight into our homes, 24 hours a day in living color. Possibly the most depressing thing about protracted watching of MTV is how the bad, the ill-conceived and dopey so totally hold sway. There’s much implicit in rock ’n’ roll that’s far better left to the imagination.

There are a hell of a lot of frighteningly uncharasmatic people who insist on appearing in their own videos. You can blame most of it on a misconception that runs clear through our culture. If you can make it doing one thing you’ll automatically succeed at everything else. It’s why Bob Dylan tried to make it in movies and why Leonard Nimoy cut all those albums. Today it manifests itself in the belief that anyone who can carry a tune, pick a guitar or peck at the keyboard can also act in their own mini-version of Mad Max, Conan or, in the case of the more artsy British synthesizer bands, mid-period Fassbinder. Berlin is a perfect case in point. I was quite prepared to tolerate “Sex (I Am...)” as a piece of lightweight lingerie disco; I might even have been prepared to get along with “No Words” if it weren’t for the idiot Bonnie and Clyde video that went with it. I really can’t imagine what these kids think they have to add. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway pretty much said it all back in 1967, and I can only assume that Berlin are just indulging a juvenile desire to dress up in costume, ride around in antique cars and hose away with a Thompson submachine gun. I suppose there’s nothing intrinsically bad in such impulses; we all have them from time to time. Most of us don’t, however, expect the rest of the world to be amused by them, and I’d rather Berlin did it on their own time instead of on my TV.

A large part of the problem is that all amateur dramatics are conducted with such teeth-clenching seriousness. Does Stevie Nicks really believe all that fairyland stuff, or is Madenna actually convinced that writhing about on white seamless is going to provoke uncontrollable lust? Ever since Michael Jackson was allowed to extend “Thriller” to its preposterous 12 minutes, there have been absolutely no boundaries to self-indulgence. In this area, it’s the oldtimers who can claim the greater measure of credit. They seem to be able to regard the making of videos with a certain degree of detachment, even humor. When Keith Richards is allowed to pose around in “Undercover Of The Night” as Death with a .357 Magnum, he’s giving in to the same temptation as Berljn, but at least he’s honest enough to make it clear that he’s having a great time. In fact, the Stones have been doing rather well lately. They’ve given up the long running concept that the Rolling Stones’ video was, by definition, Mick squirming about and pulling faces for the camera, and haye even gone so far as, in “She Was Hot,” to reduce Mick to merely one of the boys and let the sexual symbolhood fall on the ample Anita Morris.

Ray Davies consistently takes the weight off Kinks videos with a very literal and self-mocking wit. In the same way, ZZ Top manages to avoid getting too mystic or Twilight Zone twisted as the trio goes around the country handing out the magic car keys and turning wallflowers into sex goddesses and geeks into Mohair Sam. It’s all played strictly for laughs but, then again, what other way could a group of guys with Civil War beards and sheepskin guitars play it?

It’s possible that the reason so many rockers get so grim about their videos is that they jook on a video as some kind of affirmation of power. Top of the world, Ma—look at me on MTV! Ever since Quiet Riot played “Cum On Feel The Noize” to a roaring, fist-clenching mob of enthusiasts, any band with more guitars than ideas, when in doubt, turns its video into little Nuremberg Rallies. It says a bunch not only about the musicians but about their fantasy relationship with the audience. The Scorpions fans are so brutally mindless that they have to be separated from the group by steel bars. Little Steven’s crowd is so rabid that, at the end of “Out Of The Darkness,” they break into a sieg heil style chant—Ste-ven! Stev-en! I always worry when rock stars want to be Hitler. Or when, like Duran Duran, they feel the need to pour special effects all over the audience.

Billy Idol once had what had to be the most damaging vision of his public ever to grace a TV screen. In “Dancing With Myself,” the fans were ragged George Romero zombies prepared to claw their way up the outsides of tall buildings to reach Billy, who’s trying to electrocute himself with some massive Frankenstein appliance. (It’s a well known fact here in New York, incidentally, that junkies can walk up sheer walls.) Billy’s attitude began to soften somewhat and on “Rebel Yell”; here, the mob was actually allowed into a nightclub to watch Billy rant and sweat and brandish his fists. By the time he got to “Eyes Without A Face,” off in a new direction that could easily have made him the Official Jim Morrison of the 1984 Olympics, Billy had moved on to symbolic flames, black-robed monks, women in cages and more women in rubber dresses being knocked over by high pressure hoses.

The proliferation of soft focus sado-sexual images is one more indication of just how many power fantasies are buried in the outpourings of rock video. S&M is only power in a sexual drag.

With so much self-glorification and would-be rabble rousing, it comes as a relief to see something as simple and direct as Brace Springsteen’s “Rosalita.” Springsteen is so overtly in love with the band, the crowd, the situation, Clarence Clemons, even the girls who climb on stage to try and kiss him. Above all, and in the best possible way, he’s in love with himself and the knowledge that he’s doing it exactly right. “Rosalita” is a celebration.

Sad to say, a celebration is a rare event among the general pretentions of rock video.

RETURN OF THE THIN WHITE LOAF

DAVID BOWIE: . Serious Moonlight (Media Home Entertainment) HERBIE HANCOCK AND THE ROCKIT BAND (CBS Fox Video) DEXYS MIDNIGHT RUNNERS: The Bridge (RCA/Columbia Pictures Video)

As they say, take David Bowie. Puh-leese. Take him and ask him what exactly he had in mind with his latest album, his latest tour, his latest HBO special and Serious Moonlight, which is that very same special with 30 minutes of extra tunes spliced in. Ask David Bowie if his entire “plan”j-for the man deals in plans—was to become as appealing, as exciting, as controversial and as radical a pop performer as Sammy Davis, Jr.

If you were among those who have followed David Bowie from, say, his Man Of Words/Man Of Music (a.k.a. Space Oddity) LP, you have doubtlessly been dumbfounded by the man’s tendency to change. Since Ziggy Stardust, Bowie has become Aladdin Sane, a cover artist, a half-dog; a slick Young American, a proto-Nazi, a Tangerine dreamboat, the sort of twit who’d narrate Prokofiev, a lodger, a scary monster, and now, basically, a blowdried singing can of Spam. And if you’ve been a longtime Bowie fan— and I always thought I was— I imagine you were severely disappointed with Let’s Dance. Maybe as a fan you viewed its blandness as some sort of consolidation move on Bowie’s part—his first album for a new label, his chance to reach a whole new audience, not a sellout but a purposefully strategic move. And, mind you, this may well be the case. But it doesn’t excuse the dreariness of this tape.

Serious Moonlight establishes David Bowie as an entertainer in the same mold as Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond and maybe even Dylan during his Vegas period (“Here’s a song you might remember, it means a lot to me, might mean something to you, it’s called ‘Like A Rolling Stone’—hit it, boys...”). He is the Jovial Entertainer, ever willing to please fans new or old alike. His choice of songs seems inspired on paper, but the performances themselves are disappointingly lackluster and emotionless. Except on the track “Fashion,” revealingly, Bowie doesn’t really give any of himself in performance. Many will say that’s always been the case and is in fact part of his unique appeal— but that’s the easy way out.

Bowie seems to mean it on “Fashion” because ordering his audience to “turn to the left/turn to the right” is what he’s been doing since Ziggy Stardust. For it was that album and the worldwide success it met that gave Bowie the message that concepts, ideas and trends are more important than simple songs. Bowie’s never written one more heartfelt than “The Bewlay Brothers” from Hunky Dory, for example, yet the proposition that he could write as personally meaningful a song in 1984 is laughable. So here we Sit, left watching a soulless cover of a once-great song, “Life On Mars,” that in retrospect seems better sung by Barbra Streisand.

Serious Moonlight is a fine documentary of an artist in a perpetual bind: he couldn’t go back home again even if he wanted to. Since he “initiated” the back-to-dablooz trend with Stevie Ray Vaughan on Let’s Dance, there’s always the possibility he , might be inspired enough to go back-to-the-heart and start writing songs like he means them again. But, as I’m sure he’d be the first to point out, they wouldn’t be as fun to watch.

Herbie Hancock’s approach to concert recording is significantly more interesting, maybe because so few people have even considered his image (and more don’t even know what he looks like) in the first place. Hancock’s reputation in the jazz world is forever assured by his classic recordings with Miles Davis’s group of the mid-’60s—and though he’s taken more flak than most jazz musicians with fusion leanings, his recent recordings with Material have brought him favor both critically and commercially. Thus this tape.

CBS/Fox Video are using Herbie Hancock And The Rockit Band to introduce their VHS Hi-Fi technology, probably because the highs and lows the synthed-up group produces sound stunning via that system. But watching Hancock’s tape may be almost as nifty as hearing it, Hi-Fi or no. Experimental video techniques warp the images of the Rockit Band all over the place: entire figures are big and small; heads are huge, legs are tiny, then vice-versa; and just when you’re bored with the sideshow-mirror gimmickry, swinging, robotic arms and legs descend onstage, ala this year’s Grammy Awards show. And the famous “Rockit” and “Autodrive” video clips, produced by ex-5cc’s Godley & Creme, show up during the performance, clipped and edited, and— as a bonus—at the tail end of the tape in their entirety.

Sure, things slow up when vocalist Bernard Fowler comes aboard, semisoulfully crooning; with robots, dismembered hands and quacking ducks, who w&nts to be reminded of Hancock’s need for “mass acceptance”? Otherwise, his band is untouchable: ex-Feelie & Pere Ubu drummer Anton Fier, bassist Wayne Braithwait, second keyboardist Jeff Bova, drummer J.T. Lewis and turntable bigwig Grand Mixer D.ST. make noises like you wouldn’t believe. Scratches, pops, blips, bleeps and shrieks are everywhere, Hancock keeps his cool impeccably, and if you lit up some incense it would be a light show. Neat stuff.

‘‘Gimmicks are bullshit,” one can imagine England’s Kevin Rowland howling right about' now—but Rowland, whose gimmick with Dexys Midnight Runners was always no gimmicks, could stand to learn a lesson from Herbie Hancock. Dexys (they of the longshoremen outfits initially and even dumber clothes after that) might’ve been the biggest thing since peas in England once, but you wouldn’t know it from watching them on The Bridge. Assuming you can stay awake long enough to draw a conclusion.

Let’s be polite about it. A fluke of nature has given Rowland a voice almost identical to Freddie Mercury’s. But could nature alone be cruel enough to make Rowland as unremittingly obnoxious as is Queen’s lead singer? Surprisingly, he’s that and much more. In truth, this concert video numbers among the very few I would consider terrible.

Why?

Because it is just them, onstage. No gimmicks. They are boring.

Because they perform a Van Morrison song and fail miserably at getting more than 50 percent of the lyrics correct.

Because Rowland often imitates Morrison, and mutters his own lyrics as if they were the lyrics to, say, “Listen To The Lion”—when actually, to be quite fair, his lyrics are very often meaningless.

Because Dexys Midnight Runners embody all that is pretentious, selfimportant and basically unnecessary in current British pop music.

And because if Kevin Rowland had his way, he would make a video like David Bowie’s Serious Moonlight and think it was really good. He would be wrong, of course, but he wouldn’t care, because he was Kevin Rowland.

Luckily, we aren’t.

Dave DiMartino