VIDEO VANITIES OF 1985 THEY PAID WITH BULLETS!

VIDEO VANITIES OF 1985 THEY PAID WITH BULLETS!

Richard Riegel

You’d think, from reading the popular press (including CREEM, of course), that all the most blatant leather & stud lock-up-yerdaughters metal videos are playing on your kid’s boob toob every hour on the hour this week. However, before you call an emergency meeting of your PTA to combat the decline in reading test scores caused by Gene Simmons’s charismatic tongue action, you’d be wise to tune into your MTV any given afterschool hour.

Motley Crue, Twisted Sister, Ratt—none of the costumed metal monsters are appearing on MTV with any regularity anymore, even though they were hotshot programming just a few months ago. What MTV is showing much more of instead is metalflavored bands, like The Firm, Survivor, Sammy Hagar, etc.—groups who make with the loud axe action OK, but who don’t have the imagination (or whatever it takes) to dress up in the leather uniforms all the “classic” metal boys favor.

Check out these newer metal videos if you can find ’em anywhere on your tube: Grim Reaper, “See You In Hell”; Autograph, “Turn Up The Radio’’; Robin George, “Heartline.” I’m a pro video watcher, and I’ve seen these entries a grand total of one time each, so these bands may as well forget their leggy-blonde-peopled dreams of mass exposure. Oh yeah, I can remember that each included some guitars and some leather, I might even be able to recall Japgrafix sweatshirts as seen on Grim Reaper, but otherwise these video contenders’ faces are pure blanks to me. So MTV, with something of a popular rep for pandering metalbangers, is actually shilling for the sterile triangles of Phil Collins’s receding hairline!

It really hit me that MTV’s programming is going seriously downhill when Martha Quinn started looking good to me. I mean, if it’s a choice between ogling Martha’s perky little bod thru her synthetic punk garments, or watching Phil Collins make the universe safe for British men’ssmoking-club imperialism for the two zillionth time, you’ve gotta go with the human side of the equation.

Speaking of humanity, MTV’s prize video this week of course is the recently-debuted USA For Africa’s “We Are The World.” Obviously this is a worthy cause, and I hope the record raises many dollars for the hungry people on our planet, even if I’m not overly fond of the video itself. But that’s my bias—I abhor congregations of “superstars” in groups larger than one at a time, so the assembled multitude of networkers on “We Are The World” gives me the sensation of viewing Entertainment Tonight on bad acid.

There are a couple of redeeming moments in the vid, like when Kenny Rogers elbows the halfpint Paul Simon out of the way at the mike (the blind shoving the blind, and Stevie Wonder’s not even involved in this fenderbender), or in Bob Dylan’s ever-redeeming performance. Bob gets to stand by his songwriter idol Smokey Robinson, but he's otherwise shrimped out by the towering Pointer Sisters and by M.C. Lionel Richie (dollars to donuts Bette Midler had to explain to Bob who Mr. Richie was). Dylan huddles back there in the ranks, clutching his headphones like an electronic security blanket, and going thru some 360-degree eyeball dilations (stuck inside-a-Mobilewith-the-etc.), but finally he lets loose with a snarling-prophet solo that restores all his cranky (real) superstar dignity once again.

Actually, if you ask me, the USA For Africa gang should’ve done “We Are The World" as a conceptual video. Daryl Hall was on hand for the session, and as he’s imitated black soul men in his records for years now, he could’ve played a starving Ethiopian black person just as convincingly. Think of it, a closeup shot of Daryl Hall lying emaciated on the desert floor, with flies nibbling at his sculptured pompadour and at his icy-bachelor egocentric eyebrows—I’d send money in for that cause pronto!

Funny that I just mentioned asseen-on-TV offers, as a couple of video mega megas have pulled the old bait & switch on us recently. For one, I thought Wham! s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” was a clever song and the video was at least passable, but they've struck out on both counts with “Careless Whisper." The song is pure narcissistic mush (and you can tell George Michael s really getting into this drivel, guess the bouncy “Go-Go” was just another lie), and the accompanying video is a horribly depressing parody of everything that’s wrong in Duran Duran's l-am-a-blond-Englishmanyou-shall-submit-to-me video tours of all the chi-chi islands.

REO Speedwagon have pulled a similar B&S Stateside. “I Do’ wanna Know" was their best song maybe ever, and the colorful video was just as nifty, but "Can’t Fight This Feeling" is a dreary ballad. replete with all of Kevin Cronin's worst neo-Bing Crosby tenden-cies. all the ones I already hated this band for in the '70s. What's in-teresting is that there are two ver-sions of the "Can't Fight This Feel-ing'. video. one in which the band members crack up at the obvious maudlin•ness Of the song, and one in which they play it as straight as all the lines in Cronin's earnest-priest face And just guess which one MN programs more often! In-cidentally. the "straight" version has so many shameless visual lifts from the late surrealist Rene Magritte that his old pal Salvador Deli should come over here and paste fur all over the REO's in retribution.

If you're a Ian of Emperor's New Clothes-style videos. you should definitely check out Eric Clap-ton's "Forever Man." I can't figure how Kevin Gridley and Lol Creme could direct a bomb like this after all their celebrated creativity on limbic Hancock's "Rockit," though maybe the dum-my they had to work with in this one is less of a method actor. I've watched this video again & again. and nothirul over happens in it. ex-cept that Clanton sings and strums his guitar in a rally studio. while cameramen nein around and shoot the 'mil who are Simultaneously shooting him. And that's all there is to it! Not to men-tion that it's filmed in that same drab brown lint they use for caveperson sequences in Billy Idol and Scorpions yids. I dunno. maybe this is just the visual punch-line to the musical joke Clapton had already become (sez me) as early as Leyte.

Speaking of overly plain videos. the unadorned route may have been O.K. for Julian Lennon the first time he cashed in on closeups of his facial bones. but he's trying my patience with the same plotlessness in "Too Late For Goodbyes " Maybe there's a story in that offstage person he keeps semi-smiling toward. and then again maybe not. I think it's time we demanded a conceptual video from this bright young lad. who after all created the whole concept of his dad's "Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds" when he was just five years old for crissake!

Frankie Goes To Holly-wood are finally making their presence felt on primetime U.S TV with what Ms. Quinn tells me is the fourth version of the "Relax" video. Presumably this is the safest of the lot, as it's merely another concert-pandemonium rockumentary. with many shots of girls rushing on stage to embrace the respective Frankies. The message of course is that FGTH are just as manly & all-American as their fellow female-embraceable performers "Bruce" Springsteen and Steve Miller. The word on the street is that FGTH are British. and that they have something or other to do with the gay scene. but I can't see that in this vid.

Elliot Easton of the Cars also goes the ham-bourgeois route on his "(Wearing Down) Like A Wheel" video—you'd hardly guess that the guy's a member of a highly successful icytronic pop phenomenon. Nope. he thrashes around with his guitar as though he's a pure prairie boy as bland as the T-shirted Bryan Adams. But his accomplished-Car background sneaks into Easton's vid via the Levis-blues and neon-pink color-ing. not to mention that he portrays girl anxieties too. just like the ever-yearning Ric Ocasek.

What. you ask whether I ever like anything I see on MTV? Sure I do. MTV's overexposure of Madonna's "Material Girl" finally sold me on the yumminess of her navel jelly. I resisted the superhyp-ing of this blonde product for a long time. until Comrade Fern-bacher admitted there might be something halfway-decent going on behind the writhing. By now I actually almost enjoy the video of "Material Girl." first for all of Madonna's long-gloves & cocktail-dress pirouetting among those glamour stiffs (she looks much bet-ter being handed around by those gigolos than Elton John does). and then for the subplot in which she's going to take the rich & arrogant Keith Carradine for everything he's got. Here's another case in which life has a real obligation to imitate art.

I'm also an admirer of at least two of the six entries in MN's unsigned-bands Basement Tapes competition each week. but the general viewership never seem to agree with my choices & they in-evitably vote some cretin(s) closer to an Elektra recording contract. Just for the record. my choices from last week's Basement Tapes were 1) Georgia's Arms Akim-bo. their "Dominique" is ripe with all sorts of hopefully-British fetishes. plus their video's biracial love affair makes Al Jarreau's look like the fraud it so obviously is. and 2) Illinois's Basics. their "Kids In The Street" vid kids all the neon-children commercials of today to the point that they're fun again. and also it attacks the Yuppies real good in their stoopid possessions. The popular mandate went elsewhere. but if it were up to me. Mr. Record Company Owner. I'd give the Basics and Arms Akimbo a contract NOW!