THE VILLAGE VIDIOT SPEAKS ON DADS 'N' PRIMATES 'N' STUFF

THE VILLAGE VIDIOT SPEAKS ON DADS 'N' PRIMATES 'N' STUFF

Richard Riegel

There’s no use me ranting about the state of MTV (which = the known world of video rock for most of us VCR-less peons) again this month. I’ll just start sputtering, and I’ll end up wasting a lot of those valuable column inches you’re about to fork yer sweaty $2.95 over for, at this very moment. Better to get right on with the vids themselves, OK?

First of all, my apologies to all the John Parr fans out there for my glaring factual error in my critique of his “Naughty, Naughty” video in the June issue. That lush convertible Parr works on for peanuts, and then fantasizes about appropriating for his own uses is a Rolls-Royce, not a Bentley as I called it. Jeez, the camera even lingers on the R-R radiator emblem for the benefit of slow learners like your reporter, and I still blew it. By now I’m even starting to like the Parr video, maybe as penance for wronging it earlier, maybe just “because.”

Something else that’s made me feel more favorable to Mr. Parr is the arrival of Bruce Springsteen's “I’m On Fire” video, which has received a bunch of gushing hoopla from all the Martha Quinns of the Universe as The Boss’s first “conceptual” video. As you must have noticed by now, “I’m On Fire” has almost exactly the same plot (lowly mechanic covets the hot car he’s servicing & dreams of all its sexual-tool possibilities) as Parr’s "Naughty, Naughty,” but it’s only half as interesting. Now let me get the car right this time — it’s a 1956 Ford T-Bird, with '57 hubcaps, no less—but when Bruce crawls out from under the car he’s fixing, and when he’s aw-shucks conversing with the T-Bird’s glamorous owner, he paints a much too apelike expression on his mug. In other words, he believes in all his own romantic-myth songs about the nobility of grease monkeys, but when it comes to acting ’em out, he should stop after the nobility part. My own father has been an auto mechanic for 60 years now, and I know he’s never once come on as primate-heavy as Springsteen does in “I’m On Fire.” Funny, my arms seem to be lengthening even as I type this...

Another video you’ve undoubtedly seen on your TV many times this week is Tom Petty's “Don’t Come Around Here No More.” It’s a well-done visual update of all the psychedelic potentials of the Alice In Wonderland story the Jefferson Airplane hipped us to way back in “White Rabbit.” Some viewers enjoy the cannibalistic climax, where Alice is sliced up into fattening squares of cake and served on good china, but for my money the star is Tom Petty’s gophery everyface. shot head-on so that he looks real redneckpunk nasty in those little Jim McGuinn glasses. It’s nice to know that Springsteen-noble rockers can portray an innuman side, too. And yes, that is the Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart perched up on the toadstool—they say he hasn’t come down yet.

As celebrated populist-rockers can get nasty, so can the cocky metal boys get noble (sometimes.) Michael Bolton's “Everybody's Crazy” includes all the usual Robert Plant-derived strutting and preening Bolton figures his long curly mane entitles him to project. But at the same time the video's trying to make an anti-violence statement of sorts, what with all the background footage of wars, nuclear explosions, soldiers' graves, etc., flashed by us in the edifying manner of Bob Dylan's "Jokerman.”

Warrior might even have some of the same save-the-world concern in their “Fighting For The Earth” video, directed by Jim Yukich, although too much of the vid is taken up by lead voker Parramore (!) McCarty's garglethroated. demon-possessed hopping around the risers (of some ratty backlot Hollywood studio). This video is like a parody of a parody of a parody of one already done by one of the other noo-metal L.A. biggies—maybe Ratt, maybe Motley Crue, I fergit which now, but when McCarty screams about '‘the cry of the jackal you know he's after big game.

Twisted Sister's Dee Snider is after an even more formidable quarry in the video of “The Price"—Mr. Snider's going for nothing less than all the mommies and all the daddies (of all the P.T.A.’s out to ban T.S.). This vid features absolutely no assaults on authority figures, it’s pure performance. just Snider emoting his way thru the earnest ballad, like he thinks he's the new Steve Perry or something. Next stop. VH-1! I told you Twisted Sister had crossover success on their kinky brains!

Speaking of crossover and its usages. I know you've seen the video of the Power Station's "Some Like It Hot." wherein a couple of those Taylors from Duran Duran get together with Robert Palmer, one party to shake off the dread teenybopper associations, the other to escape past charges of Izod elitism. Don’t ask me which is which, they’re all just hokum pretty boys to this old slinger of ugly words, but the video’s pretty neat anyway. It’s got lots and lots of the bright blues and intense magentas that have blown out many a one-button color tuner. The makeup goes neon (literally) when the leggy model passes from animation into flesh, and the whole video escapade suggests a commercial for Merry-Go-Round's new line of daglo bondage jeans. Who did you say’s in this group again?

A video you should definitely avoid when it pops out of your MTV pill bottle is Vitamin Z’s “Burning Flame.” The lead singer here is a Limey who vaguely resembles Elvis Presley (and boy does he know it!), with the repulsive consequence that his heavy-lidded eyeballs chase a woman all around the room as he sings, making her feel guiltier and guiltier for not worshipping his Elvisoid mug 48 hours a day. Whatsamatter with these modern wimmen? Aren’t they grateful to be in the presence of such sumptuous malehoodiness any more? Well, I’ll tell ya, bub, my modernwoman spouse has even harsher words for you. She claims you look less like Presley than you do like someone born with his eyes on the side of his head, eyes that had to be surgically shifted back to a more "normal” position. So that’s what today’s Janes really think when you stroll into the pub, Tarzan! Shrivel up & get lost now!

As videoland Limeys go, sometimes the more senile geezers are easier to take, e.g., the reunited Deep Purple and their "Perfect Strangers.” This is pure lifestyles-of-the-disgustinglyrich-and-famous turf, what with Messrs. Lord and Blackmore showing off their baronial estates and their two hot-air balloons in every garage weekends. Deep Purple’s message here seems to be that they’ve already made it, that this reunion is just another lark for these disgustingly rich & famous personages, and that if they fall on their lovable-bozo faces this time, don’t say that yer TV didn’t warn you.

In parting, let me remind you that there are still plenty of good videos out there, Just keep watching for ’em. One I like a lot this week is Huey Lewis’s "Bad Is Bad,” complete with many little triggers of emotional & nostalgic pleasure for us refugees from the '60s. I’m still beatnik-romantic enough to relish Huey’s tour of skid row, and when that 1948 or '49 Hudson (exactly like the one Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac piloted in On The Road!) arrives at the end, all my battered literary idealism comes flooding back.

You should also check out a video that’s neither rock nor particularly new, but which grabs me whenever I see it (& I did again this week): Merle Haggard’s "Are The Good Times Really Over?” The song’s the vehicle here, another powerful crash-of-theAmerican-dream lament in the tradition of Seger, Mellencamp, and Springsteen. But the video’s tough too, especially when Haggard sings “Wish a Ford and Chevy would still last 10 years like they should!” and the crowd goes into a cheering uproar.

Hard new times are upon us Amerikaners. Keep tuned, kiddos of the industrial apocalypse, the videos will take their stabs too.