AMONG THE VDEODROMEDARIES: NEAR THE SAHARA OF THE BOZART

AMONG THE VDEODROMEDARIES: NEAR THE SAHARA OF THE BOZART

Richard Riegel

Metal videos seem to be pop-ping up on my tube more frequently this week than they have for several months, or maybe I'm just getting more skilled on the ol' cable box. Punching off MTV into USA's Radio 1990 usually guarantees something a little bit different, and now that the latter series has instituted its "Heavy Metal Wednesday" theme shows, I know I can count on at least one half hour of metal yids per week.

Since I last reported on Radio 1990. the show has changed to a co-hostess format. Founder and all-around grande-dame-of-t he-rockcrits Lisa Robinson has con-tinued her enshrined practice of fawning over her "good friends" Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page at least six times every week, but

she's turned the more prosaic reporting duties over to one Kathryn Kinley. The freckled-bosomed Ms. Kinley is almost as glossily robotic as those generic anchorpersons on Entertainment Tonight, but at least she just reads her teleprompter lines.

Anyhoo, a bunch of mellowing metal veterans who recently pop-ped up on my medium-sized screen are Slade. with their "Lit-tle Sheila." This video has a goofy overlay of printed chapter titles: "Act One: A Dark and Stormy Night." etc., which seem rather superfluous, since the whole mini-epic is nothing but the usual Sladest simulated "live" crowd pandemonium anyhow (or maybe that's the point). Once these guys (especially Noddy Holder and Dave Hill) put their natural-born yobbo faces to work in a video, few other props are necessary. However, one suggestion. lads: give your old manager/ producer Chas Chandler a cameo in yer next vid. we of the Animals Liberation Front will be eternally grateful.

Surprisingly, I caught my favorite metal video of the month on hidebound MTV. I was just about to punch away from the pimple-medicine commercial or Phil Collins video (same difference) I feared, when the tricky Emmteeveers programmed Loudness’s "Crazy Nights." These Japanese metal moguls have been sampanned all over the map as “derivative” of the AngloAmerican big boys, but isn’t that what metal’s all about? Lead shouter Minoru Nihara is nothing more than Ronnie James Dio translated into total unintelligibility (which is not only where the mole man has belonged all along, but also where fringe punk metalleers like Nina Hagen derive all their impressive power). Anyway, when I see the longblackhaired frozen Japs of Loudness strutting like roundeyes across the stage, before that impressive bank of Marshalls, I can't help wondering what Yoko Ono thinks of this as she watches from her Dakota citadel. It’s 11 P.M.: do you know where your kids are?

Some metal bangers don’t seem to have that much “kid” left in them anymore, if Dokken’s “Alone Again” video is any indication. This is half-performance, halfstory, as lead singer Don Dokken reflects on the lonely existence of the always-travelling “rockstar.” (I’ll spare you my comments on the awesomely creative originality of this plot.) This has all the neonmotel pop art cliches beloved by video directors: all those clutching hands at the edge of the stage, yet King Don’s alone in his motel room after the show. How sad! (But will somebody write in and tell me whether the performance segments of this vid are purposely programmed in slow-motion, or do Dokken always play that way?!?)

Take it from me, boyos, if you want to do a song that weepy and narcissist, at least try to rescue it from Maudlin City with a funny video. That combo does the trick for REO Speedwagon who are back in my good graces with their “One Lonely Night” video. The song itself is as Irish-tenor-with-aswelling-breast sentimental as Kevin Cronin just loves to do (even if keyboardist Neal Doughty was the composer culprit this time.) Anyway, the video reclaims a more existential tone via Kevin Doyle’s direction, and his starring role as a lonely (k)night adrift in a surrealistic. modern midnite metropolis of an American city. Doyle also directed and starred (as the bratty kid) in REO’s lively “I Do’Wanna Know” video, and this one is even better, mainly because of the presence of that versatile REO repertory company. Kevin Cronin is kept safely out of the way as a dizzy wizard, while Messrs. Richrath, Hall, Doughty, and Gratzer turn up in multiple roles, as speedwagoned cops, winos, delinquents, and at least three changes of drag, in which they’re absolute queens of the night. Bravo, you cuties, by now I even go for the squealy organ in this song when I catch it on the radio, thanks to you painting a better picture than the lyrics could ever do.

Speaking of female impersonation in the video world, it’s not always fun & falsies a la REO Speedwagon. Director Derek Burbridge employs the same whitefaced, black-gloved closet types in the videos of both Robert Plant's "Little By Little,” and Gino Vannelli’s “Black Cars.” Robert Plant appears to comprehend all .this hyped-up mimery even less than we the longsuffering viewers do: he’d just as soon wander out & about among the country gentlefolk in the wintry Black Mountains of Wales, maybe to prove he’s even more of a sensitive soul than he is the longmaned cockrocker who caused all these other long-maned dippos to descend on us over the years. “I can breathe again,” Plant croons, as he nuzzles up to a greyhound, but that’s an acquired taste of an olfactory experience, Bobby, if you ask me. Besides, Plant’s video includes too many of those helicoptering over-a-craggy-cliff atmosphere shots we already saw in the Eurythmics’ “Here Comes The Rain Again” last year.

Well, that's all for this month, kidz & kiddos, keep those "bikini areas” dry until I return to advise you once again of the best vidz to CREEM all over...