If there’s one commodity that sure seems in mighty short supply these days along the old video trail, it’s a sense of humor. Now I know that when you sit down and try to think about the reasons for this sorry state of affairs, you can actually come up with quite a few. To begin with, there’s the fact that videos are, after all, commercials, and, just as commercials for deodorantsandsoapsuds didn’t start to bo able* to laugh at themselves until the medium of television was able to establish itself as being frere to stay, so, too, music videos had a hard time getting comfortable enough as an overall ent^td iet the proverbial hair down. These things, we all know, cost money—in most cases more tharf|it cost to make the damned record they’re promoting#;dnd record companies want to be able to foresee a return on that investment. Which means thatf the vidmakers must “pitch” the act properly, playing up either the artist’s ego (Stevie Nicks can’t be offscreen for more than two consecutive seconds in any video she makes), or image (Bruce goes to Vietnam, Bruce fixes a car; Bruce operates the crane), or attitude (like all of us, New Order is bored)||l||

The other primary reason is that artists, especially new or upcoming ones, are usually much too “serious” about their “craft” to want to thumb their nose at the mirror. Let’s face it: for every ZZ Top or Bette Midler out there enjoying themselves, there are 11,957 Face To Faces and Autographs for whom striving to be rich and famous (especially rich) is tough, demanding work. Sure, you can sit back and laugh it up when you’re David Lee Roth and on top of the heap, but when you’re Giuffria, and struggling up that long, hard climb, it’s quite another story.

Perhaps this is exactly why we’re so pleased to report that there’re at least a few people out there toiling in the trenches who aren’t afraid to make their videos fun—and funny—to watch. Singled out first for meritorious service this month is Mr. “Dare To Be Stupid” himself, Weird Al Yankovic, who has pretty much become the Allen Sherman of rock video. Al’s latest, “Like A Surgeon,” is the first one he’s done that really works on a connected multitude of levels, as he not only skewers Madonna and her pathetically regressive hot-totrot undulations, but also uses the lyrical parody of “Like A Virgin” to Create an entire A/'rp/ane-like universe in the hospital where our protagonist is interning. Whether he’s dropping transplant organs on the floor, hanging a “Now Serving” sign in the operating room, getting a forefinger sliced off by a mishandled scalpel, or watching the anaesthetist sneaking a 12 o’clock high, Yankovic, on “Like A Surgeon,® has surpassed the loftily looney levels he reached on “Eat It,” and that’s saying a sutureful.

Also getting a hearty thumbs-up is the Talking Heads gang, whose “Road To Nowhere” video should do lots for those folks who find them too austere and too selfconscious on vinyl. It’s not that there’s anything especially ha-ha funny about this clip, although David Byrne singing underwater with an utterly straight face is a rather deft touch. What’s striking here is the general tone of the video; this is an ambling, assured, self-effacing, tongue-in-cheek, very amiable piece of work that clearly took a great deal of time and effort but simply runs by without worrying whether you’re “paying attention” or not. From Jerry Harrison’s manic man-onwooden-chair jumpiness to the dueling businessmen in wrestling masks to the runaway shopping carts and Byrne’s “Once In A Lifetime” nerd still trapped inside his little Skinner box, “Road To Nowhere” is an utter delight. And delightful sure ain’t the way this born skeptic is used to describing his videos, that’s for sure.

SNAP SHOTS

Jam Up And Jelly Tight: Prince & The Revolution, “Raspberry Beret”—As Richard Walls astutely noted in his review of the Around The World In A Day album, this is “psychedelic” music made for expanding your wardrobe, not your consciousness, and the vibes in this video are decidedly sartorial. As long as all you’re doin’ is simply groovin’ on all the outasite apparel (love that far-out Far East motif running through the string section), things are very cool indeed, but then you see Prince singing lines like “She wasn’t too bright” and “I wouldn’t change a stroke,” and that misogynistic bad karma starts coming down again. Suffice to say that, sex-wise, this boy still seems to be on one bummer of a trip. At least he finally gave himself a decent shave...Stop Me Before I Video Again! John Denver, “Don’t Close Your Eyes Tonight”—I thought I’d seen everything when ABC television actually hired this clown to be the “official” wandering minstrel of the 1984 Winter Olympics in Yugoslavia. Boy, was I wrong! Should this video turn up on your screen unexpectedly, all I can do is urge you to not only close your eyes, but lock the doors and hide the children as well. I mean, John Denver in bed, on top of a woman (hope this person filed a grievance with the Screen Actors Guild), with his shirt off, SWEATING? They censored Bowie’s “China Girl” and let this atrocity get through? Wire your congressman today!...Shags At 10 Paces: Jeff Beck/Rod Stewart, “People Get Ready”—I tell ya, there’s nothing quite like the sight of Rod Stewart mouthing the words “git on boad” while Mexican girls stream out of their adobe huts to worship at his feet. The Vanilla Fudge died for this?

Immediate Death To The Designated Hitter Rule Not Soon Enough! Bruce Springsteen, “Glory Days”—I’ve finally figured out Bruce’s lip-synch problems— his right shoulder flies open on the windup, and that screws up his release point. I don’t mind cheap baseball references, but even his personal rock critic, Dave Marsh, coulda told him that it’s called a fastball, not a speedbalL.I Swear, That Picture’s Following Me Around The Room: Men At Work, “Everything I Need”— Look, I’m sorry half the band left and all that, but if you want to act this morose, do it on your own time, OK? We want some entertainment value for our kilowatt hours, you know?...Not In My House, You Won’t! Dead or Alive, “You Spin Me Round”— Steve McQueen, where are you now that we really need you?

BEAT ME!

STEWART COPELAND:

The Rhythmatist (A & M Video)

by

David Keeps

The most boring show I ever saw on television (other than the American Music Awards, of course) was a swell little travelogue program called George Pierrot Presents. Old George was a helluva guy—so fat you couldn’t see his eyes with a voice that sounded like a cement mixer—and he always fell asleep by the end of the show. Fortunately, that big blond drumbo they call Stewart Copeland grew up in the Middle East, not Detroit, so none of George’s inimitable style wore off. But despite his contention that this fuil-length-nothing-to-do-with-rockvideo video dispenses with plot, The Rhythmatist is, in fact, a linear travelogue with traces of a story and just a dash of documentary feel.

It begins, like one of those Cinemax Album Flash doo-hickies might, in a recording studio, with the dashing Mr. Copeland mucking about at the control board as a sprightly African tune unfolds— but suddenly we are plunged into the African plains as his cartoon scientist voice explains that these here sounds are the basis of all rock ’n’ roll—what a hook! “In life, as in rhythm,” he explains in the narration, “if you know where the beat is going to land you can jump on it.”

Before long, he’s jumping into cartwheels with the natives and into the sack with a “tall, cool blonde” who picks him up hitchhiking. Copeland’s “character, one Dr. Kent (a not-so-subversive reference to his pop alter ego Klark Kent) is both an observer and a participant—joining in on jungle jam sessions and composing on his Casio while trying to analyze the deeper meanings of rhythm. This quest would become more than a little tiresome if the blacksuit-and-hatted Kent didn’t also share Copeland’s cheesy grin and earthy sense of humor. Mocking the pretentiousness of a scientist, he passes a Pygmy peace pipe with the observation that “attending college in California has prepared me for the consumption of the village weed.” And when the good doctor espies some simian intercourse he deadpans, “Now that’s wildlife!”. '

OK, we now know what wildlife is, but just what the hell is a rhythmatist anyway? Momma always told me if I got lost that I should ask a policeman for help. Take it away, Stew...“These are Dr. Copelafid’s theories of rhythmatism. Time is all rhythm. The whole city is pulsating with that rhythm—the traffic goes in in the morning and out at night. Rhythmatism is the science of finding the patterns of life. It started out as a frivolous exploration but the more I delved into it, the more substance I saw in it. Look at the works of Escher or Bach and these patterns do seem to add up to something—something spiritual actually. Recently I’ve discovered books by Germans with unpronounceable names where they teach this stuff in universities. Then there are Dr. Copeland’s earlier theories of Kinetic Ritual— using ritualistic applications of rhythm in creative ways to induce mental states for concentration and creativity. Like in a church, when they kneel, pray, stand, kneel—very rhythmic behavior that brings about a divine presence. The same thing happens at football games and rock shows where there are 20,000 people concentrating on ail that rhythm. I know that I can leap tail buildings when I’m at the center of that power.”

Yeah, but making a video filmette might be a little more strenuous. Though Copeland has directed a movie—a documentary of Brit punk bands called So What—he enlisted the aid of Belgian* director J.P. Dutilleux, who specializes in “first contact” with primitive tribes. They spent two-and-a-half months on the plains and in a friend’s ranch, and traveled east to west across the equator, with Stewart landing in jail for an evening for traveling without a visa in Zaire. But that didn’t piss him off at all. “Africa is the most hospitable place in the world,” he gushes. “There is no racial hostility there at all, none whatsoever. They’re very warm and jovial people. There is no such thing as disenchantment with society as with the youth in America and Europe, because their societies are so wellbalanced.”

And besides, it was in that jail that he discovered Lingala, the local form of pop music, which is the basis of the music for the very fine Rhythmatist LP, which is not exactly a soundtrack for the vid. “African music sounds incredible when you’re there in the village and one song lasts for three hours, but when you try to put it on an LP it’s a different medium. I really had to carve it up and put it through my laboratory techniques, which I enjoy doing because I’m an incorrigible meddler.

“The reason for my exploration of this fairly esoteric subject is a questing for meaning in my own life. For some reason, I am outrageously rewarded for this obscure talent I have for rhythm. Doctors save lives, lawyers save freedom, interior decorators save people’s kitchens and I don’t do anything nearly so important. I live in the English countryside— horses and elitist stuff like that which is fairly sickening, so I have to get out of that. I could write music for my friends the gophers and rabbits that run across my land, but that’s not what I’m here for. In a way, my own lifestyle is irrelevant to all those people out there. I’ve managed to pull myself out of the same existence that most people are living, but I don’t consider that relevant. I want to communicate with the people here. That’s the reason I find films inspiring.”

It was one film in particular that galvanized Copeland’s interest in rhythmatism. He earned Grammy and Golden Globe nominations for his atmospheric soundtrack to Coppola’s Rumblefish.

The Rhythmatist, Copeland reckons, is really “a new art form.” And, he jokes, “I take my art fairly seriously. With a capital |A’ and an ‘E’ at the end and quite possibly an ‘F* at the beginning. The inspiration is poly-fold. The medium itself, videocassettes, is a way of making LPs with pictures. But the problem with the medium at the moment is they’re using art forms that are made for a different medium like feature films, which are really made to be seen once on a big screen. The challenge was to make something that has the same kind of playability as an LP, something that you can come back to after years.”

It’ll probably be a few years before Copeland himself has a chance to review his contribution to this new (F)arte form. Last year he scored a ballet, and he’s completed music for Lucasfilms’ Star Wars cartoon and started work on music for a 13-part TV series. “A real disciplined job,” he mutters. And he’s also been approached by a movie company to write the story and music for a film he’ll star in. “I definitely enjoy working,” he says. “Because the work I do is so much fun. But a real workaholic is someone who directs movies.”

And, now, to the burning question? “I’m not bound by the hip to my two colleagues in the Police,” Stewart says in anticipation of the obvious. “I enjoy making music with them and I intend to keep on doing it.” And maybe, if there’s some spare time, he can invent another new art form, too.