VIDEO KILLERS OF RADIO STARS

VIDEO KILLERS OF RADIO STARS

Richard Riegel

Back in my June column, I requested postcards from any readers who actually had caught the elusive video of Motorhead’s "Killed By Death” on their tighttubed MTV. I didn’t receive a single postcard, which means that either 1) nobody reads my column all the way through, or 2) MTV hasn’t been showing Motorhead anyway. As the MTV programming computer has repeatedly proved itself much more fond of the lem-mings of the pop universe. rather than the Lemmies. I tend to favor explanation #2.

In any case, you faithful readers can dispense with the postcards now. as I finally caught up to the "Killed By Death" video myself, on the early evening of May 29. 1985. when it premiered on Radio 1990 (not MTV). This was nearly six months to the day after Motorhead had clued me to the vid's ex-istence. "Killed By Death" is everything the band promised. and maybe more: Lemmy rescues the nubile teen nipple icon from her uncomprehending parents and spirits her away on his big hog bike. Sound like Twisted Sister so far? Soda. except that this band plays for keeps: the fascist groove thang cops shoot down the hairy Lemmy. and then give him the high-tech highchair for good measure. He molders green-faced in his grave for at least as long as it took TV to pick up on this video, and then he pulls off a do-ityourself exhumation, bike and all.

Obviously I was rather pleased to catch the Motorhead video in its warty flesh after such a long wait, but I was even more excited about Lisa Robinson's commentary in introducing the vid. She gave a really strong pitch for Motorhead’s distinctive brand of hardcore metal,” which (she said & I agree) makes them “England’s most uncompromising heavy metal band.” As this Motorhead showcase fell on one of Radio 1990's Heavy Metal Wednesdays, Robinson had her rockcritical crossbow aimed right at the target codpieces of the American metal kids, who haven’t yet given Motorhead half the stardom they’ve so energetically earned, because the local electronic media in turn haven’t given Motorhead proper exposure.

Even though I haven’t seen “Killed By Death" a second time yet. on any channel, I’ve been more excited about Lisa Robinson’s hardcore push of worthy acts on recent Radio 1990 shows. She did a feature on hardcore rock itself, calling the style “the heavy metal of the 1990s,” and then showing Penelope Spheeris’s video of the D.l.’s “Richard Hung Himself,” another title not likely to follow Steve Perry in the nightly MTV rotation.

Just last night, another HM Wednesday, Robinson introduced the German panel-beaters of Einsturzende Neubauten to

the Radio 1990 mass audience. Her introductory tagline. “I’ve finally found a group loud enough for me," again seemed to be directed right at the metalconsuming kids, who claim to love LOUDNESS itself, but often seem to fall for visual props like scarfwrapped knees rather than pure noise as NOISE. Lisa went further out on a critical limb with a statement that might seem excessive printed in CREEM. let alone broadcast over national TV. when she described E.N. lead screamer Blixa Bargeld as “the most riveting since Iggy Pop or Jim Morrison.” On a Kaiser roll, Ms. Robinson finished off her exposition of these Kraut sauerballs with the triumphant simile, "They make heavy metal sound like Connie Francis and Frankie Avalon!"

Assuming Lisa Robinson wasn’t making a perverse allusion to the fact that Connie Francis was raped in a motel a few years ago (an incident which must have “inspired” certain metal video directors to come), her last statement was tough talk to discover on the usually lowly toob. For years I’ve dreamed of a rockcritical radio show, which would play everything that’s released, but on which the Don Imus-like deejays would also make appropriate value judgments, e.g.: "That was the new Genesis single, you're welcome to get into it if you like, shit seeks its own level after all.” I never imagined that a show like that could actually emerge, even on small college radio stations, but for Lisa Robinson to make strong, essentially critical statements on national TV—well, that still amazes and energizes me.

As recently as my September column, I was making fun of Lisa Robinson for her longtime practice of acting as though the various survivors from the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin actually deserve the superstardom they so richly enjoy, but her tuff new Radio 1990 stance makes me ready to forgive her those pet delusions of (Limey) grandeur for now. Give stodgerock some more hell for me, Lisa. Could I interest you in a primetime denunciation of Casey Kasem?

Speaking of Jim Morrison, as Lisa Robinson was up above, MCA Home Video has put together a retroactive vid of the Doors' “Roadhouse Blues,” hot with a whole series of big Jimbo’s many run-ins with the improper authorities of the late 1960s. This video shows the cops dragging the obviously looped Lizard Rex off one stage after another, for Morrisonian peccadilloes which (Kafka-like) are never identified nor explained. These scenes really bring back the horrible midnight soul paranoias of 1968-69 for me, as I was battling Selective Service at the very moment Morrison was dropping his leather drawers in public, and I was in some danger of being hauled off to the slammer myself. Don’t take the word of anyone—from the draft-free Britons to that little kiddie Prince—who tells you how paisley peace & [ove the late ’60s were. For us Vietnam-ravaged Amerikans, the end was always right in our laps in those fluorescentnightmare days. The “Roadhouse Blues” video is another installment in the “true” history of the ’60s that’s gradually emerging.

Back on the “contemporary” metal video front, I’ve noted Autograph’s “Send Her To Me.” It features enough leggy blonde disposables that it’s probably ultimately as sexist as too many other HM vids, and yet it may be the first such video to stand back and satirize its own sexism simultaneously. The plot is as simple as Autograph’s own chord changes, the band orders leggy dolls out of stock at Fans & Groupies magazine, and then gets to unpack a T & A readymade for each Autograph hound while he’s strutting his stuff on stage. The punch line is that the drummer’s bundle of tumescence turns out to be a futuristic female robot, who orders him to poptop a can of oil for her pronto. I think director Oley Sassone is kidding the mechanistic/materialistic tone of typical metalvid sex here, and, if so, we could use a few more of these type videos.

The older variety of sexist metal video was recently demonstrated by Radio 1990's rerun of Helix’s “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin’.” It includes the mythical “Miss Rock Fantasy 1983” pageant (imagine if Bert Parks had allowed heavy leather all those years), which earned these misguided Canadians charges of shrink-to-fit brains from outraged feminists coast-to-coast. Helix cats Paul Hackman and Brian Vollmer told the probing Radio 1990 VCR that they’ve learned from their mistakes and that their next vid might be set in the 20th century!

Speaking of video time warps, the song coursing through my neuron circuits as I write this is the Eurythmics’ wonderfully horny “Would I Lie To You.” This song/video marks something of a change of pace for Eurythmics, who made their name as latesttech Brit synthpoppers, but who are coming back at us now with a fairly raunchy slice of the black R&B that inspired all the best English bands of the ’60s. Yeah, I agree, casting Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox as the Ike & Tina Turner of 1985 is an idea as weird as Stewart’s acid-etched ponytail, but somehow they make it work. Annie Lennox is absolutely one of the sexiest women in video rock, even in her prim Limey nightgown in “Here Comes The Rain Again,” and even if Autograph would never think of ordering a short-haired model like her from Fans & Groupies mag. The old beatnik nirvana jazzjoint setting of “Would I Lie To You” has all the nostalgia hooks firmly installed. Even better is the fact that MTV shows this vid often.

Coming next month: Bryan Adams’s video matchup with his femme double, a bland buffalo gal fresh off the Canadian prairie, a gal who wears white T-shirts and zit craters in public! Could be the Sneak Preview of the season!