Back in the June, 1984 issue of CREEM, when we first unleashed the Video Video section on an unsuspecting world of helpless readers, we made note, while outlining the various raisons d’etre for the magazine’s decision to take the plunge into “thoughtful” consideration of music video’s anesthetic b)cultural c)musical d)none of the above value to life on earth, that the time had indeed come when “video has actually succeeded in creating its own specialized universe, an insulated place where videos could, if they so desired, relate to nothing else but other films, other TV, or (even worse) other videos...a vast wasteland all its own.” Sure enough, the past year-and-a-half has given us everything from Al Yankovic’s blow-byblow take-off of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” to Chicago’s Pete Cetera rewriting the script of Casablanca to fit his own willful needs (how’s this for a first? Musician leaves band after 18 years because he thinks he’s made such a strong visual impression that he’s ready to “ascend” to movie stardom) to Steve Perry pulling a Jimmy Durante-like “Stop the video!” in a middle of a “shoot,” which led to a “prequel” video the plot of which I won’t bore you with the details because I respect everyone out there’s intelligence too much.

Nonetheless, video, like time, marches on (although all too many videos seem to proceed much slower than time itself), and our report this month concerns a video twosome of, if not downright groundbreaking, then at least newwrinkle-adding, proportions. Because, in their own ways, both Phil Collins’s “Don’t Lose My Number” and Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing” make real statements about videos—about why they’re made, what they accomplish, and how they’re perceived. Although he goes about his video with characteristic low-profile fashion, Collins neatly mocks the high-handed lunacy that often comes into play when a piece of music is turned into a video. The song—a fairly straight-ahead tune into which there’s no reason to read much of anything—gets buried under the “vision”s of a veritable host of ego-crazed directors, so that, by the time he’s through, the eager-to-please Collins has been plunked down in the midst of High Noon, Revenge Of The Ninja, Mad Max, Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing,” the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and the Cars’ “You Might Think.” Collins offers no morals and preaches no sermons in this clip, but the message comes through anyway: a song is a song is a song, regardless of what visuals are tacked onto it, and, often, in spite of the visuals tacked onto it.

As for Dire Straits, well, “Money For Nothing” is probably the first bona fide song about MTV, and, as such, already has a place in the history books. Two blue collar workers keep passing a wall of TVs—all tuned to MTV—while they wheel kitchen appliances in and out of a department store. And what do they see? Horny metal bands depicting themselves as gods, women as meat, and the world as a place where you take what you need, and then you take some more because you want

more, that’s why. Even a Madonna-ette shows up, “sticking it in the camera,” on her road to “stardom.” “Money For Nothing” works on a number of levels, and it’s instructive to note that MTV itself has trimmed the video down slightly so that guest star Sting’s cry of instant gratification (“I want my MTV!” he croons eerily, like the Maypo kid gone to Poltergeist land) is almost completely excised. Like they say—the medium is the message.

SNAP SHOTS Don’t Go Near The Shower! The Motels, “Shame”—As Rory Calhoun, the Sweeney Todd of roadside accommodation management, confessed while being chainsawed to smithereens in his human sausage smokehouse at the exciting conclusion of Motel Hell, “I was the biggest hypocrite of all—I used preservatives. ” Let’s put it this way: You can dress up mediocre material in lipstick, rouge, fishnet and lingerie for only so long before the clientele starts turning in their room keys. Then again...Madonna, “Dress You Up”—Random perverse thought inspired by this video: Can’t you just see millions of preteen girls all across the country playing dollie in mommy’s room while humming “gonna dress you up in my love all over your body”? ...Don’t Go Near The Bathtub! Don’t Go Near The Light Tower! Starship, “We Built This City”— Just to show how much vid consciousness is begining to take over my over-cathoded mind: the kids start climbing up to the roof where the band is playing and I’m rooting for Billy Idol’s electroshock zombies to show up and zap ’em all to kingdom come. Like they say in Night Of The Living Dead—“Kill the video, and you kill the song”...Sure, But How Much IS That In American Currency? Rush, “Big Money”—Nothina like

watching Geddy Lee wobbling about a life-sized Monoply board whining that “big money ain’t got no soul.” Like, look who’s talking. And isn’t Neal Peart’s braid just the cutest thing since James Young’s greasy pony tail? And, speaking of Sticky Styxers...Lee lacocca, Gimme My Money Back! Tommy Shaw, What If (Remo’s Theme)”—What would I rather see than Tommy Shaw standing on top of the Statue of Liberty? How about Tommy Shaw falling off the top of the Statue of Liberty? Where’s Sgt. Slaughter when you really need him? Serves You Right To Suffer: ’til tuesday, “Looking Over My Shoulder”—Now that we’ve all had the unpleasant experience of having to sit through another of this band’s videos, I say we start a grassroots campaign to give her old boyfriend from “Voices Carry” equal time. Send your pledges to So Glad The Band’s Doing Well do this magazine.

GODLEY & CREME & CREEM & CREAM...

Annene Kaye

We here at CREEM’s 1 Eastern Office Complex (otherI wise known as the island of I Manhattan and not to be conI fused with CREEM’s Inferiority I Complex) sure hope you know * who Kevin Godley and Lol Creme are. Consider their list of video credits, including Duran Duran’s “Girls On Film” and “A View To A Kill,” Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit,” Asia’s “In The Heat Of The Moment,” Le Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and Frankie Goes To Heck’s “Two Tribes” and “The Power Of Love.” Consider their 25 years together. Consider their career as 50 percent of 10cc, and their successful afterlife as at least 100 percent of Godley and Creme. Consider their latest; a song produced by Trevor Horn entitled “Cry.”

When you’re done with all that, consider your chances of being crowned “Queen For A Day,” just for the hell of it. Then consider your faithful authorette, who faced these two Quasimodo legends with the same visible and verbal attitudes used by Chuck Barris when he dealt with Gong Show contestants. In other words; you wouldn’t want to be in a plane crash with us. In other words; A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation” (Saki, you illiterati) but it didn’t this time, and in any case there’s no way to explain this interview.

CREEM: Describe your liaison with Mr. Trevor Horn [this is not what we actually said, but hey, that’s show biz],

LC: It was a marriage made in heaven. We met here, as you probably know, in the ParkerMeridien Hotel...we went to my room and started flipping the TV channels and in so doing, we decided this was making a new form of music...a new culture would evolve from this. So we decided to go to the recording studio at midnight and record this new musical experience...

KG: It was going to be called "Hit The Box”...

CREEM: Where did you find all the beautiful girls for the “Cry” video?

KG: All those beautiful girls!?

LC: There was a couple of nicelooking ones...we just cast greatlooking faces from agency books. There’s a couple of different kinds of agencies at home. One s called “Ugly,” where there’s loads of character faces.

CREEM: I thought those girls looked great...

KG: That was me and him! The different ways they all approached it were quite funny. There was one girl that really went for it; another girl hadn’t got a clue. Another one cried all the way through and it was wonderful but we never used a frame, and a professional Jewish gentleman who assured us he could mime. He was about 70 and half dead with heart attacks and God knows what...“I’m a professional mimer,” he says, “I was born miming.” Showed up on the set and not one word was in sync.

LC: PATHETIC!!

KG: We sent him upstairs to learn it again. He came down and he was worse, so we just used him in a gap between lyrics. And we gave him a Mr. T hairstyle...

LC: When my face turns into Mr. T’s and, if you look carefully, Mr. T turns Jewish...that’s the guy that couldn’t mime.

Here is where the authorette lost all control of the so-called interview. When she regained what passes for consciousness among writers, she managed to blurt out a single word;

CREEM: Anglophilia?

KG: Who? [Is he feigning innocence or are comas catching?]

LC: That’s when you fuck English people isn’t it?

CREEM: I think it goes a lot deeper than that.

KG: No, it’s fucking dead English people. Isn’t it a joy in all things English?

CREEM: Didn’t you sort of touch on the subject with “An Englishman In New York”?

LC: That was Americophilia.

KG: That was Newyorkophobia.

Oh well. A verbal and mental swing on the chandelier followed. The authorette stupidly attempted to steer the conversation videowards and was eventually rewarded.

CREEM: What about your movie—oh, you’re not allowed to talk about that, are you?

KG: We are because it’s our fucking movie! What, we won’t allow ourselves...?

LC: We’ve decided to keep it a surprise, because it’s supposed to be a surprise for your eyes. All I’m going to say is it’s very rude...

KG: It’s very rude, very offensive, very funny...

LC: ...and there’s no music in it and there’s no sound in it and there’s no pictures in it and it’s not even in black and white...

KG: Shot on gaffer tape...

CREEM: It’s the Emperor’s New Movie!

LC: It’s a con, we’re not doing a movie at all...it’s three movies that we’re doing, or messing about with, great scripts that we’ve found out of all the dross that’s been sent by Hollywood...

So that’s what they’re doing. The authorette and her subjects get into an argument about whether they’re perverse, perverted or eccentric. The authorette loses; they claim they’re Jewish.

CREEM: Do you make friends wherever you go?

LC: Or enemies, we make a lot of enemies...we like making enemies!

KG: They’re easier to make than videos.