While it’s true that here at “Video Video” central we do often tend to spend a sizeable portion of our allotted space giving the proverbial thumb-to-nose maneuver to various and sundry audio/visual travesties, it is nonetheless our pleasure this month to be able to move that thumb away from our face and into the straight up position since, for some reason or other—pure accident, most likely—a sizeable cluster of rather enjoyable clips have recently surfaced that we felt should be brought to your attention. (Those of you looking for the usual gripes, whines and wheezes are instructed to skip the page for now and come back next month, when the Beastle Boys will get their considerable due.)

Now, obviously, to make a good video it helps if you’ve got a good song to work with, because even the most perfunctory of “performance” clips will work if the song can go the distance, which brings us to our first spotlight clip, ’til tuesday’s “Coming Up Close.” Regular readers of this column know that I wasn’t much of a “Voices Carry” fan (‘‘Shut up/he said/shut up” isn’t exactly my idea of a great chorus), and the more videos they made in which they tried to make singer Aimee Mann look “alluring” in, the less I was liking them still. But this one does it for me because the video—a simple live-footagewit h-the-tune-synched-in— clears everything aside so that you can concentrate on Mann and crew as a band, doing a song that, lo and behold, already has such a strong story line and visual sense that it didn’t need the ucking up it all too likely would have gotten had it been handled differently (guess I didn’t say before that good songs can and do often get ruined by bad videos).

Also in the performance vein is the Smithereens’ “Behind The Wall Of Sleep,” a riveting piece of what used to be called “power pop” back in the “old” days of new wave. This performance clip, though, differs from ’til tuesday’s in that it was filmed in a studio and not at a concert, and what sets it apart is that it’s one of the few straight ahead band-plays-you-watch videos in which virtually all the shots and edits are predicated by the movement of the music—thus enabling you to get not only swept away by the song, but into each band member’s corner of their universe, from the drummer’s precision timekeeping and the bass player’s churning rhythms to the guitarist’s implosive leads and the singer’s achingly lonely vocals. If all performance clips were made this carefully, even the most perfunctory metal bands might actually convey some character.

Lastly, we have the Los Lobos gang, back with a new album (about goddamned time,1 too!) and a rollicking new video, “Shakin’ Shakin’ Shakes,” which neatly intersperses shots of an in-progress kiddie hideand-seek game with stock movie footage of bygone suspense and horror films, including Alfred Hitchcock getting ready to open the shower curtain in an ad for Psycho. Amidst all this are rock ’n’ roll’s favorite huskie boys, Cesar Rosas and David Hidalgo, with those sly smiles that only the true zen blues masters can flash. And I’ll bet they know their motorcycle maintenance, too.

SNAP SHOTS Travis Get Your Gun! The Barbusters Featuring Joan Jett & Michael J. Fox, “Light of Day”—Cleveland sure has some luck, doesn’t it? First the town wins the big sweepstakes to get the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame housed there, and then the powers that be decide to keep the induction ceremonies in New York, because nobody involved really wants to actually have to go there. So who does? Well-known film funmaker Paul “You Talkin’ to Me?” Schrader, that’s who. Schrader’s the kind of happy-go-lucky writer/director whose work a moviegoer can really get up for, you see, and what he previously did to assembly line workers in Blue Collar, cabbies in Taxi Driver, and zookeepers in Cat People, he apparently has tried to do to rock ’n’ rollers in Light of Day. So, while many of us won’t fail to miss this one until it shows up on cable, at least we can for now enjoy Joan (like the haircut, kid, keep it) and Michael J. (did he get this part because of his guitar solo in Back To The Future?) and Michael “Sex Farm” McKean (is he now resigned to an acting career featuring nothing but “musician” roles?) in this fair-togood cousin Brucie tune about being set free by rock ’n’ roll (I know I’ve heard that thought expressed somewhere before). Wonder if Joe Charboneau makes a cameo appearance ...

Yo, Tipper! The Wallets, “Totally Nude”—Now here’s a sight for Gore eyes if ever there was one. “They’re totally nude/ They’re totally naked/They’re waitin’ for you,” sings the band’s lead vocalist, a man who looks and moves like a cross between Jim Morrison and Sam Kinison (think about it), while the screen dances with visions of naked cartoon ladies, rippling male torsos, and so much underwear that you keep waiting for the lady who says “it doesn’t say Hanes until / say it says Hanes” to show up—in the buff, of course. Besides, any group whose singer isn’t averse to being filmed with small white rodents crawling out of his mouth surely must have the best moral interests of youth at heart, right?

And speaking of the best interests of youth, moral or otherwise, we don’t want to duck out this month before congratulating MTV for its new social awareness program, as evidenced by the inspired viewer call-in polls the station’s started conducting lately. I mean, I never realized how many people wouldn’t mind spending 50 cents to express their opinions concerning such burning questions (I SWEAR I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP) as “Should home video cassettes be allowed to include commercials?” and “Should old black and white television programs like Gilligan’s Island be colorized?” We are the world, indeed.

HE’P!

HELP!

(MPI Video)

John Kordosh

I haven’t seen this one I since its theater release, I which was way back in nineI teen sixty-and-five. If you I weren’t alive back then, or if I you were a tot who’d be ■ grooving on Aerosmith and Kiss when you hit your high school days, let me assure you it was quite the era. I remember stuff like corny liner notes on Kinks’ albums, being a third-string player on my junior high lightweight football team and a balanced U.S. budget very clearly. Why, it was one thing after another.

Not least among these things was the Beatles, who you’ll surely remember as the greatest rock group of all time. They’d already made one remarkable flick, A Hard Day’s Night, and some pretty fair records as well. I can’t remember anyone ever actually saying “The Beatles rule!” (as, nowadays, one hears from the fans of acts like Motley Crue and Bon Jovi), but—believe me—if anybody ever ruled, it was the Beatles.

Which is why, in watching Help! at a time in my life that my daughter believes Bon Jovi rules, I’m a little disappointed. Oh, it’s pretty funny. And, yes, the Beatles display their unfailing charm and wit pretty much as I remembered it. And, indeed, the music is great, as all Beatles’ music was by natural law.

It’s just that Help! isn’t a very good movie.

Basically, the plot’s a James Bond send-up: Ringo gets a ring in the mail, only it’s the sacrificial ring of some cult. Cult wants ring back, ring is stuck on personable drummer’s finger, Beatles flee from London to Switzerland to Nassau as hijinks ensue, bad guys are ultimately foiled. End of plot. If you’re thinking that’s not exactly It’s A Wonderful Life, you’re right. In fact, if you’re thinking it’s not even a wellscripted episode of The Donna Reed Show, you’re also right.

What’s good about Help! is the extremely fast, extremely dry humor, much of it delivered by the slightly-overweight John Lennon. “Now see what you’ve done with your filthy Eastern ways,” he quips to a cult chick who’s trying to help Ringo. Good stuff, as is a quick shot of John kissing A Spaniard In The Works before hitting the sack or playing harmonica while a slew of the cast are singing Beethoven’s Fourth. George Harrison gets in his moments, too: the best being when the band is openly speculating about replacing Ringo, should his finger be cut off or somesuch. “There’s a drummer in Manchester,” George deadpans, adding—after some unrelated conversation“He’s a good-looking fellow, too.”

All part of being a Beatle, and nicely handled.

If you look for ’em, there’s a few good sight gags, too. A box of dynamite the cultists have is labelled “Equal To Exactly OneMillionth Of All The High Explosive Exploded In One Week Of The Second World War”— but I had to freeze the frame to get it all. And check out the Beatles’ disguises as they head for Nassau—darned if the boys didn’t look pretty much like that within five years, beards and all.

There’s another whole aspect to Help!, too—namely, that it was certainly the inspiration for the Monkees and, in the long run, the music video artform itself. The song clips seem to have been thrown in this movie almost ... helter skelter, that’s it!.... and, within the context of the film, are absolutely gratuitous. Which means they’re exactly like the stuff shown on MTV in this, the modern era. Check it out: the Fabs doing “Ticket To Ride” whilst skiing through the Alps is prototypical music television. The only thing that distinguishes it from MTV is that the song itself is way better than practically everything out there, but that doesn’t matter, does it?

Come to think of it, the whole point of Help! is that it has no point, unless you count the gratuitous music clips. That’s why it’s a lousy movie, but it’s also why it’s an important one. Like just about everything these guys did, they managed to influence things by merely hanging around. Quite a trick, and one—I daresay—we haven’t seen repeated since their time.

As the Scotland Yard inspector says to John Lennon: “So this is the famous Beatles.”

As John Lennon replies: “So this is the famous Scotland Yard.”

And, as the inspector rejoins immediately: “How long do you think you’ll last?”

Not long enough, I reckon.