Last time, you may recall, we took a break from the usual hostilities to focus in on several clips that we thought merited some attention from a positive point of view—you know, the one that shows up so darned infrequently here at “Video Video” central. We promised that our usual dander would be back up in time for this month’s column, since we’d just had our first peek at the Beastie Boys’ “You’ve Got To Fight For Your Right To Party” and knew that the old grist mill would be working overtime by the time four weeks had gone by. Sure enough, the Beasties have, in that short span, cursed on prime-time TV at the Grammy Awards, de-railed Soul Train, and hit the Number One spot on the Billboard pop album charts with their double-platinum LP, Licensed To III. And the more I keep seeing them, the farther I keep getting from that bandwagon so many of my fellow critics are merrily hopping on.

“Rap’s Three Stooges” is the way People magazine recently described the Beastie Boys, but you’re going to have to call me 55 years from now and tell me if Mike D, King Ad-Rock and MCA are still popular before I’ll go along with that particular assessment. To be honest, I had little against these guys before I saw the “Fight For Your Right” video; I may not be the world’s greatest rap enthusiast, but, having liked most of what RunDMC’s done, I basically had no problems with the Beastie Boys’ Run-DMC-derived rap-metalpunk fusion, or with their headbanging “I Wanna” philosophy (i.e., “I wanna get high, I wanna get girls, I wanna go crazy”) in which they’re the rudeboy kings of their own made-up world. We all know all this rebel without a cause, don’t tell me what to do, I wanna be free stuff has been,

is, and will always continue to be, a large part of the old rock ’n’ roll ethic; certainly nothing wrong with that.

Where I start to take issue with the Beastie Boys is when I’m confronted by something like the “Fight For Your Right” video. In

it, two meek little nerds decide to throw a party for their friends while their yucko parents are out of the house. “I sure hope no

bad people show up” they say as they plan their “way out” shindig of cheez doodles and Sprite, but no sooner have they settled in for a “daring” night of fun when a regiment of “bad people,” led by ye Beasties, break down the door and proceed to wreak havoc. They spike the punch with Spanish fly, gob swill at the “normal” looking kids, set fire to any flammable items they see, take an acoustic guitar and smash it against a radiator, grab and grope all of the women (except the token fat girl, of course; she chases them), and push cream pies into everybody’s puss. By the time the parents return, the Beasties and pals have taken off, leaving the house in total shambles and the poor nerd boys ready to get it, but good.

I suppose that there are plenty of folks out there who find this video funny, but I’m not one of them. In setting up the wimpy “straight” kids as little more than easy target punching bags just so they can feel like big shots, the Beastie Boys have crossed over that line which separates outrageousness from reprehensibility. Were they pulling these pranks on those who needed to be taken down a peg,

like snooty high society figures, or corrupt politicos, then I might find this sort of “humor” effective, but what we’ve got here is just a display of bullying cruelty, in which you get your jollies mainly by making others look like idiots. To which I say, don’t forget that Moe, Larry, and Curly spent the majority of their time poking each other in the eye, and acting like clowns to be laughed at. In the Beastie Boys’ narrow little universe, they laugh at everyone they think they’re better than, and imply that you should too if you want to be “cool” like them. Last time I checked, that was what being an asshole, not a rock ’n’ roller, was all about.

SNAP SHOTS

Are you Sure Barbie And The Rockers Started This Way? The Bangles’ “Walking Down Your Street”—In which the Fab Femme Four abandon their Arabian promenading ways for the lure of matching (excuse the term) go-go dresses and poofy hairdos. The all-too flimsy plotline finds the gals portraying “The Lovebeads,” a local midwestern group that wins a national contest and gets to go to L.A. to appear on a bill with Little Richard(l), who then gets his mascara in an uproar because, at the show, the lasses get such a tutti-frutti good response that the legendary womp-bop-a-lula man feels a mite upstaged. You’d think that having two Top 10 hits would, if nothing else, get you a better class of video scriptwriters; that or at least more imaginative fashion coordinators.

A Simple Desultory Philippic, Revisited: Paul Simon, “Boy In The Bubble”—Hard to find fault with a skillfully made video that more than gives you your visual money’s worth, but by the time rhymin’ Simon is watching the parade of elephants pass by, I’ve gotten so hopelessly lost in the stream-of-self-consciousness shuffle of words and images of this clip that I start flashing on “At The Zoo,” and how I don’t especially like thinking that I should feel guilty about not liking Graceland all that much. I’ve nothing against literal-mindedness per se, but oblique literal-mindedness I think I can live without...

But Joe Walsh Told Me It Was A Guaranteed Career Move! Sammy Hagar, “Winner Takes It AH”—In which Hagar the Horrible takes on the Italian Stallion for arm-wrestling bragging rights to the video world— an event that I’m sure everyone out there has been holding their breath for. What’s next for Stallone? The thrill-a-minute, death-defying world of championship tiddly-winks? What’s next for ol’ Rustoleum head? A Krylon commercial with Bob Uecker? Stay tuned!

RIVER OF WHISKEY

VARIOUS ARTISTS We Like The Blues,

Vols. I & II (Sony)

John Kordosh

I fell asleep an I dreamed a turrible dream. It was so gol-danged awful that I could scarce credit my reason when I waked up later on, but that’s how it goes with dreams sometimes.

Here’s how my dream went, and you can see it truly was one of them bad uns that’ll stay with you a spell, cuz if it wasn’t, how come I remember it so clear?

I dreamed I was trapped in some city like I ain’t never been to in real life—an I shore don’t wanna go there, either! It must’ve been like New York City, only this one was warmer in my dream, so I guess it wasn’t that pedicular city, but a different one. An I was one of them Fancy Dans who sit around in a fine office all day, not doin’ much but talkin, like all them Fancy Dans do. I was a writer feller too, only I reckon I did more talkin than writin cuz I shore was on the tellyphone a lot in this here dream.

Then, all of a sudden-like, I was watchin’ these here vid-e-oh tapes. Hell, somebody just plugged em into this here machine an you could see it right there on the tellyvision, and I remember thinkin—even in my dream—that this was the darndest invention I ever did hear tell of. An there was a lot of people around, but they was mostly drinkin.

“These here are blues tapes,” one feller said to me, so I watched em cuz I figgered, welp, I’ll probably enjoy somethin like this. Figgered I’d maybe see Big Bill or even that Jimmy Reed feller my cousin up Chicago ways used to tell me about. I’m kinda partial to that sound. Now darned if’n I know what happened, but there weren’t no blues bein played on this vid-eoh machine fall—nope, not a lick and ain’t it the truth? Instead, there were a whole passel of fellers playin at this place called the Markee Club over down England way. T’weren’t no one you ever heard of, either—some guys who call themselves the Fab-yoo-lous T-Birds, only I’d call em the Purty Good T-Birds if’n I wanted to toss off a good un. An there were this John Martyin feller, who don’t rightly play no blues s’far as I can tell, an a guy called Snowy White, who’s a fair picker as I judge there things, but shore ain’t no blues gittarist. Nope, no way y’gonna tell me he is.

So this dream was gettin right scary, cuz by now I kinda forgot I was dreamin, like a feller will, an figgered I was livin a real life. Somebody started smokin maryhuana, and I figgered, oh Lord, I’m shore in some deep trouble I never bargained on, cuz what in the world am I doin in this here city full of strange people who aint never worked a lick an instead talk all day and smoke maryhuana?

“That there’s some Rolling Stones playing with Korner,” somebody said.

“Ten Years After are shore smokin this tape,” another feller said, but he was smokin maryhuana an all I saw was this guy playin gittar with one of them peace symbols like them hippies painted on the bridge over toward Ephus Street that one year.

“Them there She-val-yay Brothers are cooking up some cool blues now,” said this guy sitting next to me. I didn’t know who this feller was, but it felt like I should, if y’ever had that feelin. Like I knew him from some other place.

“Tarnation,” I finally said to these people. “Where’s all these blues you all keep talkin about?” I stood up, feelin kinda heated about this whole thing, like I’d been cheated in some way.

Then all these people just faded away, real quiet like. I didn’t rightly know what to say, cuz I’ll be hanged if I ever seen people just fade away. That kinda thing don’t happen much around where I come from.

Then I woke up, real quick, an I knew it was all a turrible dream, like I told you straight off. An I been telling Doc and Big Mike and Homer and—hell, I guess I pert near told the whole county about this here dream ever since. Only everybody figgers I’ve flipped shore, an there ain’t no Markee Club over down in England an even if there was there ain’t way I’d know about it seein how I aint never left the county. And that’s a fact.

So finally, Doc told me I should write this here dream down an send it to one of them maggy-zines that pays money to write about this here rock and roll, cuz it shore sounded to him like this dream had somethin to do with that. So that’s what I did, an you can take it or leave it, but I shore as heck never heard of any maggy-zine payin good money fer a feller just dreamin.