Category: Miscellaneous

One of the best shows on VH1 Classic is called ‘The Vault’, and we love it because it shows very obscure videos from obscure bands. Including, apparently Alphaville. So the other night I got to see, for the first time in my life, the video for The Jet Set

The third photo shows the line ‘Lets go to the moon’, which is a lyric from the song. Only those of you familiar with the song probably have never heard it, and I only know it from a live version. However, it turns out the single version of The Jet Set (or at least the version in the video) is significantly different from the album version, even to the point of containing new lyrics. I have seven different versions of the song on CD and yet I don’t own this one 🙁

Later in the same show we saw perhaps the worst music video in history:

All I know of Zebra I know from this video. For instance, the lead singer is a cheeseball:

The lead guitarist is fat and prone to doing a sort of weird, shuffling chicken dance:

And the band, no doubt in an attempt to stop viewers from turning off their TV and throwing it out the window in kneejerk reaction to the mind-boggling awesomeness of the song, sung entirely as it is in a falsetto that prompted KLS to comment that the lead must have had a ‘Helium supply built into his microphone’, has no compunction about inserting into their video (and I mean insert, since these sequences are completely separate from the shots of the band) some abso-frigging-lutely classic scenes of 80’s ultra-objectified video vixens:

And yes, she’s topless.

Seriously, this was capital-A Awful. Not just the video, but the song as well. Bad music, bad lyrics and bad delivery. And yet I feel strangely bad bagging on the band given the love people have for them based on the album reviews on amazon. Truly bad song/video, or just a snapshot of how times have changed since 1983? You be the judge…

We saw Black Planet on VH1 Classic last night, by SoM. I hadn’t seen that video in an oodle-and-a-day, so it was a nice sight. Also saw The Age Of Plastic by The Buggles, which is about as obscure as they get I suppose.

They have a request show, and I have emailed them to request Prime Mover by Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction. I have decided to toy with them, and send increasingly obscure requests if they play the previous one. My next choice will be by Kiss Me by Steven ‘Tin Tin’ Duffy, or perhaps Taco‘s followup song/video to Puttin’ On The Ritz (which I don’t think I have ever seen).

Incidentally, we’ve also seen most of the INXS videos from The Swing album, reminding me there is another band who I underrated terrible back in the day. Does anyone own this on CD?

And yes, we’re now recording an average of about 6 hours per day of music videos on VH1 Classic, and every evening watching the shows in FF, stopping only for songs we like. Big fun!

Here’s another ‘guess the song’. Since I didn’t write down the song title the winner is the first person to name the artist. Hint: Solo British male artist:

< Whose video is this?

We’ve been watching an awesome amount of the digital cable channel VH1 Classic. This is what MTV used to be – mostly music videos. Think of an almost 24 hour Rage, although split into various different shows and intersperced with the occasional less interesting broadcast (such as a live performance by The Rolling Stones…)

Our favourite shows are The Vault (which shows very obscure videos), Alternative (in America the term seems to describe anything that didn’t chart) and The 80’s. Alternative in particular often shows some amazing videos, such as Kraftwerk‘s The Robots (which I had only see once in my life to my knowledge) and ancient INXS or Pseudo Echo fare (amazing considering this is the US).

Yesterday they played the video for the Depeche Mode song One Caress. I was flabbergasted because:
1) I had never seen this video,
2) One Caress was never a single, and
3) This video is not even included on the recently released DVD of all of Depeche Mode’s music videos!

Furthermore the video was very good. Unlike other Mode videos it had a story (of sorts), and since One Caress is a Martin Gore vocal featured him prominently throughout. Here are some shots to give you an idea of how it looked:

This wasn’t the only amazing video on yesterday’s show. But the other one I am leaving as a guessing game. Bernard will (should) be able to guess this on sight, but I wonder can anyone else. Artist and single please 🙂