80s Music Videos and Aliens: A Theme I Sort of Bumped Into, Thanks to Youtube - 2009-11-15 06:45:34
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It all started very innocently the other day with Rick Springfield, who was on a friend's Twitter list. That sent me to YouTube, as most mentions of music I listened to in the 80s make me want to see if the videos are as strange as I remember them. Because both MTV and VH1 are no longer channels you can flip on and watch music videos on at any time of day I feel sorry for anyone who missed the weirdness of some of the programming from that time. Oh sure there was a lot of very dull videos, and a lot of similar "footage from concerts" type of stuff. But every now and then there would be a video or two that made you stop and say "Wait - what was that all about?!" Because sometimes the storylines (those you could piece together) in the music videos were particularly odd. Sometimes you got the feeling that the pre-production planning of some of the videos probably consisted of a few lines of description written on a bar napkin the night before the shoot. Sometimes you started to think that the video's director really was hoping to turn this into a full length film. Sometimes you really had no clue what was going on, and back then there was no internet to Google for the rest of the story, so you had to live with the curiosity and unanswered questions.

Let's start with this video of Springfield's. First I should mention that much of what follows can probably be traced back to/blamed on the 1979 film Mad Max. Maybe. The aliens are from all over the place pop culturally - I'm not even going to try and explain them.

Rick Springfield - Human Touch, 1983

Rick Springfield - Human Touch (Official Music Video) - Awesome video clips here

Be alert for what first appears a little after one min into the video - the multi-eye'd (and multiple mouth'd?!) alien playing the saxophone. (Is that a sax he's playing? And does he have two mouths or is it just the sax that looks odd to me?) I would truly love to know what the director or producer or whoever came up with this video's plot was trying to do with this musical alien. I can remember half watching this video back then and suddenly seeing the alien and thinking "ok, I need to get a better look at whatever that was." It was that sort of glimpse that made some of us keep MTV on just to watch a certain video over again - if not actually try and videotape it. Youtube makes this sort of - let's call it scholarship - a lot easier. (Although oddly this one video wasn't available for embed from Youtube, only from Metacafe - no idea why.)

For some reason I'm also fascinated by the plastic cuffs all the women wear as part of their futuristic costume. There's a lot that's giggleworthy here, but for some reason I fixate on that detail, wondering how often they fell off during the dance numbers, or flipped around at an awkward angle.

Anyway, so that was our first example with Springfield - and somehow I'd missed this other one.

Rick Springfield - Bop Til You Drop, 1984


I'll admit, so far I haven't poked around on the internet to find out the director on either of these - and don't you wonder whether it's the same person? (Once upon a time on MTV you could sometimes glean that info from the text on screen at the start or finish of the video. Sometimes.) But while this second video again puts us with Springfield into some dystopian future world - check out that alien. The one with that set of nasty looking teeth, sitting on the throne and controlling the rotating laser canon/gun. That's a fairly creepy looking alien - making the previous sax playing alien look relatively benign. Not to mention that this toothy alien only seems to have one working arm. And only one soldier-type alien comrade to turn to for help.

Ok, note what I'm doing here - the video only gives you a certain amount of information and my brain is attempting to piece it all together to form a plot. Yes, I realize this is probably my brain over-thinking it all - except that an entire crew of folks worked to put this video together, and I'm pretty sure there was an actual story here. From my memories of talking to my fellow high school students about some of the music videos of the time, I know I'm not the only person who had these sorts of questions.

Such as - for instance - how "Bop til you drop" was going to help fight off the evil alien overlord. Unless that was supposed to be some kind of subtle code or something.

I have to pause here to note that - if you look at any recent photos of Springfield - that man's hair is looking way too good for his age. It's somewhat startling. (Pay me no mind - I started going grey in my 20s, I'm just jealous.)

Robert Palmer - Around the World, 1985


Before he became known for being in videos with models in black dresses pretending to play musical instruments, Robert Palmer had several music videos that were in heavy rotation on television shows like Night Flight. This particular song is from the film Explorers, which I have to admit that I don't remember. But that at least explains where the alien comes from. However imdb has Little Richard doing the song on the soundtrack rather than Palmer's cover.

And plotwise of course we have no idea whether Palmer escapes from the alien's spaceship/flying cube at the end of the song. You'll notice that both Palmer and the alien appear to be singing the song - perhaps Palmer was an alien all along? It's another saxophone heavy song - do aliens find the saxophone especially attractive? Would I have any answers if I'd actually seen the film?
No idea.

Nik Kershaw - Wouldn't It Be Good, 1984


This Nik Kershaw video is one that I have a particular fondness for - mainly because MTV was the only place I'd ever hear this song at all, since the local radio stations never (or rarely if ever) played this song. Since this was in the day before I bothered to actually purchase music, I tended to play MTV just to hear music like this. I also really liked the props they used for the alien's "technology" - all of which looked like old radio parts. Not that I'm sure about that - I'd love to find someone who can identify what the props actually are. And of course the video projected on Kershaw's suit is all done with chroma key - very techy stuff for that time.

Meanwhile even though we don't have a particularly clear ending on that video in my mind Kershaw as the alien is safely transmitted home...somehow via that radio transmitter/satellite dish. Because a song about how everyone has it better than you is already sad enough - it needed at least the possibility of a good end.

I'm sure there's more I could include in this and I'll probably pop back to add more. But for the moment I'm ending it with this video because I can remember it both making me laugh and at the same time weirding me out. It's not exactly aliens of the same sort as the previous videos - except what are these creatures but everything that is alien?

New Order - True Faith, 1987


This is another video I remember having to watch more than once just to try and figure out what was happening. At one time I thought that the creature doing sign language was in a turtle shell - only later did I figure that it was actually some sort of punching bag used in boxing. Er, at least I think that's what it is. Here - we'll go to Wikipedia for more info:

"The release of "True Faith" was accompanied by a surreal music video directed and choreographed by Philippe Decouflé. In it, bizarrely costumed dancers leap about, fight and slap each other in time to the music; while a girl in dark green makeup emerges from an upside down boxer's speed bag and signs the lyrics. The video has often been voted amongst the best music videos of its year. Sky Television's channel The Amp, for instance, has it rated as the best video of 1987, and it won the BPI award for Best Promotional Video in 1988. The overall tonality, themes and various elements from the video re-occurred in Decouflé's scenography and choreography for the inauguration ceremonies of the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville."

Be sure and watch the very end when the one leg'd character - that you see at one point playing with geometrical shapes/blocks - crawls then hops across the room on his/its one leg.

I can never hear this song without thinking of the balloon men (or whatever you'd call them) bouncing on trampolines. I'm pretty sure I can blame some past nightmares on this video.


I'm sure I'll add to this later...
Or at least come up with a better summing up sentence to end it with.


Later, Nov. 16, 2009

Ok after DogsDon'tPurr added her comment and I got to thinking some more about music videos of the 80s, I had this memory of a video about the making of a video - or at least a series of video pitches. It's one of those "probably not as funny unless you'd watched a lot of videos at the time" - or if you can't stand Phil Collins. Unfortunately there aren't any aliens in it - unless you want to count the fly-creature at the end, which would be a bit of a stretch. There's definitely a Mad Max reference though. If you look at the production quality on this, you can really see that more money's being spent here than on some of the previous videos. ...Or is it that it's not more money spent here but a really good crew (camera work, editing, etc.) and pre-production planning?

Phil Collins - Don't Lose my Number, 1985


Now there's a great example of "the director will put the song into whatever setting he wants to make a film of - no matter whether it really fits the music or not." Although randomly I do think any of these sort of work - even as a joke. Of course we don't watch enough of any of them to get bored - which is always a bonus. Meanwhile I wish the samurai/ninja part had lasted longer. But then it's a sure thing that I'll pay attention to anything with a sword fight in it.

Meanwhile, while I was searching for the Collins video, I bumped into this one of the same song for Karaoke:



So there you go, a completely different plot there. I do have to admit they did a decent job with the noir lighting.

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