So, here’s a whole volley of vids featuring an errant ball or two. Please keep your winks and nudges to yourself.
I am sure many of us can thank the final vid for our sound ability to count well into double digits. Without it, we’d probably be a few bagels short of a baker’s dozen. Yessss, we all know what that means…
(No? Me, neither. But it sounded catchy when I first came up with it.)
Kelly, watch the stars! – Air
Blue Monday (1988) – New Order
Whoo! Alright – yeah… uh huh – The Rapture
Filed under vids featuring an errant ball or two
Go on, put your cardi on, for here follows a breezy autumnal to sub-Antarctic squall of vids featuring the use and abuse of a wind machine.
Over and over – Hot Chip
So fleeting, but so good.
Jesus Christ pose – Soundgarden
Here, the wind machine is explained away by a series of whirring wind turbines, setting Chris Cornell’s locks aloft, ever-so slightly. Despite all evidence to the contrary (particularly the chroma-key abuse, general dork montage of crucifixes, a grown man in shorts and boots, and the fact it’s, well, Soundgarden), 16 years on, this video still makes me feel unfathomably cool whenever I watch it.
I’m sorry for any embarrassment the above statement may cause my friends by association.
Malibu – Hole
Oh! How I LOVE this song/video. Even now, watching the video for the ten-zillionth time and trying to work out if I should include it (because a subtle wind machine by the beach is diegetically appropriate) got me all choked up and wistful, as it always does. Yes, if I ever spotted Ms. Love passing by in the street, I would be compelled to shout (truthfully):
“I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED YOU, COURTNEY!”
And if she rejoined my overly familiar salutation with a dismissive:
“___ ___, SLAG!”
I would still consider it a win-win situation.
Pray – Take That
Of course, the wind machine is the boy band’s bayonet, plunging into the hearts of squealing 12-year-old girls ever since music videos were invented in, oh, 1710 or something, back when Bach was in a boy band. So, here are some boy-banders doing a rather stomach-churning brand of yoga on the beach, loitering with intent under a cloak of mangroves, and having their blousons a-billowin’ to the prefab refrigerated gale of the “Roaring Forties” (stellar moment one minute in).
And finally, the most extreme use and abuse of a wind machine in the history thereof:
Total eclipse of the heart – Bonnie Tyler
I ask you: Turn around bright eyes OR Turn around zombie freak with ‘eyes’ illuminated by the very bowels of Hell so I can stab you in the heart with a very large stake, please.
Hmmmn?
Food for thought.
You know, when people start looking like rainbows, you’re either on to something very, very good, or, just maybe, you’re watching the following vids featuring people that look like rainbows.
Staring at the sun – TV on the Radio
Harmonic generator – The Datsuns
She bop – Cyndi Lauper
As a wildly fascinating aside, when I was nine, I attended my school’s Easter fancy dress parade dressed as Cyndi Lauper. My costume was some haphazard affair of Mum’s disco cast-offs, a crimped side ponytail, and fluorescent ankle-socks, all to celebrate the rising of the Lord’s good shepherd. Or Jesus, if you prefer. Halfway though the day, I decided, nah, I was actually dressed as Tina Turner. And not one basket-wielding anthropomorphic rabbit, Transformer-bot, or Indiana Jones-alike really took me up on it, such was the power of going to school with a microphone everyone wanted to “use” (in spite of having no amp).
Daft Punk is playing at my house – LCD Soundsystem
Around the world – Daft Punk
Paradoxically, I actually really, REALLY, hate this song. But the above LCD Soundsystem clip (which I love) wouldn’t exist without it and the ensuing video’s characters. C’est la vie, eh?
“Paint! Where would we be without it, eh?” said the palette to the brush (who merely bristled).
Here are a few vids featuring a plethora of paint – you’ll see it spewed from eyes and doorways; sloshed about by good shipmates Taylor, Taylor, Taylor, Rhodes, and Le Bon; and daubed demonically upon the reverent H. Rollins, Esquire. And, in one instance, you’ll discover what craaaaaaazy shit happens when gas station attendants cut loose with the gouache.
Magick – Klaxons
Today – Smashing Pumpkins
Note: Includes scenes of dune frolicking reminiscent of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970 counterculture flick, Zabriskie Point. In a first-year cinema studies essay on the film, I enthusiastically referenced the Pumpkins clip and Antonioni’s influence thereupon, paying considerable mention to the icecream van, the paint, and James Iha in a dress. My tutor replied Oh really? in the margin.
Filed under vids featuring a plethora of paint
Certainly, a stitch in time saves nine, but a famous friend will get you through any door in town, so long as you don’t mind forever being known as + 1.
And, from what I can tell skating the dreary city limits of Anonymous Nobody-dom, the best thing about actually being famous – aside from the fact that fame buys you love, happiness, and your very own pre-fluffed cloud in Heaven – is that you get your own famous friends, who are, of course, better than not-famous friends. And sometimes, in the oft-colliding worlds of pop and rock, famous friends decide to stop, collaborate, and listen, paying heed to that poignant Vanilla Ice call to arms – or at least shaved eyebrows – of yore. Which is how I am able to bring you this mind-addlingly exhaustive list of vids featuring a famous friend (or few). Incidentally, three of these 11 clips star gents topping my Top 10 list of:
Dreamiest Dreamboats I’m Not Married To… Yet.
And, if the internet isn’t the appropriate place to solicit a famous friend four-way fiesta, I don’t know where is, viz:
Keanu!
Dave G, and Jason Lee.
Let’s get it ON.
You, you, you –
And me.
But for now, here are some vids featuring a famous friend (or few).
Some velvet morning – Primal Scream
Weapon of choice – Fatboy Slim
Kokomo – The Beach Boys
(Nah, not for Tom Cruise or Bryan Brown flipping pina coladas, but, in case you somehow miss the pink tank top, John Stamos is on bongos. Yes, Full House Stamos.)
You can call me Al – Paul Simon
Remember the time – Michael Jackson
All you need is love – The Beatles
Oh, a prize (where I will write: You are the winner! RAD!) goes to anyone who could be bothered naming all the ‘famous friends’. And, if you can think of more BFFF vids, please link them in the comments section. I have already searched You Tube for that Elton John song with Robert Downey Jr lip-synching (‘I want love‘). How I wish it was there because my gang of four would hastily become five (see list of Dreamiest Dreamboats I’d Like to Proposition on the Internet. By which I mean R.D.J. not E.J. Just to make that clear.)
Filed under vids featuring a famous friend (or few)
Back in the olden days, way, way, waaaaaaaay before Donkey Kong was being weaned on mashed bananas, there was this totally wild “computer-controlled” game called SIMON.
And SIMON looked like this:
See, what happened was, lights would flash in a randomly generated sequence (see note about it being “computer controlled”), and you repeated this sequence by touching the light pads. If you got the damn thing wrong, SIMON buzzed at you, tersely.
GAME OVER, loser.
Your dad, suspicious of most technology, would scream from the livingroom:
“What the hell is going on there? Keep that cacophony going, and you’re not watching CHiPS!”
Tears of blood would then stream from your eyes in the pure frustration of it all.
Here are a few vids featuring coloured lights reminiscent of the game SIMON.
Modern feeling – Ikara Colt
Movement – LCD Soundsystem
Unless you’re, I don’t know, bunny hopping your stolen Mongoose on the hood of a cop car, all the while pulling bongs, burning flags, flipping the “bird”, and, oh, shrilly accusing random ladies and gents in the street of being “slags” and/or “dog fuckers”, it’s difficult to look particularly anti-authority and “rock” on a bicycle… and lord knows I’ve tried! Thus, it’s unlikely you’ll ever see a music video of, say, W. Axl Rose rattling a penny farthing along the Dickensian cobblestones of Sunset Strip, Hollywood, CA., despite his proclivity for spandex bike shorts.
But as I was saying… here are a few vids featuring a whole lot of dorking around on bicycles. Axl Rose on a penny farthing not included.
Girls like that – Custard
Ghost patrol – Gerling
Alright – Supergrass
Bicycle, bicycle, you are my bicycle – Be your own PET
Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before – The Smiths
Like the lady says…
Heart breaker – Teriyaki Boyz
Berlin chair – You am I
(Best version – on account of man in silver bodysuit)
(Another version – with heightened OMO whiteness)
