"Poltergeist." The trailer for the nuke flick "The Day After." "Just Say No To Drugs" commercials. The Dominos Noid.
None of these things scared me as much as a kid growing up in the '80s as the video for Arthur Brown's "Fire," which they'd play on MTV far too often with no regard for time of day. The black-and-white vid is a "live" (read: lip synced) performance by Brown on "Top of the Pops" - they didn't really make videos back then, and for that I am grateful, because imagine the sick shit he would have dumped on poor innocent brains all over the world.
This is truly frightening. It makes Devo's "Peek-a-Boo" look like a Richard Marx clip. Even the old guy who yells "Science!" in Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science" would be horrified by Brown's acid-induced devil dance, complete with makeup that's Alice Cooper x5 and a crown of fire on his head.
Apparently, Pete Townshend produced a lot of this dude's early stuff, which is hailed as some kind of amazing music, although it just sounds like bullshit British psych to me. This explains a lot about the limp flower-power tuneage that Townshend was peddling at the time, stuff like the preposterously overrated "The Who Sell Out."
Seriously, never play this again on TV, never let it show up in any On Demand video lineups, take it off You Tube. Please. Before someone gets hurt.
Most people know Joan Jett’s vintage 1981 single and video
"I Love Rock and Roll" as one of the early heavy rotation clips in MTV history.
Most people also probably know Britney Spears delivered a version of the tune in 2002, and while the single is pretty lame, the video ain't too shabby.
And geeks everywhere will remember Weird Al Yankovic's amazing parody in 1983, during his wheelhouse era.
But not too many people know that the tune is actually a cover of the song that was originally recorded and released by the band Arrows in 1975
- and, as you might have guessed, that version of the song is far lamer
than Jett's cover (and a lot creepier, written and sung from a dude's
perspective).
And we here at Cleveland Does Not Rock are betting that
almost no one ever noticed that Joan flips the bird in this gritty clip watched
by bazillions of little kids throughout the ’80s, entering it as Vol. 3 in our
vault of Underrated Moments in Music Video History.
By the way, what the hell is up with this guy?
No wonder scientists in Peru recently discovered that the
middle fingers of both males and females between the ages of 35 and 45 are .8
inches longer than those outside that range (I completely made that up but it
might be true.
I happened upon this moment, which occurs around 1:23,
while “researching” old ‘80s clips during a DVR-ed chunk of VH1 Classic (You’ll
notice, however, that this video was taken from MTV2, which I think now houses
a continuous loop of the show “I Am 16 and I Have Babies And You Love Watching
This Show To Feel Better About Yourself”). Maybe I noticed it now, as an adult, because I'm aware of the fact that Jett, as of the recording of that video, had already cemented her status as a badass during her time in The Runaways.
Still swarthy after all these years.
Not only does this moment make me love this song 50 times
more, it also makes me hate Faith Hill’s awful bastardization of Jett’s 1988
hit, “I Hate Myself For Loving You,” which is used as the theme for “Sunday
Night Football,” featuring the equally awful bastardization of sports
announcing known as Al Michaels.
Much fun: During the chorus of “I Hate Myself,” start
singing some variation of the rotating “SNF” theme.
And, now, we present the full-length video of the most incredible "I Love Rock and Roll:
