Weekly Video Vault

I almost didn’t make it to the vault this week! I caught a bug the day we got to my parents house and have spent most of my time either sleeping or chugging orange juice by the gallon.  So in my most alert hour of the day, here I am, bringing you another video from MTV past.

This week, since my brain is super cloudy from this cold, I have had a hard time trying to think about what music video to post but I’ve noticed that I have so far been choosing videos from the early nineties, so I think this week we will take a trip back to the fantastic eighties, when making music videos was a fresh art form, and artists could let their imaginations run wild. Some artists however, did not like the idea of music videos, taking the stance that videos would ruin music and therefore refused to appear in their music videos or just tried not to make any videos at all.

One band noted for its anti-video stance was The Replacements, a punk rock band that are considered pioneers in alternative rock. Once MTV had hit the airwaves and music videos were gaining popularity, The Replacements were constantly being told to make music videos to go with their singles, but being the punk rockers that they were, the band steadfastly refused to appear in any music videos. In fact, the only time you see the band in a music video is if they are sitting around a table, doing absolutely nothing, while the music is played for whatever single was released. Hey, it shut the record companies up at least! 

Today I am going to post the video for “Bastards of Young” by The Replacements. This was I believe the bands first music video, and it is by far one of the greatest f*** you’s ever to grace MTV.  This video was the result of the band’s label constantly after the band to make a video for their singles, because up until 1985, when this song was released, off the album, Tim , the band had yet to make a video at all, and MTV was by that time one of the easiest ways to hear your favorite music or to hear a new single, which helped increase record sales greatly.  There isn’t much to say about the video itself, as it is really self-explanatory in all of its punk rock simplicity.

So here it is, the first eighties video from the vault, and one of my favorite of all time because of its attitude, here is “Bastards of Young” by The Replacements.

Weekly Video Vault

Just a quick one today, as I have to work on getting the rest of the apartment packed and ready to be loaded on to the truck tomorrow. Can’t believe that it’s almost moving day, but that also unfortunately means I might not be able to write  here until Thursday or Friday. If I can get on in the meantime, depending on if the motel we stay in has internet and if I can wrestle the laptop away from Hunny long enough if we do have internet, then I will make a quick video or song post. We’ll see how it goes.
So, this weeks video came to mind after reading that Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has made a full recovery from cancer after finding a tumor in his salivary glands back in 2009. I was really glad to read about that and it made me think about Beastie Boys videos that I love, which then led me to pick one of those videos to share with everyone today.
At first I was going to go with “Fight for Your Right” or one of the early videos, which believe me, I love, but then I thought about how everyone really loves those songs and videos. So I decided to go with the first video I saw from the Beastie Boys, back in 1994 directed by Spike Jonze, who really head a great run in the music video business in the mid nineties. Where are the Spike Jonzes of today dammit? I miss really good music videos like this one, an imagined opening theme to an imagined (yet totally epic) 70s cop-action show, complete with mirrored aviators, sideburns, Cochese, and Bunny.

And of course, the rookie.

One of the Beastie’s best videos, here is Sabotage:

Have a good few days, I’ll be back with the Blaqk Audio article as soon as I can, I promise, I didn’t forget! AFI and related bands will be another favorite topic of mine, so no worries!