Because the 90’s are ‘back’, in that heavily laundered form that decades take when they rotate back into the zeitgeist, I’ve been trying to decide what is the quintessential 90’s artefact.
You could make a good case for this video.
It’s about a (white) teen rebellion in a shopping centre, where they upset the power structure and use their new found control to:
Pit to the soft-Alt stylings of a band manufactured around a staff songwriter
Be incredibly rude to someone working on a food stall
Release dogs from cages into a manic and stressful environment for dogs
Spray silly string
Ride mopeds around at 15mph
A neat encapsulation of the bland entitlement of the ‘End Of History’ decade, me thinks.
So in other words, the Eighties again. But with fewer ruffles on the shirts.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I’m still mad at Tom Petty for kicking over that poor innocent video game ten years before this. (And also because he looks and sounds like Tom Petty.)
You could also say it was a paycheck picture for Malcolm McDowell. Rifftrax has done two films like that in The Fairy King of Ar and Yesterday’s Target.
I posted “Belly Of The Whale” in another song thread. Good pop ditty and undeservedly forgotten. But JFC what an awful video. One or two of the visual bits interspersed with the band playing and singing would’ve been fine. But they just threw everything in unrelentingly whether it fit or not. Like there’s a Michael Jackson impersonator but the song brings to mind nothing by Jackson that I can think of. It didn’t contribute anything valuable. It’s just… there. [sigh]
Belated thanks for this. How often have I lain awake at night wondering, “What if the Harlem Globetrotters but not clever or funny?” And now I have my answer! [golf clap]
Saw them twice. Once at Great Western Forum in 1990 and again in 2009 when the currently named, Toyota Arena, opened in Ontario,CA. A severely rainy day that day in Ontario during that game and I don’t regret it.
Only time I’ve been at Great Western. Dad took me to Clippers games at the time since they were cheaper. Can’t afford to see Jack. There’s always him, though.
Not my style of music anyway, so take this with a grain of salt.
It makes me think of that old National Lampoon music news parody. A disgruntled roadie or manager goes public with the news that the bands Gallery and Motley Crue are just the same guys in different outfits.
“Jim just went nuts one day and started crying that if he had to announce ‘Four Bud splits for a dollar’ one more time, he was gonna’ kill himself. And the next thing I knew he’d dyed his hair and was writing all these songs about the Devil’s tonsils and stuff.”
These guys are just trying way too hard, and it makes me feel like the video should’ve ended with a similar reveal.
They’re trying way to hard in every sense, save for their conceptual approach to the video. And its technical execution: editing, shot composition, lighting. And presenting a consistent visual statement with their wardrobe. And the music. But aside from all that, they’re really trying too hard.
Still, I enjoy reciting the lyric “hypocritical stance / makes me piss in my pants” pronouncing ‘stance’ in my own accent, and twisting the pronunciation of ‘pants’ to keep the rhyme. It’s fun!
Possibly the most hubris ever condensed into an audiovisual format. The entire 14 minutes, including the “news” and the “interviews” and the pumping iron before the song are part of the whole sorry mess, as was a barely-coherent James Brown and, oh, everything else.
