(New to the countdown? Catch up here.)

A white-haired judge sits down behind a podium and bangs his gavel, calling the video to order.

The footage flies by very quickly: this is the most hyperactive editing we’ve seen so far on the entire countdown. I’m not going to log the hundreds of different shots in this video, but breaking down the opening sequence after the judge (most of the following is in b&w, although clips sometimes snap into color halfway through): (1) two balding men in suits, dealing with some paperwork behind a rotary fan (2) a hand holding up a newspaper with the screaming headline “DURAN DURAN EXPOSÉ: COURTROOM SHOCK” (3) panning from an old-fashioned photographer’s flash to an angry old man pointing his wooden cane at the camera (4) two men in military uniforms (they look like Marines), one pudgy and white, one black and muttonchopped–the white one turns to the camera and begins to scream (5) the judge flailing about (6) one of the balding men in suits approaching a large ornamental eagle on the judge’s desk and pointing to the newspaper headline (7) the judge looking through a magnifying glass, distorting his right eye (8) the judge laughing, with the Marines standing behind him (9) the balding man at the eagle again, wagging his finger as a crowd gathers behind him (10) a femme fatale in a dark coat and cats-eye sunglasses, pulling her sleeve over her face (11) a bespectacled man, lit dramatically from below, reading something and looking up in shock (12) a white flash and the text “COURT ON FUNK” (13) a beautiful woman licking her lips (13) the judge leaning forward and removing his glasses (14) filmed from overhead, the judge’s desk, which includes his magnifying glass, and the block which he then bangs the gavel on, and finally (15) Simon Le Fucking Bon, who begins singing.

That all happens in ten seconds.

Watched in real time, you get a flurry of 1930s-style courtroom footage and the feeling of a great frenzy surrounding Duran Duran. The song is a serviceable but forgettable slice of pop-funk. Most people’s favorite period of Duran Duran is early, when the pretty young boys were hungry like wolves with cherry ice-cream smiles. I suppose that’s very nice, but I’ve always had a soft spot for what I think of as middle-period Duran singles, the ones with definite articles like “The Reflex” and “The Wild Boys.” Pop stardom compresses the human time scale: that middle period came in 1985, just one year after their American breakthrough. At any rate, while Duran Duran did well in extending their stay on the charts into the late ’80s (and beyond), I’ve never met anybody who would count this DD era as their favorite. But even when their music flagged, the band knew how to make videos.

More courtroom hysteria, anchored by periodic cuts to Simon Le Bon, who appears to be testifying by chanting, “I don’t mind / If you’re keeping someone else behind.” He is very still, which is effective in contrast to all the other on-screen movement. He lifts up his hands and wiggles his fingers jazz-hands style for just a moment. Le Bon’s lit from below, like he’s telling a ghost story at summer camp. At first he appears to be wearing a wig and robes, but it’s just dramatic lighting and a (presumably very expensive) jacket.

More footage, a mix of color and black-and-white, with some lyrics showing up as superimposed text: an audience of women watch raptly, clapping mechanically to the beat. John Taylor plays his bass guitar, which is helpfully labeled “BASS.” Somebody rolls off a bed. There’s another newspaper front page, with the headline “SIMON’S SECRET LADY.” A closer shot of the thirty-year-old Le Bon, with the camera spinning around him as he sings into a microphone with some television screens showing fuzzy blue images behind him. We also get close-up head shots of John Taylor and Nick Rhodes, the only members of the core DD five left in the band, Andy Taylor and Roger Taylor having wandered off after Live Aid in 1985. (Andy Taylor does appear elsewhere in this countdown, having produced Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young.”) John Taylor is sticking to a game plan of smoldering his way through the video.

“Take a chance / even if it’s only when we’re dancing in the light,” Le Bon sings, inverting a Springsteen lyric. We finally hit the chorus, which is catchy and a welcome release after Le Bon’s extended chanting. A horn section shows up, although it’s not clear whether they’ve come to testify in the courtroom. We get face-slapping, pointing, an anonymous drummer–and guitarist Warren Cuccurullo, who has enormous jet-black hair and looks as if he’s wandered in from a heavy metal video being shot down the hall. (According to Wikipedia, Cuccurullo didn’t play guitar on this song, although he contributed to other tracks on the Big Thing album.)

More shots of the band posing in front of TV screens; in 1988, that was the lazy director’s way of showing that a band was modern and self-aware and meta. (People were still having arguments about whether post-modernism should be abbreviated as “pomo” or “p-mod,” which I find charming in retrospect.) A beautiful black female singer enters the video, singing “I don’t want your love” in counterpoint with Le Bon.

Fans swarm Cuccurullo as he mimes a guitar solo in a smoky room. Well, I suppose it’s nice to make the new guy feel wanted.

Rhodes, Taylor, and Le Bon march into a crowded room, chanting, “I like noise / ’cause I like waking up the house.” Another headline: “DURAN STARS CLUB HORROR.”

As we head towards the outro, with Le Bon declaring repeatedly that he doesn’t want our love, we get an extended dance sequence. Director Steve Lowe turns up the cliché meter: the room has black-and-white tiles and is has light coming through the slats of large Venetian blinds. A woman with bobbed blonde hair slaps a man in a sleeveless maroon t-shirt, and then they spin each other around vigorously, falling to the ground and onto a bed. This is intercut with clips of beautiful women and a collection of jurors moving their tabloid newspapers in unison.

The video ends with the bright white of a flash photo. In four minutes, Duran Duran have successfully communicated that they are very famous and surrounded by beautiful women. Due to MTV standards and practices, the consumption of cocaine had to be implied by the hyperactive editing; if it could have been shown on screen, this might have been the ultimate Duran Duran video.

“I Don’t Want Your Love” hit #4 on the American singles chart. You can watch it here. If this only whets your appetite for Duranology, check out Rob Sheffield’s new book, Talking to Girls About Duran Duran.

posted 14 October 2010 in 1988. 5 comments

Ray Charles America, a documentary I worked on earlier this year, debuts tonight on the Biography Channel at 8 pm Eastern / 5 pm Pacific (and then promptly repeats three times in a row). I’m credited as “consulting producer,” which means that I helped in various ways, including interviewing a half-dozen or so of the talking heads. (The talented Alexis Spraic is the director; the estimable Morgan Neville the producer; David Duchovny narrates.) We had unfettered access to the Ray Charles archives, and interviews with people ranging from Tom Waits to Bill Cosby; I think it all came out pretty damn great. The editing is particularly brilliant, for which I can claim no credit whatsoever. Check it out.

posted 12 October 2010 in News. 1 comment

Photographed earlier this week on Sixth Street in Los Angeles: the body of a Jaguar convertible with the fins of a Cadillac.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an automotive chimera before.

posted 8 October 2010 in Photos. 1 comment

1. XTC, “Dear God”
2. John Lennon, “God”
3. The Sugarcubes, “Deus”
4. Randy Newman, “Old Man”
5. Tom Jones/John Lee Hooker, “Burning Hell”

Point out the songs I missed in the comments before a vengeful Lord smites me down.

posted 5 October 2010 in Tasty Bits. 4 comments

Taken yesterday at LACMA, just outside the new Resnick Pavilion.

posted 1 October 2010 in Photos. no comments yet

From Bruce Springsteen’s “Incident on 57th Street”:

Puerto Rican Jane, oh, won’t you tell me, what’s your name?

Dude, you know her name. It’s “Puerto Rican Jane.”

posted 27 September 2010 in Tasty Bits. no comments yet

Photographed on the sidewalk around the corner from my house.

posted 24 September 2010 in Photos. no comments yet

In the Beatles’ “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” Paul McCartney sings:

And so I quit the police department / And got myself a steady job

Leaving aside the overuse of “and” to fill out the lines–how does McCartney think police employment works? Seasonally? Piecework? What kind of crazy freelance police work is the narrator doing?

posted 20 September 2010 in Tasty Bits. 2 comments

(New to the countdown? Catch up here.)

Top of the hour, which means it’s time for the station ID. For years, that meant an astronaut jumping around on the moon, but eventually MTV mixed it up (while keeping the same music). On the last day of 1988, they were showing a three-dimensional M spinning inside a gyroscope. The camera zooms in for close-ups on the M: doors and windows open to reveal images such as an animated police car, a child solving a jigsaw puzzle, and an ironing board with a fish on the end of it. Meanwhile, Adam Curry does a voiceover, hyping the videos to come in the next hour. The last door opens to show film of a black dog running towards the camera. The aperture closes, and as we pull back to reveal the MTV logo, an animated dog sticks its head out of the door and barks.

The first video in the second half of the countdown: Sting! Der Stingelhoffer. The Stingster. Stingatollah. Stingalingadingdong. “Be Still My Beating Heart” was the second single off his second solo album (…Nothing Like the Sun): after the obligatory upbeat leadoff single, this was pretty much exactly when his career took a hard turn away from new wave and towards a particularly pretentious version of adult contemporary. (I would argue that his solo debut, Dream of the Blue Turtles, split the difference.) There’s a video to match: heavily processed time-lapse slow-motion black and white. It was directed by the husband/wife team of Candace Reckinger and Michael Patterson (responsible for a-ha’s “Take on Me” and in 1989, Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract”). We follow a winding cliffside road. We zoom in on Sting, lying on the ground, limbs splayed out like a polysyllabic starfish.

A dog runs across the road, and then Sting stands on the edge of the cliff, looking at the water and the rocks below, contemplating his mortality, or maybe how he got Andy Summers to play guitar on this track. We pan by trees, and onto a bridge, where Sting leans, dramatically gazing at… another bridge. He’s wearing a long black coat. His hair is carefully unkempt. He has stubble on loan from George Michael. He turns to the camera dramatically and sings, “Be still, my beating heart.”

That phrase, as it happens, is more commonly used ironically. Since the Gilbert and Sullivan 1878 show HMS Pinafore, it’s served as shorthand for an ingénue comically overcome by love, or as a quick blast of sarcasm from somebody dismissing a suitor. Leave it to Sting to build a song around the phrase’s literal meaning.

Black-clad legs, maybe Sting’s, run through a copse, and then another pair of black-clad legs, maybe a girl’s, by a fence. Sting leans against an old farmhouse, gazing meaningfully at the camera, while the song percolates along in a midtempo fashion. We see hands playing a conga drum. Somebody runs down a train station platform at night. The camera races through a grassy field. “I’ve been to every single book I know,” Sting intones as the camera circles around him.

People listen to songs like this and assume that Sting’s a humorless wanker. In fact, from all available evidence, he’s a genuinely funny guy. I’ve read interviews where’s he’s witty and self-deprecating; I’ve heard him on the radio being genuinely hilarious. But he thoroughly quashes his sense of humor when it’s time to make music, and then people assume he’s serious when he talks about having tantric sex for hours. In a career full of self-inflicted wounds, his insistence on being a serious artist might be the greatest. Oh, okay, the lute.

Waves crash on the beach; Sting stands on a deserted street at night. And then we see the love interest: a beautiful girl with dark hair styled in a short pixie cut. First her forehead and her eyes, then her silhouette. Lots more footage of roads, looking more like animation than photography now. Sting leans on an old stone arch, in a scene that makes me wonder where the video was shot. (Between the architecture and the countryside, I’m going to guess Spain, although he doesn’t seem like a tapas kind of guy.)

Sting lies on the ground again, making dirt angels. The ground spins underneath him. We zoom in on the girl in a bit of stuttery animation. We zoom in on Sting’s eye, and pull out to see him rendered like a black-and-white Leroy Neiman portrait.

More running legs. Sting walks past a cavalcade of stone arches. A closeup on the palm of a hand. The pixie girl spins in a stone tunnel. By the water, Sting closes his eyes. We discover that Sting is on the opposite end of the tunnel from the girl. Water crashes on the rocks. The girl starts lip-synching.

As Sting sings “Sink like a stone that’s been thrown in the ocean / My logic has drowned in a sea of emotion,” we get a superimposed sheet of handwritten lyrics. That’s the directorial equivalent of a nudge in the ribs, saying, “Hey, this guy’s a poet!”

The song reaches its final stretch, having been in an inoffensive midtempo groove for five full minutes. The music is so competent and unmemorable, I find it difficult to focus on it. We get reprises of all the meaning-laden black-and-white imagery: running legs, pixie girl, lyrics sheet. The video ends with Sting, alone on a street at nighttime, swaying and clapping his hands. Since he’s not going anywhere, we can only conclude that he is once again caught between the Scylla and Charybdis.

“Be Still My Beating Heart” hit #15 on the singles charts. You can watch it here.

posted 16 September 2010 in 1988. 8 comments

In my continuing series of Rolling Stone articles that aren’t available online to be linked to, I call your attention to my short “In the Studio” visit with Tom Morello, the mad-scientist guitarist in Rage Against the Machine. Contrary to his bristling agit-pop image, he’s a warm, funny guy. Morello’s been working on a new disc in his solo Nightwatchman identity, but he decided to crank it up this time: “I figured I can play guitar like that, so I should play guitar like that,” he told me. If you’re curious to read the whole thing, reserve 90 seconds of your time and check out the left half of page 24 in the latest issue.

posted 14 September 2010 in Articles. no comments yet