Kevin Seal’s getting punchy. “On this date, exactly ten years ago,” he says, “it was December 31, 1978.” Continuing onward: “Okay, enough of the past. Let’s look at the future. Last year, I mean to say.” He introduces Belinda Carlisle’s “I Get Weak” video, mentions that it was directed by Diane Keaton, and adds that it was written by Diane Warren, “who’s a one-woman hit factory. She did ‘Where Will You Run To’ for Heart, she did ‘Ghost Town’ for Cheap Trick, she wrote the National Anthem.” He pauses. “Not the United States. That was Francis Scott Key. But she wrote the one for Ghana.”

I should say up front that I deeply love “I Get Weak.” My enduring affection for this song, in fact, is mentioned in a certain New York Times bestseller, so I couldn’t deny it–not that I’d want to. I have a soft spot for Diane Warren, who was in the early days of her career at the time of this song: she’s written a lot of formulaic cheese, but when she clicks, you end up with Taylor Dayne’s “I’ll Be Your Shelter” or Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time”–indestructible pop songs that stand up next to the best of the Brill Building. “I Get Weak” has a universal sentiment expressed in a novel way, a relentless chugging rhythm (thank you, drummer Kenny Aronoff), and a catchy melody that’s fun to sing along to in the car. I’ve never gotten tired of hearing it.

The video, however, is a hot mess. It was directed by Diane Keaton, who also did Carlisle’s “Heaven Is a Place on Earth,” which we’ll be seeing later in the countdown. This isn’t quite as spectacularly bad as that clip, if only because there’s no glowing beach-ball globes.

We open with quick cuts of a male model in a cable sweater and a giant red heart on fire. A colorized Carlisle, holding an armful of red roses, walks into a black-and-white room where footage of the male model is playing on a large video screen. Spotlights dance over Carlisle as she lays the flowers on the floor; her hair is looking a bit frizzed-out. She looks adoringly at the model–who, as it happens, is Tony Ward, soon to be Madonna’s boyfriend (and star of several of her videos, including “Cherish” and “Justify My Love”). He’s got dark features and an extremely angular face; he looks a bit like k.d. lang. He preens and holds a burning match.

Fade to a bedroom where a black-and-white Carlisle (with colorized lipstick) lies on satin sheets (which keep changing color, from peach to blue to green, demonstrating either that they are magic sheets from the land of Oz or that Keaton got overfond of the colorizing tool in the edit bay). She writhes and sings, and generally has the glamorous look of a 1940s movie star. Maybe it’s the white gloves.

Quick cuts: the burning valentine, a green satin bow hobbling a girl around her ankles, Carlisle with a peach sash covering her mouth. We’re getting kinky, apparently. Carlisle sits up, wearing a new black outfit and now sitting on a modern green chair. Tony Ward is on a video screen behind her, checking out his arms. A girl’s hand runs through his hair. Back to Carlisle in bed, while burning pictures of Tony fall through the air. Diane Keaton’s approach to video directing would have blended right into MTV’s playlist circa 1983: she loves random, sometimes evocative, images. It’s like she learned from Russell Mulcahy instead of Woody Allen. But in five short years, the channel’s aesthetics had changed: higher production values, more emphasis on both performance videos and quasi-narratives, less bargain-bin surrealism. This was not always a winning trade.

New scene: a half-dozen girls in the black-and-white room, watching Tony on the video screen. They are overcome by his chiseled good looks, to the point of fainting and looking slackjawed, and are fanning themselves with bright red fans. We pan over them sitting in a row of chairs, anointing themselves with red lipstick. At the end of the row sits Carlisle, beaming happily. She looks smitten, but unlike her fellow Tony fans, it seems like she is still able to operate heavy machinery.

More burning photos falling through the air, more Tony, more Belinda. Then some shots of the Tony fans spinning and falling through the air: they don’t seem to be very accomplished gymnasts, so I’m thinking Keaton just rented a trampoline for the day.

New setting: a retro hotel hallway. Carlisle sits on the floor, gazing at Tony, whose image fills up an entire wall. As she stands up, we get a black-and-white closeup of Tony’s eye, as if we were checking for glaucoma. Carlisle is now wearing a blue outfit and black gloves; she shimmies her shoulders and spins around. Her dancing skills are roughly on par with Billy Joel’s. Rose petals rain down on her from the ceiling; I suspect they’re meant to gently waft, but they’re coming down like hailstones. She puts her hands behind her head and moves from side to side, which looks less like the throes of passion and more like aerobics.

Back to the black-and-white room. A dozen girls wobble in, wearing purple satin blindfolds and with their ankles bound by another purple sash. Carlisle, free from the bondage accoutrements, makes her way through the flailing crowd. We see closeup shots of Tony Ward: a girl is nuzzling against his neck, but while he has spent most of the video looking to one side or the other, he is now looking straight at the camera, creating the impression that he and Carlisle have locked eyes with each other.

We pan over the faces of the other girls: black and white, except for the lipstick. Then the camera speed picks up so the faces become a blur, and all we can see is the flickering red blotch of lipsticks. Carlisle sings in an extreme closeup, with an irregular patch of light on her face. This seems like a good time to mention that she does a nice job with this song. She’s never had the most distinctive voice, and Cher or Anita Baker or Laura Branigan probably would have done just as well, but Carlisle gets the game-winning RBI.

New scene in the black-and-white room. The smitten girls come in carrying flowers, as a smoke machine belches fog at their ankles. One by one, they collapse, and crawl towards the video screen through the smoke, as if they’re swimming through a cloud. It’s extremely funny; giving Keaton credit, I think it’s supposed to be.

Carlisle walks through the room and right up to the screen. And then–surprise, surprise–she’s suddenly on the screen right next to Tony Ward. Both of them look content; the smitten girls keep crawling and claw the video screen, as if they’re zombies and Belinda and Tony have particularly tasty brains. Boy, are they in for a disappointment.

“I Get Weak” hit #2 on the pop charts, kept from the top by Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” You can watch it here.

posted 4 November 2009 in 1988. 2 comments

I have another feature article in Rolling Stone that’s not available online: this time, it’s a profile of Rivers Cuomo, who I’ve known on-and-off for about fifteen years (I edited two pieces he wrote for Details about life on the road; you can read them here and here). If you’re interested in my 1997 article about Weezer, you can read it here. If you want the up-to-date story, “Rivers Cuomo Grows Up (But Don’t Worry, He’s Still Kinda Weird),” you’ll just have to pick up the paper magazine.

My favorite exchange in our interviews ended up not making the final story: Cuomo was telling me about the Rolling Stone photo shoot, which featured him in a wetsuit with a boogie board on a beach by the Santa Monica pier. The flippers, apparently, were just for the picture: he described them as “awkward and difficult.”

“So they were autobiographical?” I asked.

He laughed heartily. “I guess so.”

posted 2 November 2009 in Articles. no comments yet

Taken last Saturday at the Day of the Dead festival in the Hollywood Forever cemetery. This is an altar to dead musicians: skeletal faces have been painted over the ones who are no longer with us.

posted 30 October 2009 in Photos. no comments yet

I suspect you’re not keeping up with comments on posts from a year and a half ago, but let me share a recent one that was interesting: responding to my rundown of commercial break #4 in the MTV 1988 countdown, “CheezNapkin” informs us that the great animated spot featuring a scientist getting the MTV logo carved into his red hair was directed by none other than Henry Selick! A little sleuthing reveals that this is indeed true; it was called “Haircut M” and it won a Clio Award. (Selick, of course, went on to direct The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Coraline.) I don’t know for sure, but I’m guessing that the Marie Antoinette bumper in the same commercial break was also by Selick. Thanks, “CheezNapkin”!

posted 27 October 2009 in 1988. 1 comment

I didn’t want to write this Depeche Mode article.  It was spring 1997, and I had recently profiled Everclear, Nirvana, and Sublime–I wanted to get off the heroin beat, which I found sad and monotonous (albeit reliably good copy). Joe Dolce, then the Details editor-in-chief, talked me into it, saying I could use the article to vent about heroin. So I did. (But my mini-rant was probably overshadowed by the overdoses and band dissension and S&M metaphors.)

The album in question, Ultra, was pretty much a flop (at least in the States). The personal highlight for me reporting the story was that I got to visit Abbey Road, and found myself starstruck by a street corner.

posted 26 October 2009 in Archives, Articles. no comments yet

Taken yesterday at the Leo Carrillo State Beach in Malibu. I believe the birds are cormorants.

posted 23 October 2009 in Photos. no comments yet

A shockingly young Colin Quinn, lean of gut and fulsome in hair, is singing U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love).” On a clear day, from a sufficiently high vantage point, he might be able to spot the melody from where he’s standing. He interrupts himself: “Steve! Steve! You’re out of tune, buddy.”

Yes, this is a promo for the late, great MTV game show Remote Control, where contestants were strapped to Barcaloungers and quizzed on pop-culture topics such as “Brady Physics” and “Dead, Alive, or Canadian?” Quinn was the show’s second banana and announcer. At various points, the ensemble also included Denis Leary, Kari Wuhrer, and Adam Sandler. (The host was Ken Ober, who now is a TV writer, currently employed by The New Adventures of Old Christine.)

At any rate, “Steve” is “Steve Treccase,” the show’s one-man band: in other words, some guy with an Ian McCulloch haircut, dark sunglasses, and a Roland keyboard. “Colin, I’m not out of tune,” he objects. “You’re out of tune! You’re always out of tune!”

“What do you mean?” Quinn ripostes. “Then how come everybody always picks ‘Singalong’? It’s very popular, that channel.” For some reason, Quinn is holding a half-eaten apple in his left hand.

“Of course it’s popular,” Treccase replies. “It’s funny that you’re out of tune. It’s funny, that’s why we do it.”

“They’re laughing at me? They don’t really like my voice?”

Treccase nods. “Yeah, exactly.”

Quinn looks hurt. “I guess that’s funny, if you like that kind of humor.” He takes a beat to let MTV Voiceover Guy tell you that there is a new season of Remote Control, and then returns to a rendition of “Pride” so bad that Bono ought to take out a restraining order.

Next up, the surreal Earth, Wind and Fire ad for Coca-Cola we’ve seen three times before. New observation: they appear to be drinking out of pull-tab cans, not pop-tops. I’m pretty sure the transition away from pop-tops happened about a decade before: somebody must have decided the pull-tabs looked unsightly on camera.

A deep voice says, “From Camelot Music, R.E.M.” We then see fifteen seconds of the band’s “Orange Crush” video. That was the second single from Green, so it would have been released shortly before this ad aired; at any rate (spoiler alert!), “Orange Crush” won’t make this countdown. (I suspect it was on 1989’s list: the song didn’t chart in the top 40, but it topped both the “Mainstream Rock” and “Modern Rock” charts, and the video won a VMA). A quick recap of the excerpt: in high-contrast black-and-white, we see an ominous chest of drawers, followed by a young blond boy running down an empty road in slow motion with his arms flailing, the back of a man with a crewcut crawling through a bed of straw, a dirty hand, an arm closing a chest in that ominous bureau, and a broken chair by the oceanside. It’s not the traditional hard sell. I assume Warner Bros. and Camelot were doing a co-op advertising buy here, although I have no idea how they split the cost.

Again, an ad for “The Conductor” batteries, allegedly optimized for “high-drain music machines.” This is our third viewing of the spot where a bored college student suffers through an extremely dull philosophy class: the clock ticks, a girl cleans her glasses, a student falls asleep on a desk with a loud thud. Then our spiky-haired protagonist puts on his headphones and rocks out to “School’s Out,” while the professor drones on, oblivious.

Budweiser has a jingle with chiming synths: “For the pride, for the dream!” We see a solemn cowboy holding a bottle of Bud, then a black father and son, leaning their chairs back against a yellow wall and popping open two cans of beer. “For the love, for the team!” A couple in a bar look at each other meaningfully, and then a line of baseball players take off their caps for the national anthem (or maybe for Morganna the Kissing Bandit–we can’t see). “For the sweat and for the drive!” the singer emotes. Quick cuts of a weightlifter, a bicyclist, a track team wearing “USA” uniforms, and a triumphant boxer. “For the reason, the reason you strive!” A regular guy in a bar lifts a mug of beer. A spoken voiceover: “For all you do, the clean, crisp taste of beechwood-aged Budweiser.” Over a sunset, the singer delivers the money line: “This Bud’s for you.”

Our fourth commercial for Rain Man: I think this one’s a slightly different edit than we’ve had previously. Thank you for providing me with some variety, promotions department of United Artists. The entirety of the voiceover artist’s work on this spot: “Johnny Babbitt thought he knew everything. Dustin Hoffman. Tom Cruise. Rain Man. Rated R. Now playing in theaters everywhere.”

We conclude our commercial break with a “Ten Second Film.” This one’s called “Two two.” An auctioneer who looks like Ricky Jay is wearing a big red-and-black lumberjack jacket and selling the obviously fake head(s) of a two-headed cow. Sample rapid-fire patter: “Would you give me two, would you go downtown wearing a tutu?”

posted 21 October 2009 in 1988. 4 comments

It took me a long time to notice this lyric, from Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough”:

Just like a rainbow, you know you set me free

Now, Vince Clarke has always been a goofy guy, but this is extra-silly. This is not one of the things that rainbows are traditionally good for! “Just like a rainbow, you lead me to a pot of gold,” sure. “Just like a rainbow, you take me to Asgard, home of the Norse gods,” okay, fine. Even “Just like a rainbow, you spruce up a thirteen-year-old girl’s bedroom or a Mariah Carey album cover,” I could live with that. But since when did a rainbow set anybody free?

posted 19 October 2009 in Tasty Bits. 1 comment

Marching forward! (If you’re not familiar with the flipwalk project: while living in New York City, I took walks of exactly one hour in duration, my route determined along the way by flipping a coin. Then I would take a photograph of whatever block I was on when the hour was up.)

This week’s teaser image:

For the complete picture, plus the story of what happened on my way to getting there, click here.

posted 16 October 2009 in Photos. no comments yet

Another excerpt from The Andy Warhol Diaries:

Thursday, July 7, 1977

Cabbed up to the Iranian embassy ($2.50). There were no demonstrators out front. Inside I saw Otto Preminger again and it was the second or third time in a few days, so he asked me what we were going to do tomorrow. I posed for pictures with the queen in front of my portrait of her. She said she was jealous of Hoveyda because he had eight Warhols and she only had four. The queen is taller than me.

posted 15 October 2009 in Excerpts. no comments yet