Music

Watching the ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ series on Sky Arts got me thinking.

Way back in the 80′s the music video was born. I remember getting excited about Top of the Pops on Thursday evening to see who had a new video on it – it was always the big acts who toured alot that would have a video on. Then in 1986 we got a new show on Channel 4 called ‘The Chart Show’ which was the first programme to have wall to wall pop videos. After a couple of years this then moved to Saturday mornings on ITV. In fact, I would go as far as to say that being featured on The Chart Show launched quite a few bands – the Milltown Brothers I reckon wouldn’t have sold as many singles as they did (although they were a bit short lived) without having been launched on The Chart Show. Same as the Divinyls. The other programmes that used to feature music videos were ‘America’s Top 10′ which used to be voiced by Casey Kasem and was always on in the middle of the night (thank god I had my own Video Recorder!) and also there was a heavy metal programme called Raw Power (or Noisy Mothers dependent on when you watched it) on through the night featuring a bloke called Krusher.

MTV didn’t really feature in my life much until we got Birmingham Cable TV in the early 1990′s – and then I just loved the amount of music video channels we had – I was always ringing in to request videos on ‘The Box’ – and sometimes you would only have to wait an hour or so for your video to come round (other times it would be 8 or 9 hours!). On MTV itself, I loved ‘MTV Most Wanted’ with Ray Cokes, and Beavis and Butthead’s appreciation of the music video. The golden days of MTV in my mind. When they actually played music videos.

The memorable music videos were those that were different – although in the late 80′s and 90′s even up until the early 2000′s, people really tried hard to make memorable music videos. In the early days, Kevin Godley, David Mallet and Russell Mulcahy (who incidentally directed Highlander and ‘Derek and Clive get the Horn’ which is a classic) were the trendsetters. Everyone was inspired by one of their videos. Kevin Godley pioneered the single shot music video (see U2′s Numb, for example, although Massive Attack also did it with the ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ video). They pushed the envelope and the video and song worked well together. In fact, there are some music videos that enhance the song so much you can’t hear the song without thinking of the video. Let’s Dance by David Bowie is a great example in my mind, or ‘I want to break free‘ by Queen. Then the world was changed by Michael Jackson with Thriller and his epic horror movie. I remember my Uncle having a genuine copy of the VHS video single!

In the 90′s, the envelope was pushed even further, with CGI and big budgets meaning the music video became an art form on it’s own. People like Chris Cunningham, Michel Gondry, David Fincher and Spike Jonze would make awesome videos, really inventive and ground breaking. Sabotage by the Beastie Boys,(Spike Jonze) and Come into my World by Kylie (Gondry) not only make you enjoy the song but also I would sit and wonder how they did it and be inspired and enthralled by the video. Windowlicker by Aphex Twin was a record that wouldn’t have been so successful had the video not been quite so surreal, bizarre and disturbing. And Jonas Ackerlund’s video for the Prodigy’s ‘Smack my Bitch Up’ which has a sexist and mysogenist theme until you hit the final shocking frame.

And then around starting in 2001 until around 2006 everything started to go downhill. We all stopped watching MTV because they didn’t show music videos any more. It was just all crappy TV shows like ‘My Super Sweet Sixteen’ and other trash. In fact, they didn’t even show ‘Jackass’ any more.  The BBC killed off Top of the Pops and the Chart Show was killed off in the late 90′s to make way for CD:UK which was just disasterous. In fact, them showing the frankly ‘porn’ music video ‘My Neck’ by Khia (see it here) at 10am in the morning that caused my kids to go ‘what are they doing daddy’ was the first and only time I have EVER registered a complaint about something on TV.

And that’s what has happened to Music Videos. There are so few original videos now it’s depressing. There isn’t any decent music TV programming any more. There is probably one or two a month that are just awesome – e.g.  OKGo’s This Too Shall Pass. But the downside is that the majority of the ‘popular’ videos are formualic. Take the current JLS video – lens flares, bling, bumped video, jumpy cuts (aping the fantastic NSync’s ‘POP‘ video). Nothing original. Sadly the current crop of music videos all seem to do the same thing. Sitting in a club, showing off your bling and ho’s.

So what needs to happen? Well, for a start, MTV should start showing music videos again, and we need some sort of mainstream TV music show (which would also help the music industry get out of the Radio 1 rut it’s got into) but also bands should make interesting and different music videos. Stop being formulaic and start pushing boundaries again. Some do – but they’re few and far between.

Otherwise we’ll have to hold a funeral for the popular music video sometime soon.

When I heard Trent Reznor was putting Nine Inch Nails into a state of suspended animation for the foreseeable future at the end of 2009, I wondered who would make music I would enjoy again.

But it seems like Mr Reznor’s been busy making rather good music with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig. The new band is called ‘HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS’ and their first track – a 7 minute opus called ‘A Drowning’ has popped up today to listen to on Pitchfork here.

To say it’s my new favourite band is an understatement. It’s like all the bits I love from NIN’s ‘still’ album with the haunting and beautiful vocals of Mariqueen. Perfect.

The HTDA website is here by the way.

(Update – they’ve loaded the MP3 file up to Amazon so you can buy it too).