Photography

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.

Having not been out for a ride since my racing bike decided to fall to bits a couple of weeks ago, it was quite nice to get back out for a ride.
My bike for today was my 18 year old GT mountain bike of which the only original parts are the crank, frame and seatpost. I even changed the brakes the other week which makes a massive difference. It currently is shod with a set of Continental Ultra Gator Pro slicks on it, and I’ve moved the rack and saddlebag over to it along with a second bottle cage. So although it’s not quite a proper tourer it’ll do to get out and ride until I get a replacement bike from that bike shop that won’t be named from Portsmouth.

The ride itself was the same ride I did a couple of weeks ago – albeit much much more windy today – that combined with the different bike meant it took me 8 minutes longer on this bike. Plus the fact I was taking it steady too as I wasn’t sure about the new brakes.

Left home and went through bishopthorpe and onto the sustrans route 65 towards selby. Over the ‘bridge of dreams’ and stopped for 5 minutes to watch the sailing club on the river. Carried on past the cafe and was onto the wide open bit and came across a massive group of people with kids who were on the cycle path looking at the solar system models. However, the cycle path is narrow (albeit there’s a massive grassy bit) and I had to stop on the grass verge and let them past even though it’s a cycle path (it’s not called ‘Cycle the Solar System’ for the fun of it!) and got some fairly glaring looks from the adults. Nice that they are happy to share things isn’t it. I noticed when I got to Riccall that they’d all parked (I counted 20-odd ‘premium and 4×4′ cars) in front of the poor lady’s house who lives at the end of the cycle path.

Rode through Riccall and round over Cawood bridge, through Ulleskelf and on to Tadcaster. Stopped in Taddy at CycleSense where I got some excellent help in choosing some new cycling mitts and a nice multitool that has almost every bit on it I’ll need (including a spoke key and a nice chain link extractor tool. I also ordered a replacement mount for my Garmin GPS as the clip has broken off on the one on the bike.

Back on the bike and on leaving Tadcaster I turned left and up towards Healaugh and took the long way home, stopping at one point to take some pictures of the bluebell woods.

A nice 30 mile ride again – the route’s so pretty I did it twice now.

Interestingly, it was a much more comfortable ride on the GT. I fitted some cane creek ergo bar ends on it recently too which made it more comfortable on the hands, and the new mitts certainly helped in the last part of the ride. I probably need to adjust the rear gears a little as they’re not selecting cleanly.

A sunset view of the City of London from Tower Bridge.