Monday Music

Here's another installment of Monday Music. I've selected some strangeness and some classics today. You have to view the web version of this site to see the videos.

First up we have this video by Jermaine Jackson which used lots of baby oil. It was directed by Bob Giraldi who also directed brother Michael's "Beat It" plus lots of other awesome music videos and movies. 

Next up we have the Jefferson Starship's "No Way Out" from their Nuclear Furniture album. This video is bonkers. I almost feel like it has coded messages meant for the future, but we just didn't understand in 1984. A quick summary is Jefferson Starship singer Mickey Thomas was cheating on his lady (who I'm pretty sure is his real life wife at the time Sara) so she takes him to some weird confessional run by the ever cool Father Guido Sarducci. Grace Slick shows him in and the madness begins with the green chair seen on the Nuclear Furniture album cover figuring into the video. Grace Slick has a spider web drawn on her face which I think was a warning to us that the World Wide Web was coming and, much like Mickey gets found out, none of our private lives were to remain private in the future. Then there is the really odd scene with drummer Donny Baldwin and an Asian lady in which he does bicep curls on the bed. I know I always leave my dumbbells on the night stand. He would later assault Mickey Thomas in real life and hurt him so bad he needed facial reconstructive surgery. Also: if you look really close when Mickey is out on the town you will see multiple people flipping the bird behind him. Cultureshark wrote about this video way back in 2013 so feel free to click on the link and see what he had to say about it. 

I lament that I never heard of Jan Terri until just the last few weeks. I have been watching her YouTube videos like crazy since I finally discovered her. Better late to a party than never go at all. I learned that she was an underground Chicago icon and that she opened for Marilyn Manson back in the day. "Journey To Mars" is my current favorite. Jan Terri is on Facebook so be sure to say hello to her. 

Patty Smyth was dismayed at how "The Warrior" video turned out, but I think its stellar with an off Broadway Cats meets the Thundercats vibe. I have to admit the song drove me crazy when it was released and I would make fun of the "shooting at the walls of heartache, bang bang" line, but I gave in years ago to this Holly Knight and Nick Gilder written tune's catchiness. Plus, Patty Smyth, is adorable. I wish she would have taken Eddie Van Halen's offer to join Van Halen back in the day. 

"Liar's Beware" from the Blank Generation movie starring Patty Smyth's first husband Richard Hell is our next featured video. Robert Quine, Ivan Julian, and Marky Ramone (Mark Bell at the time) comprise the Voidoids and if you ever wondered why I never cared much for the Strokes, it's because I had heard the originators of this sound 20 years before.

Susanna Hoffs mother Tamar Simon Hoffs directed the "Going Down to Liverpool" music video. It just so happened that Leonard Nimoy was a friend of the Hoffs family. So he gets to play the unamused chauffeur in the odd video. I think All Over the Place is one of the best albums of the Eighties. 

Fee Waybill reminds me of Bruce Springsteen in his much later "Dancing in the Dark" video in this "TV is King" performance. I wonder if "TV is King" should be updated to the internet is king. 

I wish I had the girl with the bouncy hair

Closing this set out with a tune from Rush's Moving Pictures that seems to resonate ever more deeply with me as I get older. 

VITAL SIGNS

Unstable condition
A symptom of life
In mental and environmental change 

Atmospheric disturbance
The feverish flux
Of human interface
And interchange 

The impulse is pure
Sometimes our circuits get shorted
By external interference

Signals get crossed
And the balance distorted 
By internal incoherence 

A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a mood lifter
Everybody need reverse polarity 

Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to deviate
From the norm 

An ounce of perception
A pound of obscure
Process information
At half-speed 

Pause
Rewind, replay
Warm memory chip
Random sample
Hold the one you need 

Leave out the fiction
The fact is
This friction
Will only be worn by persistence 

Leave out conditions
Courageous convictions
Will drag the dream into existence 

A tired mind become a shape-shifter
Everybody need a soft filter
Everybody need reverse polarity 

Everybody got mixed feelings
About the function and the form
Everybody got to elevate
From the norm

Everybody got mixed feelings
Everybody got mixed feelings
Everybody got to deviate from the norm
Everybody got to deviate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to escalate from the norm
Everybody got to elevate
Everybody got to elevate from the norm
Everybody got to deviate from the norm

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Neil Elwood Peart / Gary Lee Weinrib / Alex Zivojinovich

Vital Signs lyrics © Ole Media Manageme

Everybody got to deviate from the norm