Part 1 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we celebrate the return of the MLB season by discussing our favorite baseball hats. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").
Show notes:
We've both purchased many hats over the years
Back in the '70s and '80s, you didn't have a lot of viewing choices for baseball games
Baseball cards were a big factor in figuring out the hats and logos you liked
Hats can fade, especially the dark blue ones
When you just can't wear a Yankees hat
Now there are so many alternate jerseys, hats, logos
You can get hats in different colors and styles
Old guys like us don't like flat-bill caps
Other sports don't wear hats as part of the uniform, but you can get hats for their teams
We often get hats of teams we have no affinity for
Phil's honorable mentions: Black Sox-era White Sox, Boston/Milwaukee Braves, Cardinals from the '40s, Pirates pillbox hat from the '70s, Cleveland Chief Wahoo hat from the '50s
Jay's honorable mentions: Reds, Brewers '70s hat with the glove logo, Royals, Expos all-blue hats in the '90s, Mariners '70s hat, Blue Jays original hat
Phil: Seattle Pilots had a bad hat, with a touch of stolen valor
To be continued
Completely Conspicuous is available through wherever you get podcasts. Subscribe and write a review!
The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Reach (1988)
I watched a lot of videos on MTV (and elsewhere) in the '80s and '90s, but there were plenty more that I never saw. But one of the fun things about doing this feature is tripping over previously unseen weirdness, like this video from a synth-pop act called Martini Ranch.
I actually had heard of the band because one of the members was none other than Bill Paxton, who was much more well-known for his acting work in movies like Aliens, Weird Science, True Lies and countless others. And I knew that before he became famous as an actor, he directed and starred in the 1980 video for "Fish Heads" by Barnes and Barnes, a truly weird and wonderful novelty song that ended up getting played on Saturday Night Live and the following year on MTV.
Paxton was already a known commodity as an actor when he joined Martini Ranch and released two EPs and an album on Sire Records. For their 1988 album Holy Cow, Paxton and bandmate Andrew Rosenthal enlisted director James Cameron (who had made Terminator in 1984 and Aliens in 1986 with Paxton) to helm the video for their song "Reach." The song itself is cowboy-themed and not too dissimilar from "I Wanna Be a Cowboy," the 1985 novelty hit by British new wave act Boys Don't Cry.
For the Martini Ranch video, Cameron made a 7-minute Western opus featuring Paxton in the lead role, but also plenty of cameos from the likes of Kathyrn Bigelow (Cameron's future wife and director of Near Dark, which also starred Paxton), Lance Henriksen, Paul Reiser, Jenette Goldstein, Judge Reinhold, Adrian Pasdar and Bud Cort.
Paxton plays a cowboy who rides into a Western town on a motorcycle to pick up a prostitute at a brothel when a gang of women led by Bigelow captures him. The other guys in Martini Ranch (who are dressed as a mariachi band) are also there and captured, eventually getting dragged to their deaths while playing their instruments.
Paxton tries to escape but the gang catches him and drag him out of town as well. The video looks like it cost a pretty penny, but it was hardly ever played on MTV and the song certainly wasn't a hit. The album Holy Cow also features appearances by Devo's Bob Casale, Alan Myers and Mark Mothersbaugh, Cindy Wilson of the B-52's, film composer Mark Isham and actors Reinhold and Cort.
Martini Ranch did get a song on the soundtrack of the 1988 movie You Can't Hurry Love as well as 1989's Brain Dead, which starred both Paxton and Bill Pullman, who were often confused for each other. That appears to be the end of Paxton and Rosenthal's musical collaboration; Rosenthal later changed the band name to Swifty's Bazaar and released an album. Last year, Rosenthal (as ANDY) released the album Androgyne & Transformation.
Paxton, of course, went on to a successful career on the big and small screen before he died in 2017. After his death, the out-of-print Holy Cow was released on vinyl, along with a DVD featuring the videos for "Reach" and "How Can the Labouring Man Find Time for Self-Culture?" directed by Rocky Schenk. I'm guessing more people have seen the video since Paxton died than when it was released in '88, but that's just how the music business goes.
Here at SITG HQ, we're all about value. I'd say playing more than 1,250 hours of music over the last 13 years for free is a good value. This week, we keep the hot rock coming at a quick pace. After playing new music from Courtney Barnett, Motorists and Heavenly in hour 1, I've got short songs (2 minutes and under) in hour 2. You get the max for the minimum!
This playlist is like an endless donut machine. The hits keep on coming:
Hour 1
Courtney Barnett - One Thing at a Time/Creature of Habit
Remember Sports - Soothe/Seethe /The Refrigerator
Ratboys - The World, So Madly/Singin' to an Empty Chair
Motorists - Cristobal/Never Sing Alone
Heavenly - Excuse Me/Highway to Heavenly
Gladie - Brace Yourself/No Need to Be Lonely
Gardenia - Lana Del Rey/Gardenia
Damaged Bug - Double Yolks/ZUZAX
Mclusky - Spock Culture/I Sure Am Getting Sick of This Bowling Alley
Kim Gordon - Bye Bye 25/PLAY ME
Nothing - Never Come Never Morning/A Short History of Decay
The New Pornographers - Pure Sticker Shock/The Former Site Of
Cootie Catcher - Wrong Choice/Something We All Got
Crooked Fingers - Hospital/Swet Deth
Daniel Romano and the Outfit - The One/The Many /Preservers of the Pearl
Greg Freeman - Gallic Shrug/Burnover
Hour 2: Short and sweet
Fake Fruit - Mas O Menos/Mucho Mistrust
Sharp Pins - Lorelei/Radio DDR
Jawbreaker - Boxcar/24 Hour Revenge Therapy
The Nation of Ulysses - Atom Bomb/13-Point Program to Destroy America
The Makers - It's Your World/Music to Suffer By
The Zambonis - Hextall/Greatest Hits
Tenacious D - Friendship/Tenacious D
They Might Be Giants - Twisting/Flood Live in Australia
Porridge Radio - (Something)/Every Bad
Joanna Gruesome - There is No Function Stacy/Peanut Butter
Sad13 - Ruby Wand/Haunted Painting
Husker Du - Sunshine Superman (5-9 Hoboken)/1985: The Miracle Year
Black Flag - What I See/Damaged
Bad Brains - Sailin' On/Bad Brains
OFF! - Man From Nowhere/OFF!
D Generation - 1981/No Lunch
Nirvana - Been a Son/Incesticide
Chisel - Red Haired Mary/8 A.M. All Day
The Feelies - Fa Ce La/Crazy Rhythms
The Dils - C.A.R./Dils Dils Dils
Washer - Elbow/All Aboard
Illuminati Hotties - Freequent Letdown/Free I.H.: This Is Not the One You've Been Waiting For
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - The Sword in the Stone/Tell Balgeary, Balgury is Dead
De La Soul - Who Do U Worship/De La Soul is Dead
Prince - Ronnie, Talk to Russia/Controversy
Beastie Boys - Crazy Ass Shit/Hot Sauce Committee Part Two
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Let's Work (1987)
Although artists have been going solo ever since bands were formed, it seemed like the 1980s brought on a plethora of solo albums. Many of these artists were successful, including Phil Collins, George Michael, Lionel Richie, Ozzy Osbourne and Don Henley. But there were some big names who never quite matched the success they had with their original bands. One of the most notable was Mick Jagger, who kept trying but just wasn't able to surpass the massive achievements of the Rolling Stones.
By 1987, the Stones had been together for about 25 years, which was an eternity for a rock band at that point. Jagger was a huge celebrity and had done some acting, but most of his work was with the Stones. He released his first solo album, She's the Boss, in 1985; it performed decently, hitting #13 on the Billboard 200 and scoring two top 40 hits. Jagger worked with director Julien Temple to create Running Out of Luck, a longform music video for the album. All said, it was a decent album, if not up to the level of the Stones.
Jagger also performed solo at Live Aid and teamed with David Bowie to release a terrible cover of "Dancing in the Street," which got a lot of play on MTV. One person who was not pleased by all this activity was Jagger's bandmate Keith Richards, who was annoyed at Jagger's non-Stones work and began regularly trashing Jagger in the press.
The Stones released Dirty Work in 1986, but the recording sessions were fraught with tension between the band's two leading men, and Jagger was less involved than on previous albums. It sold well but was savaged by the critics and the Stones never toured to support it, with Jagger instead recording a second solo album called Primitive Cool that was released in 1987.
Jagger called in some heavy hitters to work on the record, including a backing band of Jeff Beck, G.E. Smith, Doug Wimbish and Simon Phillips and guest appearances from Greg Phillinganes, Vernon Reid, Dave Stewart and Omar Hakim. The lead single was "Let's Work," which was Mick's attempt at an upbeat, danceable hit about motivating people to work, I guess.
"No sitting down on your butt/The world don't owe you/No sitting down in a rut/I wanna show you/Don't waste your energy/On making enemies/Just take a deep breath/And work your way up/Let's work, be proud/Stand tall, touch the clouds/Man and woman, be free/Let's work, kill poverty."
Setting aside the questionable optics of a multimillionaire encouraging the masses to get to work, the song is, well, kinda cheesy. And the video lines up with that. It was directed by Oscar-winner Zbigniew Rybczynski, who also directed many music videos, including Rush's "Time Stand Still" the same year. He used new HDTV technology to make the video, which featured Jagger jogging, dancing and gesticulating in front of a green screen along with people from different walks of life (a newly married couple, firefighters, waiters, construction workers, kids, etc.) as traffic raced past them.
Mick's using those exaggerated moves and faces that he's previously displayed on stage and in videos, but it all just looks silly. I don't remember seeing it much on MTV, either.
The song didn't do much on the charts, only reaching #39 on the Hot 100. The album hit #41 on the Billboard 200 and didn't even go gold, which at the time wasn't a huge accomplishment.
Meanwhile, Richards released his first solo album, the excellent Talk is Cheap, in 1988 and did a solo tour. Jagger and Richards reunited and made peace later that year and began working on music for the next Stones album, 1989's Steel Wheels. The band then mounted its first tour in seven years.
Although his feud with Richards was over, Jagger still pursued solo success (after the Stones tour ended). He worked with Rick Rubin and released Wandering Spirit in 1993; it performed better than its predecessor, reaching #11 on the Billboard 200. Jagger rejoined the Stones for two more albums and tours in the '90s and then released Goddess in the Doorway in 2001, his most recent solo album. The Stones have released two albums of original material and toured several times since then. In addition, Jagger joined the supergroup SuperHeavy in 2009 with Dave Stewart, Damian Marley, Joss Stone and A.R. Rahman; the group released an album in 2011, but has done nothing since.
Nobody can accuse Mick Jagger of being lazy. In the case of "Let's Work," maybe he was a little too busy.
Genius can mean different things to different people. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played songs about genius in hour 2 (after playing new music from the Afghan Whigs, Gladie and Gardenia in hour 1). It's enough to get the eggheads all riled up.
Holy genius playlist, Batman!
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
The Afghan Whigs - House of I/Single
Gladie - Push Me Down/No Need to Be Lonely
Gardenia - Magazines/Gardenia
Ex-Hyena - Dark Lights (2AM Mix)/Dark Lights
Damaged Bug - The End of the War/ZUZAX
Kim Gordon - Girl With a Look/PLAY ME
Mclusky - Fan Learning Difficulties/I Sure Am Getting Sick of This Bowling Alley
Weird Nightmare - Pay No Mind/Hoopla
Charm School - Prime Mover Unmoved/Schadenfreude Ploy
Anna Calvi and Matt Berninger - Is This All There Is?Is This All There Is?
Dutch Interior - Go Fuck Yourself/It's Glass
Daniel Romano and the Outfit - Harmless/Preservers of the Pearl
The New Pornographers - Votive/The Former Site Of
Gord Downie, the Sadies and the Conquering Sun - Generation/Live at 6 O'Clock
Gee Whiz! - My Own/How to Manage a Crisis
Joyce Manor - Falling Into It/I Used to Go to This Bar
Hour 2: Genius
Public Enemy - Show 'Em Whatcha Got/It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Lou Reed - Teach the Gifted Children/Growing Up in Public
LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great/Sound of Silver
The Postal Service - Such Great Heights/Give Up
Cat Power - The Greatest/The Greatest
Steven James Adams - The Greatest Friend/Odd Box Weekender V
Rose Dorn - Genius/Days You Were Leaving
Stephen Malkmus - The Greatest Own in Legal History/Traditional Techniques
Wilco - The Late Greats/A Ghost is Born
Teenage Fanclub - Genius Envy/Thirteen
Hammered Hulls - Staggering Genius/Careening
Fred Schneider - Stroke of Genius/Just Fred
Mission of Burma - Einstein's Day/Vs.
Guided By Voices - Einstein's Angel/Zeppelin Over China
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Heartbeat (1986)
There have always been performers who have tried to have crossover success. Actors who attempted singing careers and vice versa, with varying degrees of success.
In 1986, Miami Vice was the hottest show on TV and its two lead actors both took their shots at music stardom. Philip Michael Thomas, who played Det. Tubbs on the show, self-released an album in 1985 that didn't do much. His co-star Don Johnson, who was at his sex symbol peak, had grander ambitions and the support of Epic Records behind him when he released the album Heartbeat in 1986.
Not only did Johnson record an album, but he also made a one-hour longform "concept movie" to promote it. The short film was dialogue-free, basically an interconnected series of Miami Vice-esque music videos that told the story of a Johnson as a documentary filmmaker who gets involved with gang warfare, family drama and other hijinks, including trippy dream sequences. The label spent over $1 million to make the film, which includes appearances from Paul Shaffer, Lori Singer, David Carradine, Sandahl Bergman and a young Luis Guzman and Giancarlo Esposito. It was released direct-to-video on VHS and pay cable channels.
Epic put a lot of money into marketing the release of Heartbeat. I remember seeing the world premiere on Friday Night Videos and MTV gave him a little advance pub with a behind-the-scenes clip (see below).
But it was the title track that people still sort of remember. The video for "Heartbeat" was released in September 1986 and featured scenes from the film (which wasn't released until May 1987) intercut with Johnson singing the track with a backing band that included Dweezil Zappa on guitar (the album also featured guest spots from Willie Nelson, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ronnie Wood, Dickey Betts and Bonnie Raitt). Johnson certainly thought he had something special.
"I wanted the record to be modern, tough rock and I think I achieved that on some level," he told the LA Times in 1987. "I didn't want it to sound like something that other people designed and I just stopped by for a few minutes to do the vocals. And I made it clear to Walter [Yetnikoff, who was president and CEO of CBs Records at the time] that I would walk away from it if I didn't think it was credible. I was prepared every step of the way to throw it away and walk away."
That said, it's fairly generic mid-'80s AOR that would fit right in on a Michelob Light commercial in 1986, but hey, that's what the kids were into, right? Or maybe the housewives that swooned over Johnson every Friday night when a new Miami Vice episode aired. "Heartbeat" also fit into the mold of the atmospheric, moody rock that Vice liked to feature, but it never was used on the show (although two songs by Philip Michael Thomas were used in a 1985 Miami Vice ep). The song has the same vibe as the "rock music" released by actor Jeremy Renner in the last decade or so. Nobody asked or wanted it, but there it is nonetheless.
"Heartbeat" was a hit, going all the way to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the album hit #17 on the Billboard 200 and went gold. The song had actually been around for a few years. It was written by Eric Kaz and Wendy Waldman and originally released by Waldman in 1982 with Peter Frampton playing the guitar solo, and then by Helen Reddy in 1983. Both those versions are little more uptempo than Johnson's, but their versions came and went long before Johnson's made a splash.
Johnson would release one more album, 1989's Let It Roll, which featured plenty of studio help from the likes of then-girlfriend Barbra Streisand, Steve Jones, Omar Hakim, Joe Lynn Turner and Bruce Kulick. It didn't chart in the U.S. But he did have some success with "Till I Loved You," a duet with Streisand that was a top 40 hit from her 1988 album of the same name.
He hasn't recorded any more music since then, instead working steadily in movies and TV. But there have been plenty of performers who have had success in acting and movies, although most of them are musicians who became actors: Will Smith, Ice Cube, Ice-T, to name a few. There are also actors who have released music and toured, including Kevin Bacon, Kevin Costner, Bill Murray (touring, anyway), Renner, Bruce Willis, Jared Leto, Ryan Gosling, Jack Black, Zooey Deschanel and Keanu Reeves.
But 40 years ago, Don Johnson took a big swing. Wisely, he eventually stuck to what he was really good at.
The old cliche says that truth is stranger than fiction and it's kinda hard to argue: Just look around you. The whole world's going crazy. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I've got new music from Mclusky, Kim Gordon, Daniel Romano and the Lemon Twigs in hour 1 and songs based on real events in hour 2. It's not as ripped from the headlines as Law & Order SVU, but it still rips nonetheless.
You've got the right to rock the f out:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Mclusky - As a Dad/I Sure Am Getting Sick of This Bowling Alley
Kim Gordon - No Hands/PLAY ME
Charm School - Scene Queen/Schadenfreude Ploy
Nothing - Toothless Coal/A Short History of Decay
Daniel Romano and the Outfit - Unseeable Root/Preservers of the Pearl
The Lemon Twigs - I Just Can't Get Over Losing You/Look for Your Mind!
Telehealth - Cool Job/Green World Image
EXEK - Visiting Dust Bunnies/Prove the Mountains Move
Courtney Barnett - Sugar Plum/Creature of Habit
Ratboys - Open Up/Singin' to an Empty Chair
Crooked Fingers - From All Ways (feat. Matt Berninger)/Swet Deth
Gorillaz - Delirium (feat. Mark E. Smith)/The Mountain
Cardinals - The Burning of Cork/Masquerade
Joyce Manor - Well, Whatever It Was/I Used to Go to This Bar
Gee Whiz! - Hyde & Seek/How to Manage a Crisis
Gord Downie, the Sadies, and the Conquering Sun - I Got a Right/Live at 6 O'Clock
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Be Chrool to Your Scuel (1985)
Live by the video, die by the video. Thanks to MTV, it didn't take long in the '80s to become a star and it took even less time to come back down to earth. By the end of 1985, Twisted Sister had been on that rollercoaster ride, punctuated by releasing a big budget video that was immediately banned by the same network that introduced the band to the world.
Formerly known as Silver Star, Twisted Sister was formed in 1973 in New Jersey as a glam band inspired by the New York Dolls. Guitarist John Segall, who later changed his name to Jay Jay French, was one of the first members of the group. Much like the Dolls, TS started out wearing women's clothing and makeup, although look eventually became more ragged and scary than feminine. The group had a rotating lineup over the next several years, adding singer Danny "Dee" Snider in 1976; the band played in the Tri-State area and its sound grew heavier as it built a strong local following.
Twisted Sister released its first album, Under the Blade, in 1982 on a small British label called Secret Records. After appearing on the U.K. music program The Tube, the band was signed by Atlantic Records and released You Can't Stop Rock 'n' Roll in 1983. They got some recognition in heavy metal circles but still remained pretty underground. I remember hearing them on heavy metal radio shows in the Boston area in the early '80s.
But everything changed in 1984 when the band released their third album Stay Hungry. Specifically, it was the video for "We're Not Gonna Take It" that blew up on MTV; it featured a guest appearance from Mark Metcalf (Niedermeyer from Animal House), who basically reprised his character as the strict father of a metal-loving teenager. The video became an MTV hit and the single went to #21 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. The followup video, "I Wanna Rock," also featured Metcalf (and his Animal House co-star Stephen "Flounder" Furst) and the song reached #68 on the Hot 100. The album got to #15 on the Billboard 200 and went double platinum in its first year.
I saw them play as part of the first concert I ever attended in July 1984. TS was third on the bill below Cheap Trick and Ratt and above Lita Ford. "We're Not Gonna Take It" was a hit by this point, and the band came out and really impressed with their high-energy performance. Twisted Sister was not making technically proficient or complex music, but they played catchy three-chord rock bangers extremely heavy and extremely loud. Snider was a good frontman and knew how to work a crowd. Although I never bought Stay Hungry, I appreciated Twisted Sister as a live act and indeed, saw them again a few months later opening for Dio.
Twisted Sister also had a cameo in Pee-wee's Big Adventure, making a video for their song "Burn in Hell" on the Warner Bros. backlot that was interrupted by Pee-wee. And the band got more attention when they came under fire from the Parents Music Resource Center in 1985, which led to Snider joining John Denver and Frank Zappa in testifying before a highly publicized Senate committee that fall.
A few months later in November 1985, the band released its fourth album Come Out and Play. Hard rock and metal was at its commercial peak at this time, but Twisted Sister made a calculated decision to appeal to a wider audience. The first single was a cover of the Shangri-Las' 1964 hit "Leader of the Pack," complete with a video featuring a cameo from screechy comedian Bobcat Goldthwait and the band as members of a biker gang. But the song didn't appeal to the band's core audience of metalheads and the single only went to #53 on the Hot 100.
This put a lot of pressure on the second video, the unfortunately spelled "Be Chrool to Your Scuel," which began with quotes about music videos from Snider and Sen. Ernest Hollings taken from the PMRC hearings. The song featured co-lead vocals from Snider and Alice Cooper and had instrumental cameos from Brian Setzer on guitar, Clarence Clemons on sax and Billy Joel on piano. The video was directed by Marty Callner, who directed the band's big videos from its previous album as well as specials for Robin Williams, George Carlin, Diana Ross and Fleetwood Mac. Goldthwait appears in the extended intro as a weirdo teacher in front of his bored class, which featured a young Luke Perry among the students. He goes to the teachers' lounge and listens to Twisted Sister on his Walkman, turning him into Snider and four other teachers in the lounge into a member of Twisted Sister and the guy sitting next to him, legendary horror makeup artist Tom Savini (who did the makeup and SFX for the video), into Cooper. Setzer, Clemons and Joel did not appear in the video.
Turns out the entire school is full of zombies and there's plenty of gore, including zombies eating each other, another getting its neck sawed into and Snider taking a bite out a zombie's arm. When MTV executives reviewed the video, they banned it, no doubt with the PMRC controversy fresh in their minds. So "Be Chrool to Your Scuel" never aired on MTV, which didn't help the album's sagging performance on the charts. Come Out and Play only reached #53 on the Billboard 200 chart and achieved gold status (selling over 500,000 copies), which was a disappointment after the success of the previous album. (Side note on Goldthwait: He's had a successful second career as a writer and director, while still doing standup and working as a voice actor. He also was an opener for Nirvana on part of their final tour. I just saw him open last week for Michael Shannon and Jason Narducy's R.E.M. tribute band. He doesn't do the screeching thing anymore.)
The band's next album, 1987's Love is for Suckers, was originally intended as a Snider solo album but Atlantic wouldn't release it unless it was called a Twisted Sister album. It featured all of the classic-era band members except drummer A.J. Pero, who left the band in 1986 and was replaced by Joey Franco. Guitarist Reb Beach (later of Winger) played almost all the guitars on the album; producer Beau Hill said TS guitarists French and Eddie Ojeda also recorded parts. The band did away with the makeup and toured the album for one month. Two days later, Snider quit the group. The label then dropped the band and the official breakup was announced in January 1988.
The hiatus lasted for 10 years before the band recorded a song for the soundtrack of Snider's horror movie Strangeland. The group reunited for a 9/11 benefit show in November 2001 and since then has recorded two new albums: a re-recording of Stay Hungry called Still Hungry in 2004 and a Christmas album in 2006. Twisted Sister has toured several times since then. Last month, the band canceled their world tour because Snider's health wouldn't allow him to participate; a month later, they announced the tour was back on with former Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach taking over for Snider.
Twisted Sister's time in the commercial limelight was brief, but they made a lasting impression. Even if you didn't like them, you still remember them. That's more than a lot of bands can say.
This is our second Friday the 13th in a row. I don't know about you, but I feel lucky. I didn't say which kind of luck. Anyhoo, this week on Stuck In Thee Garage I played new music from Charm School, Gee Whiz! and EXEK in hour 1 and songs from 1996 in hour 2!
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Torture (1984)
As MTV became a huge force in the marketing of music in the early '80s, artists began to change the way they thought about music videos. Straight performance videos weren't going to cut it anymore. Artists and labels began to think big and by 1984, music videos were considered mini-movies and had the big budgets to prove it.
While many hard rock and metal videos began to embrace apocalyptic or sci-fi themes (see Dio's "The Last in Line," The Scorpions' "Rock You Like a Hurricane," Deep Purple's "Knocking at Your Back Door" and Iron Maiden's "2 Minutes to Midnight"), other genres mined that territory as well. Rick Springfield's "Bop 'Til You Drop" found him performing among enslaved humanoids on an alien planet, Scandal's video for their hit "The Warrior" has Patty Smyth singing while some kind of Cats-esque dancing and fighting goes on, and Billy Ocean's "Loverboy" has the R&B hitmaker trapped in space while a bunch of aliens groove to his music in a bar that was totally not supposed to be the Star Wars cantina. Oh yes, the cash and the cocaine flowed freely in the '80s, my friends.
But when it came to high-concept videos, the bar had been set in December 1983 by Michael Jackson's "Thriller," a 14-minute short film directed by John Landis that was a huge hit and gave a a boost to sales of the album of the same name, which had already been out for more than a year. After Michael reunited with his brothers in '83, it set the stage for the former Jackson 5 (now called the Jacksons because youngest brother Randy had joined) to record an album. With Michael's popularity at its peak, the Jacksons reunion album was a cinch to be a monster hit.
However, when they got in the studio, tensions were high among the brothers and they rarely worked together on songs. The album, Victory, was mainly solo songs that they were working on at that time. The first single was "State of Shock," a funk duet that Michael originally recorded with Freddie Mercury. When they were unable to complete the version, a new one was recorded with Mick Jagger. The song was a hit, reaching #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The second single was "Torture," which was written by Jackie Jackson and songwriter Kathy Wakefield. It was originally supposed to be sung by Jackie and Michael, but when Jermaine Jackson became available at the last minute, he took over co-lead vocals with Michael. However, when it came time to shoot the video, Michael and Jermaine refused to appear in it, so director Jeff Stein rented a wax figure of Michael from Madame Tussaud's museum in Nashville; it appears in three scenes in the video.
The song was about the end of a relationship and how it felt like torture, but the video concept went in the other direction and had the other members of the Jacksons being subjected to various types of torture in some space cavern or something. The torture is doled by aliens in sparkly gimp masks, while dancers gyrate around. Oh, and there are dancing skeletons because why not? In addition to whippings, the brothers are caught in giant spider webs, get goo on their hands that cause eyeballs to grow out of them and get trapped in a giant condom-esque bubble.
Speaking of the dancers, one of them was a young Paula Abdul, who was dating Jackie at the time. Original choreographer Perri Lister was let go and replaced by Abdul, who was a dancer for the LA Lakers then (a few years later, she would famously serve as Janet Jackson's choreographer for the Control album and videos, appearing in "Nasty," and a few years after that, become a pop star in her own right). Abdul also became the choreographer for the Jacksons' Victory tour.
The video shoot went over schedule and over budget, and the Jacksons themselves stopped showing up by the end of shooting. Picture Music International, the video's production company, reportedly went bankrupt because of the "Torture" shoot and its exorbitant costs, although Stein denies that the video was the cause for the company's demise.
The song itself was moderately successful, reaching #17 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #9 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart, but it was pretty generic and forgettable.
But the "Torture" video wasn't the biggest disaster revolving around the Jacksons that year. That was reserved for the Victory Tour, which took place in North American from July to December 1984. There were 55 shows, all but two held at stadiums, and most of the music performed was from Michael's albums Thriller and Off the Wall. Indeed, none of the songs from the Victory album were performed on the tour, although I doubt anybody in the audiences cared.
Don King promoted the tour, but the primary promoter was Chuck Sullivan, son of Billy Sullivan, then-owner of the New England Patriots. He overextended himself and offered the Jacksons 83% of the tour's income, guaranteeing them $36.6 million. He put the Patriots' stadium, then known as Sullivan Stadium, down as $12.5 million collateral. Sullivan initially estimated he would earn $13 million from the tour, later downgraded that to $3 million and then $500,000. Eventually, Sullivan's losses were estimated to be $22 million. After his divorce left him near bankrupt, he was forced to sell the Patriots and Sullivan Stadium in 1988.
Part of the problem was the massive stage designed by Michael, which at 365 tons and 19,200 square feet long had to be transported by over 30 tractor trailers. In some venues, the stage was so large it required the use of some of the seating area.
And then were the ticket sales. Prospective concertgoers were required to send a money order (remember those?) for $120 and a lottery form to buy four tickets at $30 each. During the six to eight weeks for the lottery to go through, the $120 was placed into a money market account earning 7% annual interest until it was time to return the money to unsuccessful purchasers. Since only 1 in 10 people would win the ticket lottery, there would be more money in the bank than tickets to sell during that time period, allowing the Jacksons and team to earn $10 million to $12 million in interest. Michael was against the plan, believing it would be a PR disaster, and he was right. The high ticket price ($30 in 1984 was more than most concerts charged) meant many of Michael's fans would not be able to afford tickets. Some of those fans spoke out publicly against the tour's expensiveness and the Jacksons were forced to backtrack.
Meanwhile, the tensions between the Jackson brothers grew even more pronounced during the tour and at the last show, Michael announced it was the last time Jacksons would ever perform together. This was a surprise to King and the other Jacksons, who were already planning European and Australian legs of the tour; those plans were canceled. Michael went back to his very successful solo career, which would run into some serious problems in the '90s. The other Jackson brothers appeared at Michael's 30th anniversary concert in 2001 to perform a medley, but that was the last time all six Jacksons performed together on stage.
With all the insanity going on in these parts lately, it's helpful to remember that things are a lot less crazy north of the border. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I paid tribute to my homiez up north with songs by Canadian artists in hour 2, including a tribute to the late Terry Watkinson of the wonderfully weird Max Webster. The first hour is nothing to sneeze at, either, with new music from the likes of Nothing, Cardinals, Anna Calvi and Iggy Pop, Gorillaz and Cootie Catcher. Enjoy the hott rock but be careful not to fall into the Pit of Ultimate Darkness.
And now, the sleep of ages:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Nothing - Cannibal World/A Short History of Decay
Cardinals - St. Agnes/Masquerade
Ratboys - Anywhere/Singin' to an Empty Chair
Metric - Victim of Luck/Romanticize the Dive
Courtney Barnett - Site Unseen (feat. Waxahatchee)/Creature of Habit
Anna Calvi and Iggy Pop - God's Lonely Man/Is This All There Is?
Gorillaz - Casablanca (feat. Paul Simonon and Johnny Marr)/The Mountain
Crooked Fingers - Spray Tan Speed Queen (In a German Car)/Swet Deth
GUV - Crash Down Feeling/Warmer Than Gold
Remember Sports - Cut Fruit/The Refrigerator
Cootie Catcher - Puzzle Pop/Something We All Got
Mitski - Where's My Phone?/Nothing's About to Happen to Me
Genesis Owusu - Stampede/Single
Radium Dolls - Rat Song (For a Film)/Wound Up
The Bret Tobias Set - Tuff Sleddin'/Tuneless Blues
Joyce Manor - After All You Put Me Through/I Used to Go to This Bar
Plasma Driver - Deliverance/Night Whispers
Hour 2: Canada
Max Webster - Let Go the Line/A Million Vacations
April Wine - All Over Town/Nature of the Beast
Triumph - Lay It On the Line/Just a Game
Metric - Gold Guns Girls/Fantasies
Black Mountain - Stormy High/In the Future
Broken Social Scene - Windsurfing Nation/Broken Social Scene
PUP - See You at Your Funeral/Morbid Stuff
Preoccupations - Zodiac/Preoccupations
Constantines - Hard Feelings/Kensington Heights
METZ - Hail Taxi/Atlas Vending
Chixdiggit - Shadowy Bangers from a Shadowy Duplex/Chixdiggit
Danko Jones - Baby Hates Me/Sleep is the Enemy
Tricky Woo - Fly the Orient/Sometimes I Cry
The Pursuit of Happiness - Cigarette Dangles/The Downward Road
Joel Plaskett Emergency - Work Out Fine/Truthfully Truthfully
Sloan - Out to Lunch/B Sides Win: extras, bonus tracks and b-sides 1992-2008
