Videodrone #15: Well, Did You Evah!

Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century. 

Well, Did You Evah! (1990)

There have always been tribute albums, where various artists pay homage to their favorite influences, but it wasn't until the late '80s/early '90s that tribute albums were also used as fundraisers. One of the early ones was Red Hot + Blue, the first compilation in the Red Hot Organization's Benefit Series, which raised nearly $1 million for AIDS activist group ACT UP.

The album featured contemporary artists covering the work of composer Cole Porter. Released in September 1990, the album was accompanied by an ABC special featuring videos for each of the song. In my alt-rock-centric world, U2's moody electronic cover of "Night and Day" got plenty of radio airplay but there were plenty of other interesting takes on the album.

One notable cover was "Well, Did You Evah!," a whimsical number originally written for the 1939 musical DuBarry Was a Lady and later performed by Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby in the 1956 movie High Society. On Red Hot + Blue, it was performed by Deborah Harry and Iggy Pop. The video was directed by Alex Cox, who helmed '80s punk-influenced movies Repo Man and Sid and Nancy.

The video is a hoot, with Harry and Iggy clearly having a blast as they cavort through various NYC locales, bringing punk attitude to a petting zoo, shopping at a bodega, robbing a bank and hanging out around a garbage can fire. Both were in their early 40s and still fairly young at the time, although both artists still record and tour to this day. They're clearly enjoying each other's company and that attitude comes across on screen.

It was an interesting time for Iggy. He was riding a renewed wave of popularity due to his recently released album Brick by Brick, which featured another duet, this time on "Candy" with Kate Pierson of the B-52's. Normally long-haired and shirtless in videos and performance, Iggy sports shorter hair and suits in this video.

As great as "Well, Did You Evah!" was, it was only released as a single in the U.K., where it reached #42 on the U.K. singles chart. I don't recall ever seeing the video on MTV or hearing it on the radio, but damn, it's a great version.

Stuck In Thee Garage #628: April 17, 2026

If you don't pay attention, time slips by you pretty quickly. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played new music from Lambrini Girls, Lifeguard and Gang of Four in hour 1 and songs from 2006 in hour 2. Don't forget to take your meds!

This playlist fits like a fur coat:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

Lambrini Girls - Cult of Celebrity/Single

Gang of Four - No Kings Here!/Single

Lifeguard - Ultra Violence /Ultra Violence/Appetite

Emerald Comets - Don't Doubt the Clouds/Single

The Bevis Frond - Draining the Bad Blood/Horrorful Heights

Jack White - G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs/Single

The Dambuilders - Shrine 2026/Shrine 2026

Hallelujah the Hills - Drivin' on 9/Puritan Garage Howlers Vol. III

Gladie - Future Spring/No Need to Be Lonely

Snail Mail - Tractor Beam/Ricochet

King Tuff - Crosseyed Critters/MOO

Courtney Barnett - Same/Creature of Habit

Motorists - PCSD/Never Sing Alone

Daniel Romano's Outfit - Phantasy/Preservers of the Pearl

Joyce Manor - Grey Guitar/I Used to Go to This Bar

Juliana Hatfield - Harmonizing with Myself/Lightning Might Strike

The New Pornographers - Wine Remembers the Water/The Former Site Of

EXEK - Don't Answer (When They Call)/Prove the Mountains Move

Hour 2: 2006

The Hold Steady - Same Kooks/Boys and Girls in America

The Twilight Singers - My Time (Has Come)/Powder Burns

Eagles of Death Metal - I Like to Move in the Night/Death By Sexy

Arctic Monkeys - Red Lights Indicate Doors Are Secured/Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

Sloan - People Think They Know Me/Never Hear the End of It

TV On the Radio - Dirty Whirlwind/Return to Cookie Mountain

Jarvis Cocker - Don't Let Him Waste Your Time/Jarvis

The Blood Brothers - Set Fire to the Face on Fire/Young Machetes

Mission of Burma - Spider's Web/The Obliterati

Sonic Youth - Sleepin' Around/Rather Ripped

The Raconteurs - Level/Broken Boy Soldiers

Beck - Nausea/The Information

The Black Angels - The First Vietnamese War/Passover

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Way Out/Show Your Bones

The Minus 5 - Hotel Senator/(The Gun Album)

Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins - Rise Up With Fists!!/Rabbit Fur Coat

Drive-By Truckers - Aftermath USA/A Blessing and a Curse

Crank up the rock songs here! 

Completely Conspicuous 674: You Can Leave Your Hat On

Part 2 of my conversation with guest Phil Stacey as we celebrate the return of the MLB season by counting down our favorite baseball hats. Listen to the episode below or download directly (right click and "save as").

Show notes:

• On to our top 10
• Phil's #10: Reaching back to the '50s with the Phillies
• Jay's #10: Mid-90s Mariners 
• Good use of seafoam green
• '90s uniforms had a lot of bold colors: Teal, purple
• Phil's #9: The simplicity of the SF Giants hat
• Hat designs got pretty weird over the years
• Corduroy hats were a thing for a while
• Jay's #9: Classic A's green and yellow look
• Phil's #8: Dodgers' classic blue and white is another look that hasn't changed
• Bandwagon jumpers are inevitable
• Jay's #8: St. Louis Cardinals navy blue with red logo
• Had one that got ruined at Lollapallooza '93
• Phil's #7: The mid-70s Angels hat with the halo
• Lots of different looks for the Angels over the years
• Jay's #7: Phillies' hat from late '70s/early '80s
• Phil's #6: Sticking with Philly with the A's from the '30s
• Some hats are instant conversation pieces for middle-aged guys
• Jay's #6 and Phil's #4: Another classic look with the Tigers
• Ruining hats by working out in them
• Phil's #5: Kansas City A's with the kelly green
• Jay's #5: Brooklyn Dodgers with the classic B
• Jackie Robinson era
• Jay's #4: Can't go wrong with the Cubs "C" hat
• Some cool Cubs hats over the years
• Phil's #3: Iconic Red Sox blue hat
• Jay's #3: White Orioles hat with the cartoon bird
• Tried a more realistic bird in the '90s
• Phil's #2: The Braves' 70s hat with the lower case A
• Jay's #2: The Blue Jays' all-blue hat introduced in the late '80s
• Are middle-aged guys more likely to wear hats?
• Phil's #1: Orioles' mid-60s to mid-70s black hat with orange bill
• Jay's #1: Original Expos hat
• In Canada, Toronto fans hate the Canadiens but love the Expos
• Defunct but beloved team

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 #14: Down In It

Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century. 

Down In It (1989)

It's not often when a young band's video shoot turns into a murder investigation, but that's exactly what happened when Nine Inch Nails filmed the 1989 clip for their first single, "Down In It."

Trent Reznor was (and is) the mastermind behind NIN, recording the majority of the instruments on the band's debut album Pretty Hate Machine. Based in Cleveland, the band's sound was electronic, featuring tons of synths but also incorporating heavy industrial and rock elements. It was angry, visceral and exciting. 

Reznor was recording a video for "Down In It" in the warehouse district of Chicago. It was low budget, but full of trippy effects, with Reznor being chased by band members Chris Vrenna and Richard Patrick through various locations. The climax features Reznor falling off the top of a building, with the final scene showing his lifeless body on the ground as Vrenna and Patrick stood over him. 

In this pre-drone era, the band used a camera attached by a rope to helium balloons to fil the final scene, but the rope snapped and the camera floated away. The camera eventually ended up in a cornfield in eastern Michigan, where a farmer found it and handed it over to local police. They turned it over to Chicago police after noticing the city's distinctive L trains in the background. Chicago authorities couldn't find any evidence of a murder matching that location and turned the case over to the FBI. After watching the footage, FBI agents began investigating whether it was evidence of a cult killing or a snuff film, noting that the "body" appeared to be rotting in the video.

Flyers were distributed looking for leads and an art student who worked for H-Gun Productions, the company that filmed the video, recognized the "victim" as Reznor and informed the FBI that he was very much alive. This was in September 1990, a year after the video was filmed. 

Chicago police announced that there was no body, after all, and in March 1991, the tabloid "news" show Hard Copy aired a sensationalistic report about the whole thing (see below). It's really a classic of the era, with reporter Rafael Abramovitz editorializing about Reznor's nose rings, interviewing the Michigan cop who initially investigated the footage, and talking to Reznor and the production crew about it. Reznor found the whole thing amusing, which seemed to annoy Abramovitz, who chided him for wasting a year's worth of police work that could have gone into solving real crimes. The band's label, TVT Records, took full advantage of the publicity, including clips from the Hard Copy report in the press kit for the UK release of the album. Some British journalists wondered if the whole thing was a publicity stunt, but Reznor insisted it was a just a stupid accident.

As it turned out, when the video was aired on MTV, the network refused to air the final shot of Reznor's body, which was covered in corn starch to give it that "freshly dead" look. 

Pretty Hate Machine was eventually a huge success, going triple platinum, but it had a slow build. Released in October 1989, it entered the Billboard 200 in February 1990 but continued to gain momentum over the next few years. NIN was part of the first Lollapalooza lineup in 1991, which is when I started seeing quick late-night TV ads for it. 

The band's rise coincided with the alternative rock explosion of the early '90s. NIN's videos for songs like "Closer," "Hurt" and "The Perfect Drug" were in constant rotation and often pushed the boundaries of what censors would allow. But it was that first video that put NIN on the map in more ways than one.

Stuck In Thee Garage #627: April 10, 2026

Emergencies happen all the time. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played new music from the Dambuilders, Jack White and the Bevis Frond in hour 1 and songs about emergencies in hour 2.

The urgent playlist:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

The Dambuilders - I Hope We're Not Too Late/Shrine 2026

Jack White - G.O.D. and the Broken Ribs/Single

The Bevis Frond - A Mess of Stress/Horrorful Heights

Courtney Barnett - Great Advice/Creature of Habit

Snail Mail - Agony Freak/Ricochet

King Tuff - Stairway to Nowhere

Gladie - Car Alarm/No Need to Be Lonely

Heavenly - Portland Town/Highway to Heavenly

Motorists - Anomaniacs/Never Sing Alone

The New Pornographers - Ballad of the Last Payphone/The Former Site Of

Squeeze - What More Can I Say?/Trixies

Gardenia - Therapy Sessions/Gardenia

Damaged Bug - Sike Witch/ZUZAX

Mclusky - Hi We're on Strike/I Sure Am Getting Sick of This Bowling Alley

Gee Whiz! - Cocktail Umbrellas/How to Manage a Crisis

Cardinals - Anhedonia/Masquerade

Remember Sports - Roadkill/The Refrigerator

Hour 2: Emergencies

Hot Snakes - I Need a Doctor/Jericho Sirens

Thin Lizzy - Heart Attack/Thunder and Lightning

Beastie Boys - Heart Attack Man/Ill Communication

Speedy Ortiz - Emergency & Me/Rabbit Rabbit

Billy Nomates - Emergency Phone/Emergency Phone

The Tragically Hip - Emergency (feat. Sarah McLachlan)/Unreleased

Sloan - Emergency 911/Parallel Play

Van Halen - Somebody Get Me a Doctor/II

Motorhead - Emergency/Ace of Spades

Metallica - Crash Course in Brain Surgery/The $5.98 EP: Garage Days Re-Revisited

Mike Krol - An Ambulance/Power Chords

Soccer Mom - Open Heart Surgery/Soccer Mom

TV On the Radio - Ambulance/Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes

Destroyer - Saw You at the Hospital/ken

Spitzz - Take Me to the Hospital/Single

Turtlenecked - Meeting You in the Hospital/Vulture

The Replacements - Take Me Down to the Hospital/For Sale: Live at Maxwell's 1986

Quick, listen to the show NOW!

Completely Conspicuous 673: A Tip of the Cap

 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 #13: Reach

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.

Stuck In Thee Garage #626: April 3, 2026

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

Mary Bell - The Parade/Mary Bell

Pardoner - Get Inside!/Peace Loving People

A Giant Dog - Seventeen/Pile

Have another donut and crank up the show RIGHT HERE!

Videodrone #12: Let's Work

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.

Stuck In Thee Garage #625: March 27, 2026

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

Dead Stars - Smarter/Perfect Patterns

Sasami - The Greatest/Squeeze

IDLES - Great/Joy as an Act of Resistance

You don't have to be a genius to rock this playlist.

Videodrone #11: Heartbeat

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.