max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#542: badly drawn boy - pissing in the wind (2000)

a very little known fact about both millennial indie rock and joan collins’ oeuvre is that her best naked lip-syncing work was done in badly drawn boy’s highly underrated pissing in the wind video, made around the time of the cinematic milestone these old broads (costarring debbie reynolds, shirley maclaine and elizabeth taylor). it’s a very erotic movie, plus a very erotic music video. and even though badly drawn boy is a poor man’s elliott smith, this song is secretly a twangy beauty.

#538: shane macgowan, nick cave, bobby gillespie, glen matlock, chrissie hynde, mick jones, johnny depp, and more - i put a spell on you (2010)

the future of charity singles has been put in grave jeopardy by a group of tocacco-smoking rapscallions who have recorded such a pelvic, leathery, and tremendous screamin’ jay hawkins cover (to benefit haiti) that no one, including lionel richie, will be brave enough to gather a group of singing celebrities ever again. this is the charity single to end charity singles. someone get shane macgowan a nobel and a drink.

#533: yoko ono & sean lennon - higa noboru (2009)

“i have to tell you,” yoko ono said to her audience at the brooklyn academy of music on tuesday night, a few days before her 77th birthday, “you have a long life ahead of you, and it’s going to be beautiful.” her brooklyn academy of music show—half concert, half tribute—was filled with all kinds of things: shimmying, screeching, thumping, family members, guitar gods, art films, drag, a tuba, a cello, and as ms. ono would say, a lot of cosmic splendor.

the first half was full of thick, loud, strange, twisting grooves, which probably wouldn’t sound like promising news to those who know her only as a screechy-voiced beatles destroyer. but this wasn’t music for a pilates class in westchester—it was interstellar and kaleidoscopic, with pelvic bass lines bouncing below gooey guitars and horns. she sashayed, shuffled, shook and swayed.

but the tribute half of the concert stole the show. in the spirit of ms. ono’s canyon-sized proclamations, the sound paul simon and his son, harper, made on the two songs they played and sang together was one of the most exceedingly warm things i’ve ever heard live on a stage. they played hold on from john lennon’s first solo album, and silver horse from season of glass, her first after his death. one is sung to a wife, and the other is sung by a widow.

eric clapton, the guest that came on afterward, turns 65 next month, but his guitar, especially on the white album’s yer blues, was hysterical, sludgy, and huge. “in sound check, he was teaching me to play how my dad did it,” said the younger mr. lennon. “a touch sophisticated.” after rising, one of the first set’s arty disco songs, full of ms. ono’s points and crouches and marches, mr. lennon son whispered something to into her ear. “he’s always saying, ‘oh it’s great, it’s great,’ to make me feel good,” she explained.

“i’m not lying, mom,” he said. the crowd sighed. a few days before the concert, ms. ono  discussed her maternal feelings: “you would never know, because you’re not old enough, i’m sorry to use those expressions, but when your son grows up, and he’s doing his own thing,” she explained, “it’s nice to get a chance to be with him for a while.” she said the show’s guests had been his idea. “they’re sort of added. added bombs! not bombs! bombs is a bad word! what is it? added sparkling stars.”

#530: radiohead - nude (2008)

february glowers bring out radiohead’s powers before april showers bring may flowers.

#526: hercules and love affair - hercules theme (2008)

i spent a whole hour looking forward to the perfectly crisp half-sour pickle i’d be enjoying with my honey-ham-with-lettuce-and-swiss hero today, only to bite into a soft and mealy catastrophe. where has the world’s crunch gone? the winter is limping. new york droops. funk just hit its 52-week low. that’s why it’s important to watch haphazardly made clips of pulp fiction’s vincent vega dancing to 21st-century disco made by people who grew up in denver leather bars run by lewdly named hostesses. wasn’t it george clinton who used to say that you can’t put the crunch back in the pickle, but you can put the pickle back in the crunch?

#521: yoko ono (with antony hegarty) - i’m going away smiling (2009)

this morning i had a delicious breakfast bar, drank some o.j., and then spent a half hour on the phone with yoko ono, who turns out to be a radically lovely person to talk to. “it’s just that i’m myself, and me, and whatever comes to me, at the time, tends to be something probably, i don’t know, au courant, but then, it’s me, as usual,” she said. she offered some more future classics (to be used in an upcoming nyo article) like: “i think i’m wiser now. well. i hope i’m wiser. i make so many mistakes every day—oops!”

it turns out that she does not listen to 60s pop music. “i’m an emotionally frail person,” she explained. “i don’t listen to anything. i just listen to the music in my mind. it’s wrong to say i don’t listen to anything. you know what i listen to? i listen to john’s songs, because i have to. have to is not the right word. almost every day, i listen to it because people request it—‘can i use it?’ and for relaxation i listen to indian music, old.”

on eric clapton, paul simon, thurston moore, jim keltner, and the other guests at her upcoming brooklyn academy of music concert, she said: “each one of these people—people? these stars!—i know them personally.” basically it was like conversing with the inspiring elementary school art teacher i never had. “just remember, you’re talking to me,” she said at the end. “we’re talking the same way, we’re on the same page. you’re 25—don’t think i’m not 25.”

#513: islands - no you don’t (2009)

i admit that michael cera should probably learn two or three more facial expressions, but no can ever say the man can’t carry a music video. and even though the song isn’t as lovely as anything on the well-titled who will cut our hair when we’re gone, most of this video still melts my eyes into small puddles of flower pedals, sunshine, sweat, and rhinestones. that’s what happens when the man from t.v. carnage, who makes online films of 80s workout videos and news segments on gary coleman, and is probably the david cronenberg of youtube, directs a music video.

#509: vampire weekend - california english (2010)

if you’re annoyed by the thought of a group of well-dressed young wasps stealing the hard-earned glimmer and glee of vintage african pop, but you don’t want to let that annoyance stop you from listening to vampire weekend’s lovely new album, i’ve got the solution: just close your eyes and enjoy the nice songs instead of worrying about lacoste or authenticity or lead singer ezra koenig telling the new yorker that his columbia university class on “imperialism and the cryptographic imagination” really got him thinking. and then when you’re done, just watch a chief commander ebenezer obey video and download some early and mid-career king sunny ade to balance the scales. if you’re still upset, take comfort knowing that vampire weekend never actually robbed old mahotella queens songs like malcolm mclaren.

#505: the walkmen - in the new year (2008)

in 2010 i’m going to think like david lynch, grin like lyle lovett, dress like late-60s ray davies, erupt slowly like early-70s al green, stand with good posture like mid-80s dr. dre, talk like serge gainsbourg, smell like elis regina, rerecord an entire harry nilsson album like the walkmen, and ride my bicycle like paul mccartney before he lost that extra-special glimmer.

#498: randy newman - marie (bbc, 2008)

by a landslide, “you wouldn’t be so stupid, if you were randy newman,” is this year’s best quip written on a card held up by a young indie rock frontman in a music video. and randy newman is this year’s best reason to live, just like he’s been every year since 1968—when love story (you and me) kicked off his self-titled debut. warbled love songs about sloven laziness, cruel weakness, singing trees and true romance are the only love songs worth listening to.

#472: the strokes - new york city cops (2001)

this halloween i’m going as post-millennial manhattan indie rock. the costume will sound good at first, get repetitive after a while, and sound sad in retrospect.

#454: radiohead - kid a (live, 2003)

with today’s conclusion of pitchfork’s top 200 albums of the 2000s countdown, the most haunting of all radiohead issues—kid a versus amnesiac—was finally put to rest. everything is in its right place: amnesiac (which has its intelligent supporters, but does not reach the same mind-tickling, soul-floating heights) clocked in at no. 34, while its sister album was named the decade’s no. 1 album. which it is!

remember when you were in third grade and were delighted by the trick ending of aerosmith’s amazing video, which revealed that alicia silverstone had been in charge of the virtual reality machine the whole time? that’s what it’s like, every single time, to listen to kid a in its entirety. it’s gigglingly good. it’s cold music that makes your head go warm. music with gravity to make you float! and the singing’s pretty, too.

but then here’s the thing: if radiohead’s ok computer was the best album of the 1990s, and radiohead’s kid a was the best album of the 2000s, then what happens when our children’s children start arguing over which was greater?

#447: spoon - small stakes (2002)

a song built around a very distorted looping organ riff and a tambourine is a bad idea, unless it’s played by a band that sounds exactly like a 60s girl group recording within the oceanic crust, or phil spector recording in his prison cell, or the kinks recording their hits as they slowly starve to death (which is kelefa sanneh’s idea, not mine). in other words, spoon is the only band in history that sounds good while sounding so arthritic, hollowed-out and scrawny.

#442: paul simon - american tune (1974)

it would be easier to watch paul simon’s boxer from the first post-9/11 saturday night live if there weren’t shots of bernard kerik, a bugle solo, and a waving american flag in the nbc logo. this american tune from the month after nixon’s resignation feels much more right: not tearful, and not even sad, just very empty.

#437: metronomy - radio ladio (2007)

geeee golly, if only this song was just a smudge less hip and self-satisfied (with a lot less of those ripped-off, linoleum floor kraftwerk electronics, and a lot more of those catchy and weird and gushy “l! a! d! i! o!” vocals), the video’s dreamy crayola body paint, excellent hand wiggling, and inspired yellow/purple backgrounds would have been enough to catapult this into the section of music video heaven roped off for white guys in a room doing something funny with a little bit of color.