max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#988 : jonathan richman - now is better than before (1985)

from jonathan richman’s first 20 years in show business by jonathan richman: “mr. richman was born in boston in 1951. he started to draw pictures all day long from the age of 5. played baseball all day long from the age of 9. this would not leave time for anything else, would it? he took up guitar at 15, started playing in public at 16, and by 17 had caused many people to leave coffee-houses… quickly… with their hands over their ears, and by 18 was sure he wanted to sing professionally… he left home at age 18, moving to new york. since he was ten years old and first was taken there by his parents, he wanted to live there and also his favorite rock band the velvet underground was there along with the artist andy warhol (since deceased)… he admired their sincerity, their dark sound, and their ability to improvise both lyrics and music onstage. his first place to stay in manhattan was on the couch of the personal manager of this velvet underground. after two weeks the manager and his wife and the other person staying there felt that jonathan… well… he immediately found work as a busboy (unbelievably incompetent) and as a foot messenger on wall street.” (emphasis mine)

#979: fugazi - waiting room (1988)

a certain pseudopolitical media figure’s bald philistine cruelty made me so sad today that i had to listen to early fugazi for like five hours to remember that washington dc and the people affiliated with it aren’t all smirking narcissists.

#976: bruce springsteen & the e street band - sherry darling (july 1984)

believe it or not this was filmed after i was conceived but not yet born: that very special time in every utero’s life when we magically listen to all contemporaneous bruce springsteen concerts. i’m writing a blockbuster about it called womb boss radio. it’s like look who’s talking but prenatal.

it won’t be as rollicking or touching as this sherry darling, even the gesticulation alone. the way bruce pumps his forefinger singing ”i’ve got you” and heaves back his thumb for “and baby you’ve got me” before clarence clemons takes his two-meter solo! together they giggle and stomp, shuffle, duckwalk and ham. ”ladies and gentlemen, the greatest man alive,” bruce says, introducing clarence.

but we know who he’s really talking about. have you ever wondered if bruce were really jonathan richman playing a rock and roll superstar, like david bowie as ziggy stardust?

#969: jonathan richman - vincent van gogh (australian interview with john cale) (1983)

come for john cale on a couch in sunglasses staying very still while jonathan richman sings—immeasurably less upsetting to watch than the opposite, teetotaling jonathan richman squirming on the same couch while late-drug-era john cale tries to explain himself and plays chinese envoy . but stay for jonathan richman, the swingiest man the caucasians have ever known: look at him go. he even smiles when late-drug john cale responds angrily at the end of the song here when asked if he met j.r. as an a&r man.

#958: allen toussaint - hey little girl and professor longhair lessons (1980s)

it’s true that allen toussaint arranged all the horns on the band’s last waltz, produced dr. john’s best album and history’s most romantic song about rain, wrote the nation’s happiest song about working in a coal mine, wrote otis redding’s most painful song about pain, was single-handed responsibly for the meters (his old house band), handled a&r for the beautiful minit record label, and made from a whisper to a scream in his spare time, but the real reason we should bow down is his speaking voice. his is the only adam’s apple with its own mustache.

#956: kate bush - babooshka (1980, on french tv)

is this the best air-punching in a french music video for a u.s. pop song with a different american video? it is, because kate bush knew what to do. come for the beautifully deconstructed schmaltz, stay for jazz hands, a giant figure skater on a green screen, the moon, a sparkling cape, and the last-minute mustachioed man in a 19th century sailor suit.

#952: squeeze - black coffee in bed (1982)

a really important historical document proving that it took until at least early 1983 before new wave bands learned how to stare seriously into the camera. plus, it’s finally evidence that at one point in music video history bands liked adding in slow-motion vignettes of children playing basketball, shirtless men on the phone, and a tired woman ironing. new wave videos! what couldn’t they do?

#946: king sunny ade - mo ti mo (rockpalast, 1983)

because the title king of kings has already been claimed by nebuchadrezzar, jesus, haile selassie and triple h, king sunny ade will have to be known as his groovingest majesty the federal chairman of juju’s wahwah rhythms and all-highest life of highlife.

#939: kate bush - babooshka (1980)

i’ve written a major motion picture screenplay about the meeting kate bush took with emi music executives in 1980 where she demanded to spend the babooshka video wearing a vale and holding an over-sanded double bass against an all black background. in the film’s second act, the emi music executives counter that they’ll only fund a babooshka video if she wears a kind of stripper-set-loose-in-the-metropolitan-museum’s-arms-and-armor-wing get-up. but in the third act, when their lawyers fight, both teams threaten to leave the talks before agreeing to a babooshka video with half arms-and-armor and half vale and bass. in the fourth and fifth acts they film the video and it becomes a world-famous triumph.

#934: tom waits - telephone call from istanbul (1987, big time)

narrowly the world’s finest song on the subject of telephonics, by the skin of a tooth on a hair hanging from a blue trenchcoat. 

#931: frank sinatra and quincy jones - until the real things comes along (1984)

almost certainly the best sweater-on-sweater action of 1984, quincy jones in red and sinatra in blue. it was probably filmed the same day as footage of quincy messing around with herbie hancock’s new synthesizers, just after taking off his sweater and switching spectacles.

#928: naini diabaté - r.t.m. (1988)

what if i told you that r.t.m. stands for office de radiodiffusion-télévision du mali, and that this clip is a recording of vibraphones and two guitars and a woman naimed naini singing like someone on fire about that malian television station? and then that the video itself is actually from a malian tv station? and then your brain explodes all over your bedroom or office walls and radiodiffusion-télévision du mali is held responsible for manslaughter?

#924: townes van zandt - pancho and lefty (private concert, 1988)

the saddest song by the saddest man who’s ever lived, played in a goddamned honest to goodness holiday inn in texas. “lefty he can’t sing the blues all night like he used to,” he sings, leather-faced and i think a very sorrowful drunk.

townes van zandt, even in a motel room by a fern singing about kerosene and murder, looks like a priest. 

#919: the cure - jumping someone else’s train and grinding halt (1980, amsterdam)

all feature films would be better off if movie theaters played a selection of exceptionally well-picked old music videos before the coming attractions start, instead of 20 minutes of very large television advertisements and like behind-the-scenes footage of upcoming abc family channel sitcoms. specially, what if the sean penn as a robert smith nazi hunter vehicle had a cure video, a talking heads video, and maybe something from will oldham beforehand? someone get harvey weinstein on the phone immediately.