max abelson's super groovy music video spectacular

#648: joseph gordon-levitt - pop tarts commercial (1991)

just before jane magazine folded in 2007, it featured zooey deschanel on the cover. “i’m always looking for school uniforms, trying to squeeze into kids’ clothing,” she said in her interview. “it’s sort of a party trick, the way i can get myself into tiny dresses.” just before domino was closed, ms. deschanel once again graced the front of one of its last issues. “bold happy colors,” her cover said, “chic storage for every room, smart makeovers & more!” and with yesterday’s announcement that paste will no longer continue, the person with the dubious honor of closing that magazine’s tenure on newsstands is joseph gordon-levitt, ms. deschanel’s would-be soulmate in the humerous and precious (500) days of summer.

these magazines have been felled by the curse of the twee.

the fact that mr. gordon-levitt and ms. deschanel graced three end-of-days covers is, of course, a coincidence. but a cynic would point out that the stars, like their parenthetically-titled romantic comedy last year, are downright fun and colorful and special and digestible and just as adorable as vintage tin lunchboxes, and are missing something. they are uncomplicated! they are gluten-avoiding vegans. hollywood’s great celebrities have always been scarier, or more mysterious, or just on the wrong side of unfathomable and arcane. like inception’s leonardo dicaprio, cillian murphy, ken watanabe and michael caine, but not mr. gordon-levitt, and not ellen page either, they are discomforting and itchy. ms. deschanel has sung in a cotton ad.

writing in these pages two years ago, tom mcgeveran penned a wonderful cover story about twee. his opening described the word: there’s twee “in the old british sense—twee was adorable baby talk for ‘sweet,’” and a newer american definition, “old-fashioned-looking wellingtons, fresh vegetables, t-strap mary janes, fringes or bangs, marmalade, anoraks and tea in a pretty teacup.”

twee is great, but maybe it can’t save magazines. [nyo].

#644: radiohead - no surprises (1997)

this may not be the official best video of the 90s, but, gosh, it’s my best video of my 1990s. i was a wee sleepaway camper at laurel south when i walked into a room of counselors watching a vhs of 7 television commercials, radiohead’s compilation of videos from the bends and ok computer, and even though i’d grown up in love with mtv, especially daisy fuentes, i’d never seen something so perfect. a head, singing about a heart filling up like a landfill, in a fishbowl filling up with water! slowly drowning? holding his breath for the final silence? opening his misshapen eyes for his final bellyache? and saved at the last moment by his chorus! i’ll take no surprises, please.

#636: wyclef jean - anything can happen (1997)

sure, wyclef jean’s yéle haiti foundation has had multimillion dollar accounting problems, and hundreds of thousands of dollars meant for haitian victims went to a t.v. station that he and his cousin jerry own. but what matters is that the carnival was my favorite album for all of seventh grade, and a third of its songs are still perfect early-august thumpers. so i think everyone can agree that he deserves to lead one of the hemisphere’s most troubled countries. just look at him roller skate! he’s a man who belongs in high office.

#621: iris dement - let the mystery be (1995)

even agnostics deserves pretty music. iris dement’s voice is whole milk, and her fiddler’s mustache is one for the ages. and a bouzouki? gadzooks!

#616: goodie mob - cell therapy (1995)

don’t miss your chance: the end of a july heat wave is the ideal time for listening to mid-90s music made below the mason-dixon line. you won’t be sorry.

#612: steve earle - hometown blues (1991)

woody guthrie’s guitar killed fascists, townes van zandt’s hat made thieves and liars repent, and steve earle’s early-90s mustache once beat a bully in an arm wrestling contest. in later years his beard was known for comforting the ill and forlorn.

#605: raekwon - incarcerated scarfaces (1995)

the three lines in incarcerated scarfaces that i like the best despite never having quite understood what raekwon is referring to: 

1st verse: “poisonous sting which thumps up and act chumps. raise a heavy generator, but yo guess who’s the black trump?”

2nd verse: “check the status. soon to see me at caesar’s palace, eating salads.”

3rd verse: “i seen it, like a 27-inch zenith: believe it!”

#596: nirvana - drain you (1993, mtv live & loud)

i feel an awfully large nirvana phase coming on, and i feel swell about it.

#590: r.e.m. - fall on me (mtv unplugged) (1991)

did you know that this was the single worst week for album sales since 1991? the weird thing about the news isn’t that cds are selling poorly, it’s that they weren’t selling like drug-laced hotcakes back in ‘91. surely nirvana, r.e.m., a tribe called quest or the elegant bachelors of stone temple pilots were moving a few units?

indeed they were! the “worst week” headline is a tiny bit misleading: sales are the lowest since ‘91 because that’s when nielen soundscan started tracking them.

and now you know, and can relax while michael stipe sings prettily about the sky.

#582: brian wilson and van dyke parks - orange crate art (1995)

and the works progress administration poster archives also have a section of fruit crate labels, which is not only a splendid thing in and of itself, but it also happens to be on the same exact subject as brian wilson’s sweetest song. so it’s a win-win.

update: van dyke parks is coming to brooklyn! v.d.p. in bk.!

#580: pogues - white city (1990)

the one undeniably great about today’s stock market crash was that it turned the internet into a giant montage of spinning newspaper headlines. such fear! such excitement! down! such curiosity! down! down! so many numbers! people caring about the media again! up! analysis! up! down! up! money! money! money! it was even more exciting than the tv coverage of 1987’s black monday, which was relatively sad and staid. but it was not as good as the the pogues’ white city video, which features such spinning headlines as “20,000 people attend london’s first greyhound races.” spinning newspapers will save the newspaper industry.

#574: anthony kiedis - raps about ocean pollution (green heaven) (1990)

i don’t blame the giant oil company bp for the increasingly horrible crude oil spill off the coast of louisiana. i blame the red hot chili peppers’ anthony kiedis, whose 1990 video on ocean pollution might have prevented the problem in the first place had it only been a little bit better. here is a sample kiedis couplet: “grooving and a-gliding/ as graceful as lace/ never loosing touch/ with the ocean’s embrace.”

this is his introduction: “i would imagine it’s probably about 7:30, which means that i had to get up around 5:30 or so to get out here. and now you might ask yourself, why would a sane person like me want to get up at 5:30 and come down to malibu?

well, for one thing, it’s very beautiful, as you can see from the background here. and for another reason, because this guy jim called me and said, ‘hey, anthony, i’m doing this special about how the oceans are getting polluted, and i heard that maybe you might want to say something. and i said, well, you’re very right. because, you see, i happen to love the ocean, ever since i was a little baby and i was growing up on this planet which we are blessed with. i said to myself, you know, the ocean is one of the most amazing things in the entire universe, let alone on this planet.

when the ufos come down they see our oceans, they go, god these guys are lucky, look at these oceans they have, with all these creatures and these dolphins and these whales and these sharks and these fish and these octopuses, and everyone’s hugging each other and swimming through this liquid space atmosphere.”

thanks for nothing, anthony kiedis.

#570: gang starr - you know my steez (1998)

if heaven is real, gang starr’s guru is there and it looks exactly like the you know my steez video, except without the eerie thx 1138 references. the mc is dead at age 43. i hope that instead of focusing on what happened to the pair in recent years, obituaries remember just how thrilling weird and jazzy gang starr’s music was, not to mention the fact that it had the kind of heart, rhythm and substance that other do-good 90s hip-hop acts could only dream about in their pajamas. and guru, more importantly than anything else, was the first person who could make monotone raps slither and shake. rest in peace.