Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 23, 1995 TAG: 9502230029
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
That is to say I had expected rock or rap or punk accompanied by those videos that either scream at you, confuse you, blind you, or leave you with a feeling society as you know it is doomed.
The Eagles gave me hope that it wouldn't be so bad watching four hours of MTV - which is what I agreed recently to when I put certain blandishments ahead of common sense.
I like the Eagles - despite the fact that a city editor, in or about 1977, assigned me to cover them at the Civic Center and I thought he was sending me to a lodge meeting.
It's my understanding, incidentally, that "Hotel California" is about drugs. But I like it anyway.
Then came Tom Petty and something called "You Wreck Me." There were black-and-white flashes and a sudden, startling shot of a cat on green grass. I began to feel uneasy.
There were also two dogs. I think they were in black-and-white.
The Cranberries came next in "Ode to My Family." It had a nice Irish folk-tune feel to it, and I was reminded of Peter, Paul and Mary - which dates me horribly, but I don't care at a time like this.
This was accompanied, however, by a video that I didn't understand. Still, I wish the Cranberries well.
I have to report that a commentator - or the video equivalent of a disc jockey - appeared shortly thereafter. His style, if that is a proper description, reminded me of those people who hard-sell exercise equipment on TV.
He was wearing something that looked like a night shirt with a collar. This guy needs help with his mind and his wardrobe. (In fairness, let's say that some of this guy's colleagues on the country music channel act kind of odd, too, although they usually dress conservatively.)
Let me say here that at about 2:40 p.m. I felt my head going. Again, in fairness, let me say that I get the same feeling from excessive watching of the O.J. Simpson trial on CNN.
At or about this time, there was a number called "Gin and Juice," which featured a shot of a young man rising from a commode. How this enhanced the song, I don't know. I'd rather not discuss the symbolism, if any.
This was either before or after Van Halen, rock music's ode to loud, cluttered lyrics that blow older people away and make them remember how nice it was when Tommy Dorsey had his band.
There was a quiet, almost demure number by Dionne Farris. The video and the lyrics were more or less understandable - except on those occasions when a long line of urinals appeared in the background as Dionne sang.
I began to feel more in touch with my world until they ran this video in which persons - acting very much like they were in a newer version of "Night of the Living Dead" - left their cars in a traffic jam and disappeared. That is, I think that's what happened.
(The country music channel has obscure videos, too, but I've never seen such a thing there. Nor have I ever seen a young man rising from a commode as say, maybe, George Jones sang something boozy and sad.)
Honest. In that video where the people leave their cars, lines started flashing across the screen.
One of them said: "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy."
Another one said: "No tenemos mas tiempo."
I think the Spanish translation of that is: "We don't have anymore time (or beat.)"
The proper translation aside, go figure what that has to do with a traffic jam based on "Night of the Living Dead."
There was a band that threw its guitars away and a band called Lithium, which was kind of appropriate for the things it does.
The videos make me fretful and uneasy and give me a weird feeling of being disembodied and unsettled, of wondering who thinks up these things.
They recall Hieronymus Bosch - whom I remember dimly from some college course - who painted these pictures that were pretty scary and had demons in them.
Many of these videos seem dark visions of something out there that is going to get all of us; although we don't know what it is. Others are silly. Some remind you of Dante's awful vision of the hereafter, and their imagery is strange - as in that row of urinals.
They have old men and children in these stark shots that remind us of the pictures taken in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression. They remind us of mortality, often brutally. One of the old men I saw was in a wheelchair with an oxygen bottle strapped to it.
One video showed a progression of wounds on various human bodies.
Then, there is cleavage, and just before my sentence was up, Madonna appeared, and before long she was in black underwear and writhing on a bed.
I could see that this video had something to do with bullfighting. There was this matador, a bull killer who looked very healthy, had a great waistline, seemed to have little sense of humor, and, for some reason, walked around barefooted on broken glass.
Incidentally, I have always thought that Madonna kind of tweets when she sings. I also believe her to be a better actress than a singer - bed-writhing scenes to the contrary.
(There is sex on the country music channel, too. But it is sex washed by rural breezes. As far as I know, Reba McEntire has never fooled around on a bed in her video life and doesn't regularly appear in black underwear.
(Yet, red-headed Reba regularly jangles the hormones of many young men. And if you're talking cleavage, Dolly Parton invented it - although she is not a bed-writher either.)
In addition to being dense and foreboding, many of these videos stress the abdominal musculature of the performers. Mainly, they stress the abdominal musculature of females - who bump and grind shamelessly. They also show their navels as much as possible in these quick, almost subliminal shots.
I am no expert here, but I have to give Madonna credit. It's my impression she invented navel exhibition as we have come to know it.
When this outfit called 4 p.m. did a number called "Sukiyaki" right after Madonna and the bullfighter, it sounded like the Mills Brothers. I suspected someone was playing with my mind.
A final word here about abdominal musculature, and our subject is Janet Jackson, who did a number that was plainly soaked with urban, understandable sex. I mention Janet because I think she is lovely and is without doubt the abdominal-musculature champion of the world.
My time was almost up when the video jockey who was wearing the nightshirt and a female colleague were shown riding a sofa on runners down a mountain at Aspen, Colo.
After several takes in which they dealt in inanities, the female threw up on the night-shirt man.
I guess these people know when they're having fun.
by CNB