Martha, My Dear: ILM's All-Time Video-Poll Results Thread

Shannon was so big in Miami that LTMP's third single earned airplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSaOxK_kTKU

I hope nobody minds this digression, but the Shannon talk reminds me that Miami had a freestyle station before the legendary Power 96, namely WHQT Hot 105. That was where you heard Shannon in 1985 (I was a high school listener). In about the summer of 1986 the two stations traded formats, with Power 96 assuming the freestyle sovereignty all the way to the end of the era.

I have some physio at 10:40, but I'll post the first couple before I leave--I'll pick up again around 11:30.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/video-40.jpg

40. “Jocko Homo,” Devo (1977)
56 points/6 votes
Director: Chuck Statler

Images were much harder for me this time than with previous polls I've done. Neil Young and Yo La Tengo were easy. The two film polls (discounting an early one, when I didn't put any thought into them), road films and political films, even when I hadn't seen something, I had a reasonably good sense of the film to pick something that worked. (I remember not having a clue about the John Landis film Into the Night--that was the rare exception.)

There are a lot of videos among these 40 I'd never seen before. And--I'll say stuff like this periodically, and it's never directed at people who voted for them--there are a number I don't like. So I'm sure with some of them, if it's a video you love, you won't care for the image; I'll have missed whatever it is that makes the video memorable for you. (I would skim those videos quickly, but I didn't have the patience to watch them all.)

i kinda dig that they're gonna be thumbnails with youtube UI included

I hope nobody minds this digression, but the Shannon talk reminds me that Miami had a freestyle station before the legendary Power 96, namely WHQT Hot 105. That was where you heard Shannon in 1985 (I was a high school listener). In about the summer of 1986 the two stations traded formats, with Power 96 assuming the freestyle sovereignty all the way to the end of the era.

― Josefa,

Excellent post. Hot 105 exists as the adult R&B station; these days I occasionally tune in for the quiet storm show.

(xpost) That was something that looked good to me, and I figure 97% of video viewing now happens on YouTube anyway; the two have basically verged. (I have one Vimeo image for the one Björk video I couldn't get on YouTube here.)

And, of course, not cropping that stuff out was easier, and also keeps the original ratio there.

Verged = merged...

https://phildellio.tripod.com/video-39.jpg

39. “When I’m with You,” Sparks (1979)
57 points/4 votes/one #1 vote
Director: Brian Grant

Devo restoration: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk1DNzg0LWs

sorry i'm bad at remember how not to embed lol

I suppose the first two define the earliest days of video--be as weird as possible. I very much doubt that Brian Grant and Chuck Statler, when they directed these, ever thought anyone would be looking up their names in 2022.

(Not a big Devo fan, but I did vote for "The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprize," primarily because of how much I love the song.)

Back in an hour.

Ah, sorry I missed that--that version looks much cleaner. (The not-clean version does look more primitive, though, which is apropos.)

i hadn't seen either of these but they're fantastic, particularly the sparks video

Damn, I meant to include non-embedded links in the info...I'll start doing that when I get back.

i didn't realize i'd seen the music video for "jocko homo," but now i'm realizing that i saw it as part of a short film called 'devo-lution,' which i saw during college at an ann arbor film festival. it's an incredible amount of fun, and the "jocko homo" part is definitely the highlight. would've voted for it if i'd known it was a free-standing video

Shannon was so big in Miami that LTMP's _third_ single earned airplay.

📹

I hope nobody minds this digression, but the Shannon talk reminds me…

seeing Sparks tomorrow, never seen this before. thanks, Clemenza!

"Jocko Homo" was one of the first videos I saw as a kid, probably on the pioneering CityTV program The New Music, which predated MTV. It's amazingly grotesque, even from the perspective of the 70s, but I prefer the faster album version of the song too much to vote for this version.
Though I'm a Sparks fan, I hadn't heard "When I'm With You" till this year. I voted for it just for Ron's smile.

I forgot about the Sparks ventriloquist video. It's a bummer how much 80s Russel Mael looks like Tucker Carlson.

Wow, I voted for both of these. I was the #1 vote for Sparks. A somewhat strategic boost!

Interesting too that the countdown begins with two brother acts!

First two placings suggest a really fun rollout, I'm here for this

That Devo doc containing the "Jocko Homo" video is, curiously/appropriately, included on the Criterion disc of Island of Lost Souls (1932).

i kinda like the slowed version of “jocko” from the video

https://phildellio.tripod.com/video-38.jpg

38. “Relax,” Frankie Goes to Hollywood (1983)
57 points/7 votes
Director: Bernard Rose

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yem_iEHiyJ0

One I do remember, and "Two Tribes." I like the long "Relax" sequence in De Palma's Body Double (pretty sure Holly Johnson appears).

xps also a voter for Jocko Homo, could have voted for all of those early Devo videos, arresting genius.

a partial Chuck Statler videography (he doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry, wth?):

1976 Devo: Jocko Homo (Music Video)
1976 Devo: The Truth About De-Evolution (Short)
1976 Devo: Secret Agent Man
1977 Suicide Commandos: Burn it Down
1978 Devo: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (Music Video)
1979 Devo: The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprise (Music Video)
1979 Elvis Costello & The Attractions: (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding (Music Video)
1979 Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Oliver's Army (Music Video)
1979 Madness: One Step Beyond (Music Video)
1979 Nick Lowe: Cruel to Be Kind (Music Video)
1980 Devo: Whip It
1980 Elvis Costello & The Attractions: High Fidelity (Music Video)
1980 Elvis Costello & The Attractions: I Can't Stand Up for Falling Down (Music Video)
1980 Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Love for Tender (Music Video)
1980 The Cars: Panorama (Music Video)
1980 The J. Geils Band: Love Stinks (Music Video)
1981 Devo: Beautiful World
1981 Devo: The Men Who Make the Music (Video)
1981 The Time: Cool (Music Video)
1983 Elvis Costello & The Attractions: Let Them All Talk (Music Video)

fuck, why didn't i vote for "relax"

why not link the videos?

Get this: my parents didn't get cable until 2000. Growing up, I depended on Friday Night Videos and my friends.

Get this: I've never had cable.

At least a half-dozen of those got votes.

I like the screenshots better--whatever polls I've done, the fun I have creating the images are really the main reason. You can click on the link easily enough if you want to watch the video.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/video-37.jpg

37. “Human Behaviour,” Björk (1993)
58 points/7 votes
Director: Michel Gondry

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0mRIhK9seg

how many times do y'all think gondry will place on this poll

123

The answer to that question...amazed me.

I might have had some dim awareness before starting this that Björk was considered an important video artist. But because her music has never meant anything to me, the videos haven't either. Think I may have seen this one once--I vaguely remember the giant insects--the other two that placed, never.

i think i was avoiding putting gondry on my ballot bc i knew he'd be overrepresented here and then i belatedly realized he did the chemical brothers video i voted for ("star guitar")

"star guitar" is the greatest visual representation of how it feels like the landscape syncs up with the music in your headphones when you're staring out the window of a train

Never seen that Sparks video - otherwise not surprised by the first few results.

You mind bolding the text in the results entries, clemenza? Helps for those of us with images turned off, thanks

I can do that, yes--you mean the text right under the image, right?

https://phildellio.tripod.com/video-35b.jpg

35. “Just,” Radiohead (1995)
59 points/5 votes
Director: Jamie Thraves

www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIFLtNYI3Ls

https://phildellio.tripod.com/video-35a.jpg

35. “Money for Nothing,” Dire Straits (1985)
59 points/5 votes
Director: Steve Barron

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0

I prefer the G-rated laser-version "Relax" video just for the close-up of Paul Rutherford going "Ooh Yeah! Ooh Yeah!"

eww

First tie.

I was really surprised the Dire Straits video showed up. Again, no criticism of anyone who voted for it...I thought, if nothing else, the one line would have kept it out. I had an antipathy to it long before that became a story. I can't get past the song itself, and there was always something kind of, I don't know, self-serving about the concept for both the artist and MTV.

the computer graphics were the attraction to me as a kid, moreso than the song. didn't vote for it though. my version of voting for "money for nothing" was voting for "right now"

the one line would have kept it out

Yeah, how did they get away with "blister on your thumb"?!?

i mean, the video came out two years before i was born but it still looked kinda cool whenever i ended up seeing it (prob around '98, pop-up video?) xp

Unfortunately I can't remember how 'groundbreaking' the money for nothing video seemed to 12 year old me, but I threw it a vote, guess I forgot about the one line.

Typo correction: I have no evidence to suggest that it was officially sanctioned by the band.

Wow--I hardly ever get feedback that I don't initiate myself, crypto, so this is much appreciated.

Didn't know anything about Dark Academia, so that makes sense. Totally missed the Britney Spears connecion too. I'm almost angry about the Dylan video being pulled, because I don't understand: it was commissioned by him; it's great, and got all sorts of attention; taking it down from Dylan's site is one thing, but at least let someone repost it on YouTube. If you figure out anywhere to see it, let me know--I gave up.

It was real guesswork sometimes trying to figure out if a video was commissioned or user-uploaded; the GBV video is a good example. Nine times out of ten I would have assumed the Julie Ruin video was user-created, but seeing that it was uploaded onto the Julie Ruin page made that one easy.

Looking forward to more posting.

(I actually messaged CBS about putting the Dylan video back up--amazingly, they have not yet done anything.)

The channel surfing "Like A Rolling Stone" video? I think the problem there was running and maintaining the interactive software on the page hosting it--plus maybe some long-term licensing with trademarks or the participants.

I found the Dylan video here: https://video.bobdylan.com (via https://www.2pause.com/video/like-a-rolling-stone/ in case the former requires you to go through the latter)

Watched it twice, flipping through the "channels" each time. The second time through I was able to time it (not consciously) so that I landed on "watching all the pretty people" while on the Fashion channel" and "you better pawn it, babe" while on Pawn Stars. Will probably watch it at least three more times, the first to see the original video, and then straight through with The Price is Right and Bachelor's Roses (ha!). Officially one of the coolest things I've ever seen; now off to read what you have to say about it.

It glitched a few times both times I watched it, but only for a second each time.

Great! It looks like CBS has restored it (or fixed whatever technical issue caused it to spin unloaded endlessly a few weeks ago). My message and I are taking 100% credit for this.

(I know the issue wasn't mine--a friend encountered the same problem.)

I have to quote this corker of paragraph in full:

The net effect--of Dylan popping up at the last second, of everything that has preceded him--is overwhelming. The disconnect between what you might have envisioned for a video to accompany "Like a Rolling Stone"--different for everybody, an interactive cable-TV feed for nobody--and what you've seen is so vast, and so disorienting, you may not even be sure you've seen what you've seen. So you go back for another look, and then a third, and it's different every time, and it never ever changes. The song is bigger than the video, bigger than the form, bigger than the world; it subsumes everything in its path. What if the only language available to people were "Like a Rolling Stone"--what would that look like? What would that feel like? It would look and feel like this video. And it would be enough. Everything that needed to be said would still be said.

Thanks again. I was really happy with that, even if I do see the name MARCUS all through it...I've messaged three different people today about the video being back up (people I remember saying they'd never seen it).

Watched/read the New Wave block over my tea this morning. Pretty much a sweet spot for me--I don't think I had heard the Devo song until now, but I already knew and loved the other four. My favourite of the lot: "Life Begins at the Hop." I have some memory of having seen this video before, even though that doesn't make a whole lot of sense: I can't image any scenario in which MuchMusic would have played this in the 90s, around the time I first encountered the song on a Rhino DiY compilation, and it certainly wouldn't have been anywhere near MTV during my brief (late 90s--the Diddy/Backstreet years) access to the station. I suppose I might have looked up the video on YouTube any time during the site's existence, or followed a link from somewhere...who knows?

Anyway, I love the video for pretty much the same reasons you do. It's goofy, ironic/non-ironic fun. I plays, as I suppose it would have in 1979, like a band figuring out a format they barely understand and not worrying how fakey and clunky it might look--although the former quality is self-conscious and the latter actually not an issue: I've seen plenty of pop videos that undoubtedly cost more and looked worse. I love Colin Moulding lunging at the camera like a friendly parody of Johnny Rotten. I love the cardboard pink car, and guitar falling apart piece by piece. I love that Terry Chambers looks, era-appropriately, like Chris Makepeace's older brother.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoSfTe9cI-M

Russel Mulcahy looks to be one of the video auteurs of the era: hell, he did "Video Killed the Radio Star," along with "Bette Davis Eyes," and a number of Duran Duran's biggest videos in addition to "Life Begins at the Hop," and a few other XTC clips that I now want to look up. His subsequent Hollywood career looks like a bunch of hackwork (various entries in the Highlander and Resident Evil series, along with a bunch of justifiably forgotten 90s duds like Ricochet, The Real McCoy, and The Shadow). He also directed a handful of episodes of the North American Queer as Folk, a show I was curiously indifferent to at the time, though I remember one episode making rather effective use of Rufus Wainwright's "Poses" (the YouTube clip I found is too blurry for me to bother posting, alas).

I thought I had two Russell Mulcahy videos in the book, but I just looked at his credits and I guess not...My guess is that I saw XTC and Devo on The New Music, which launched in '79; it's possible they still got played occasionally when Much went on air a few years later. I love how XTC are already making fun of the conventions of something that hasn't really even been invented yet. Those two videos, plus the Undertones and the Presidents of the United States of America and Green Day, are partly there as a balance to all the moody, aspires-to-art stuff I'm susceptibe to.

I don't have anything to add to clem's appraisal, but the Claude Lelouch-directed video for Dionne Warwick's "Walk on By" is indeed very cool. Probably because I knew I was in the hands of a fellow Paulette, but the "Come-Dressed-As-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties" analogy occurred to me even before I read the chapter. Puzzlingly, though, the video itself seems to have vanished from YouTube in the two days since I watched it.

One weird, likely unintended(?) connection, the chapter that opens with Warwick follows a chapter on Warhol-inspired videos, which itself culminates in a discussion of a lovely pair of videos that R.E.M. did for their equally lovely late-period single "We All Go Back To Where We Belong" (new to me, and a most pleasant surprise; New Adventures in Hi-Fi was the last time the band mattered to me). The connection? The Bacharachian flourishes in the song itself--likely the only time R.E.M. could plausibly be labelled Bacharachian--which, if you are playing the videos in sequence (as I was), makes for a nice segue into "Walk on By."

clem writes, rather poignantly, on the video (R.E.M. shot two Screen Test-inspired clips for the song) featuring Warhol's ex Jon Giorono, but I most enjoyed watching Kirsten Dunst's clip. I've always liked Dunst, and she fills the role of the Warholian blonde nicely here. She appears to be listening and responding to the song for the first time here, looking pensive during the verses and smiling at the wistful romance of the chorus; did Warhol invent the reaction video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpwd1YLgDaM

Finished the book. I didn't stop to highlight a few other standout videos--Feist, Fiona Apple, Vic Mensa--for the same reason I didn't dwell on "The Emperor's New Clothes" upthread: I already knew and liked these ones. Of the three, I was gonna say that Mensa is the least popular, but searching the archives, I see that "Down on My Luck" was ILM's 10th favourite track of 2014 (I probably voted for it if I submitted a ballot that year), and at least one comment in the rollout makes reference to the clip ("clever video too," says gr8080).

Anyway, I will just reiterate that if you care about music videos--not necessarily these music videos; this is very much the kind of book that inspires you to play along, brainstorming your own list of faves--or just good writing on music and pop culture in general, you should head on over to Amazon, or preferably somewhere less Trump-placating (I had a gift card to use up), and buy this. Well done, clem!

The "Walk On By" clip can still be found here (scroll down):

https://lapoeleafrire.tumblr.com/post/115204854531/comment-dionne-warwick-sest-retrouvee-sur-le-toit

I posted it on Twitter last year before it was yanked from YouTube, but mistakenly thought it was directed by Jean-Christophe Averty, who was pretty much the king of 1960s French music videos.

Thanks so much, crypto, your post means a lot to me. (I've never included blurbs on a jacket before, but if I do another one, I'm going to ask you I can lift something from that.)

I didn't even know the R.E.M. song until I was writing that entry, much less the videos; they were slated to be in the book for "Man on the Moon" or "The Great Beyond" or "End of the World" (probably would have gone with "The Great Beyond"). I don't remember exactly, but I wouldn't doubt that YouTube's algorithm threw them up there when I was searching for screen tests. I think the screen tests are crucial to a certain kind of music video; I'd say they're almost as important to "Nothing Compares 2 U" as the Dreyer film.

Not sure how much commercial weight my name carries (actually, I think I am sure), but yes, feel free to cite me.

Don't worry, I have exactly the same problem.

did Warhol invent the reaction video?

Misinterpreted you there...I see you mean those YouTubes where they get young people to listen to Patti Smith or Jimi Hendrix or whoever for the first time. Yeah, I can see that in the Kirsten Dunst video. In the actual screen tests, though, I imagine the room was silent after Warhol vacated? I don't know.