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

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.

Believe me, I'm someone who more often than not pushes back against the idea that "you can't like this because of one line." Here, I don't have to even grapple with that because I dislike the song and video above and beyond the line.

video looks a billion times better than the metaverse

I posted a few months ago about playing the "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me" video for a grade 6 class (Boy George's birthday) and suddenly having to shut it off because of blackface--I had zero recollection of that, and don't ever remember it being a story.

Y'all could've just voted for this instead and not had to deal with any such conflict

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WPzFnZkZmI

"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

This. I'd been thinking about how great it would be to do a music video like this for years leading up to it, and when "Star Guitar" came out I thought it had basically been made for me. Easy vote.

why not link the videos?

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.

..........but you are not linking the videos!!!! that is what I asked

so, wait, did y'all vote for videos despite your feelings for the song?

I didn't.

Cool video + shit song = no vote

34. “Enjoy the Silence,” Depeche Mode (1990)
61 points/6 votes
Director: Anton Corbijn

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGSKrC7dGcY

oops

https://phildellio.tripod.com/video-34.jpg

34. “Enjoy the Silence,” Depeche Mode (1990)
61 points/6 votes
Director: Anton Corbijn

www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGSKrC7dGcY

I already liked most of the songs whose videos I voted for, and then a couple were songs I discovered/came to like through the videos.

that link doesn't work because of the weird hyphen at the end, so here's the real link:

brad's all-time top 100 favorite music videos ever

Good selecting. I'm happy anyone else has seen and loves "Y Control."

nice brad! lots of crossover with my favs

Totally forgot something I'm almost certain I would have voted for: Paul Simon's "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard." I think it was made a couple of years after Graceland; it starts with Big Daddy Kane and Biz Markie. When Mickey Mantle shows up, it's as sublime a moment as Paul McCartney in "They Don't Know"--obviously Paul Simon's dream as a kid, to be pitching to Mickey Mantle, and suddenly there he is. Near the end, another sports icon.

I didn't vote in the Broadcast poll, because I really only remember (and love) "Echo's Answer," but I wish I'd known about this for the video poll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yEz1eZmUco

AV Club predictably making some eye rolling choices. https://www.avclub.com/50-greatest-music-videos-ranked-1850820669/slides/52

Very quickly scanning, but yeah. If you could generate a Masterpiece Theatre equivalent of a greatest-videos list, this would be it. (Which is not to imply that most of the famous ones here are boring but good--they're boring and bad.)