Worst music video, in terms of production values?

"Loverboy" by Billy Ocean is appalling and "Good thing going" by Sid Owen always has me in fits of giggles but the worst music video by any criteria I can think of has to be "I will survive" by Gloria Gaynor.

Kris.

They definitely have the 80s local access TV look down.

The same can be said about the early Wax Trax! videos... Cheeeeezy videos by A Split Second, The Weathermen, Neon Judgement, etc. but low budget, hilarious, and brilliant videos by Meat Beat Manifesto, Greater Than One, and Fini Tribe...

I agree that the JPS and Tall Dwarfs videos rool.

Then there's "Addicted to Love" by Ciccone Youth, both the song *and* video of which were recorded at one of those cheesy "Make your own music video" stands. I think I remember Thurston Moore commenting that it and the "Teenage Riot" videos cost about $20 to make, total.

I am very fond of the video for Dogbowl's "Revolution of the Homeless," made from a childhood homemade Super-8 gore movie. Mostly, it's lots of little kids stabbing and shooting each other with marvelously fake blood. The scratch-directly-on-the-film special effect to simulate the firing of machine guns is endearing.

I can't help but feel a small amount of shame when watching "Eat Y'Self Fitter" by the Fall.

Also try and see Black Flag's "Slip It In" video if you can. Terribly cheap video (the classroom full of students doing "You...slip...it...in" is way out of synch). I saw it a few months ago and wondered why they even bothered.

Every Replacements video. One featured 3 minutes of the camera focusing on the back of someone's head (Paul Westerberg?) as he watched television. Ooh, how arty.

I think yr thinking of the video for "Bastards of Young" (and the exact same footage was used for two more videos from that album). Someone puts on a record, sits down to listen to it, it starts skipping at the end, guy puts foot through stereo. It makes sense in the context of "Bastards of Young" (which "skips" at the end), and it represents the pre-MTV way to watch music. How's that overly arty?

"DAVID! WHERE ARE MY CIGARETTES?"

by Negativland?

All those early SST videos are brilliant... except maybe for "Family Man". Extra kudos to "Slip It In", "TV Party", and the Minutemen videos.

Back in the late 80s, it was actually possible for independent labels to help budget a funny little video for their bands and get a good chance at some airplay on MTV's "120 Minutes"... I remember seeing a friend's video collection of said stuff, like the Fall's "There's A Ghost In My House" and something Homestead-era from Big Dipper.

but anyway here in nz a video show host introduces video as "as ghetto as you can get" and it's "The Message" (GMF&tFF) straight from the Bronx which communicates trash and deprivation and the basics better than the song alone

BEST: iggy pop partying in nz in 197x or 198b (?) singing "i'm bored" to a party of "cut above the rest" b-grade nz-tv-celebs wearing velvet bow ties too much permed hair etc. and they're all slumming it, having a quiet laugh at freaky iggy jumping around in the middle of their cocktail session rapping about y'know he's the chairman of the bored etc and he gets too close to this "rich bitch" gets in her face and she slaps him and he lungs back at her naked from the waste and he's getting hmmm a bit wild for their little party and they look more uncomfortable and shun the accompanying tv camera and it's all a little out of hand and hey _real_tv_

recent youthful tv presenters still play the clip here in nz to get back at those late '70s wankers who now run the tv stations and are even more overblown celebs than ever -- they showed it back then and they've shown it recently -- ok you have to know of these small-pond big-time bores to hate them but it really is the greatest rock'n'roll thing totally non-choreographed and really weird how they let it out of the can in the first place, and once again _real_tv_

But then again, I am anti-minimalism in ANY artform. I am a maximalist.

Blimey.

this is pretty narrow minded (shocker)

What's wrong with that GA video? I quite like it.

and something I saw once or twice in 1982 and then never again called "Questionnaire"

and the Village People's legendary "Sex Over the Phone."

I like that 80s local access look. It's what I was hoping cable TV would become, but didn't. Sort of like the ancient Greek idea of "Polis" or "Poleis," e.g., small city-states that afforded everyone -- not just a privileged few -- a voice in the political/social arena. Instead, cable became more commercialized and professionalized. But blogs and message boards sort of fill that need these days, I suppose.

That's right - an entire video where the camera never moves.

The New Zealand band Goodshirt did this for the videos off their first album: 'Good', 'Sophie' and 'Blowing Dirt'. Shihad also did this for 'Home Again'.