Music Videos - discuss... generally :-)

[AndyR]

This is something that's bugged me since the "music video" first appeared. And I'm wondering whether there's anybody else who feels the same way I do.

I "get" music videos, I see what they do, they are a superb marketing tool, etc. I've even been known to like some music videos the first time I saw them.

When people started creating music videos in the mid-late 70s (this was when I was just about to step into the "I wanna be a rock-star" arena), I was completely horrifed. I can see why they happened - if you want air-play on a medium that is about moving pictures (without showing up to perform every time), then you have to make a film that is identified with the song. 

I didn't mind the glorified "performance" videos (eg the early Queen ones) - I liked to see what the band looked like when it did it's thing. I loved seeing the film of Dean Freidman and wotsername doing Lucky Stars while it was a hit. I like performance videos.

But music videos, originally marketing tools, I guess, now a valid art-form in their own right, short films that interprete or add to the music, they leave me cold.

Ultravox's Vienna video absolutely horrified me when it came out. It's good, VERY good, but after one viewing I found it a bit boring. And worse than that: I didn't understand this at the time, but I never got a chance to hear that song for the first time, on it's own, without the visuals - I will never know what pictures it could have painted in my head... what a WASTE of a piece of music!!!! .

Added to that, would Vienna have been a hit without that video? Was it a strong enough song in that climate? At the time I thought not. Now, I'd like to think it was... but is that because of what I think of the song years down the line (sound and vision)?

When this was happening (remember I was wanting to make a living out of music at this stage), I could see that, suddenly, to be successful as a musician/songwriter one was going to have to regard "video" as being at least as important (if not more so, from the media and marketing point-of-view) as the music itself. There was even the odd "Oh what a boring video so-and-so have put out, it's just the band performing..." at the time. The type of moving images I actually liked was getting generally dissed as boring!!

This all made me quite sad and p1ssed off... I wanted to make music, not films. I wanted to get famous as a performer. And suddenly it seemed, in order to be successful, I was going to have to waste effort in creating some ancilliary art that I had no interest in nor commitment to.

I write songs and sing, and I used to be a good ole skinny/sweaty rock and roll front-man. Music is what grabs and inspires me. Music is something that I listen to or go and watch someone perform. Sequences of images as an integral part of a piece of music have never grabbed me...

I have an admission to make: I know a quite a few of you are very interested in this side of music, and I suspect that number is growing at the moment, but I very rarely watch any videos that you folks post - I reason that that's cool, because the folks who want to see it will.

When I do occasionally follow a video link or press play, I find myself wondering "why?". I also find it often distracts from the music, it puts images in my mind that take up the space that the music should have been painting in. And those images (from videos) are not erasable - once they're in your head, they're in your head. The images that music (and novels, and poetry) generates are a lot more organic and variable. Songs are never really finished until they arrive in the listener's head - it's the listener that completes the song, not the songwriter or performer. What Ultravox did, when they released the video for Vienna (and the TV plastered it into our living rooms), was destroy the song's ability to create images - for ALL time (for those of us who watched the video).


What brought this up recently was me and the missus watching a few episodes of TOTP2 the other week. At first it was just seeing some performers who had big UK hits in the mid 70s who just wouldn't have got a look in a few years later. In fact, I suspect their careers were truncated because we all got into visuals with our music. These individuals were not attractive looking, and they looked really boring while singing. But the songs and the singing were... fabulous.

And then, there was some modern song included at the end, with its video. As far as I was concerned it was utter trash and nonsense... until I had to go to the other end of the room (behind the TV). I stopped and went "hey! this is really good!". My wife went "you're kidding me". I said "shut your eyes". She did, and went "wow, it is...". THAT is the power that concrete images have over music... and I'm afraid I don't like it.

Funnily enough, Buggles and Video Killed The Radio Star was on one of these TOTP2 episodes. I hated the song at the time, but I think it's quite good now. But, wow, what perceptive folks they were. I guess I wanted to be a radio star, and the media and public taste (and punk!! don't get me started...) killed it all off before I could get going... poor me

Don't get me wrong - I can see why pictures with music does grab nearly everyone else. And I find some videos very clever, moving, meaningful, worthwhile, etc. Like I said, I regard it as a valid art-form in its own right, just not one that interests me. And we do have some very talented dudes on here in this medium - please don't think I'm knocking you, keep doing it, it's all creativity and therefore a good thing. But unless they're just images of the performer performing the thing (which I like for different reasons, and which don't seem to affect the song) I'd personally rather not have the pictures mixed with the music.

The thing is though, now, even in this wonderful internet world of making your own music and sticking it on the web, it's begining to feel like it suddenly felt in the late 70s - there's a danger that if you don't do pictures as well, your music won't get listened to as much...


So, that's my lament for today. I'm expecting most folks to think "what are you talking about? mixing music and pictures is powerful stuff...". But I am wondering if there's anyone else feels the same way as I do?...


(Btw, I am an artist in my other spare time - I paint and draw, but I've never had any interest in photography, moving pictures, collage, or mixed media stuff.)

[Oldrottenhead]

i get where your coming from andy and i too like to have an image in my head when i hear a song, but there are a couple of videos that come to mind where the video made as much impact (to me anyway) as the music did. i remember vividly seeing the devo video for jocko homo being shown on the old grey whiste test and i think they had to repeat it the following week. also being introduced to the residents by the same show when the ogwt put on the third reich and roll video by the resdents. you should check out the residents videos. oh and not forgetting barnes and barnes.

[AndyR]

I remember the Devo one (in fact I saw it the other week). At the time - you guessed it - I hated it! But seeing it last week, it was brilliant.

That one is (I think) a good example of them embracing the whole thing - music and video. I'd still find it difficult to get much out of the song alone (although it is part of the soundtrack to my late teens, so it has a familiarity plus there), but with the video, I thought it was utter genius when I watched it last week. Years ago, it was and "whoosh" (straight over the top of my head - they missed me entirely, I was too busy singing in a choir and learning pentatonic scales and 60s Bee Gees songs at the time ).

No, there's plenty of folks that make a very good go of this video lark. And I guess all of us (even me) appreciate what they create. I suppose the gist of my lament is "what about us folks that just want to do music, what do we do when everyone seems to expect the "good stuff" to have pictures as well?" ... that and wondering whether anyone else feels or has felt the same.

[launched]

I like performance videos as well, but I don't prefer to view them until after I've heard the song a few times. Similarly, it's also no fun to go to a concert if the headlining album isn't scoured first!

Now I'm off to watch old live Go' Go's videos because Belinda Carlisle was hot!

So I'm with ya!

[Greeny]

I'm very fond of certain videos - especially when the artist / director is trying to create a piece of 'art' rather than a shameless marketing excercise. Kate Bush is a good example of someone whose visual performances were an important part of the experience (although her music would have stood up well enough on it's own...). There's an awful lot of crap that has been made over the years though, and some of it on huge budgets (the Michael / Janet Jackson spiky rubber one springs to mind).

There's plenty of great music without videos, and there's plenty of rotten music that has a pretty good video. And everything in between.

It's probably a strange set of circumstances (beyond the quality of the song) that lead to a great music video: the budget the record company are willing to invest in that artist; the quality of the director; the creative idea; the performance capability of the band. And so on.

We're in a different era now. The music is absolutely secondary to how the artist looks on video, stage and in magazines. Stars are chosen totally for their 'marketability' and the quick buck. Sickening.

And you're right - TOTP2 is full of ugly, aging freaks (like me, lol) who would never make it now, regardless of how talented they are.

[Hilary]

Everyone has the right to express themselves how they see fit, whether audio/video/books/art etc etc. It's up to the discerning listener/viewer to chose whether to participate in the experience.

In a perfect world only the truly talented would be successful but sometimes life's a bitch ain't it.

[Burtog]

Now I'm off to watch old live Go' Go's videos because Belinda Carlisle was hot!

That would have been a great idea for the Gurlfest,..................................missed opportunity!!

[FuzzFace]

Kid:  I like this song.
Parent:  What's it about?
Kid:  I don't know, I haven't seen the video yet.

[Mojo1961]

Andy thanks for bringing up this topic. The day the music died....August 01, 1981. Well maybe put into a painful decline anyhow. MTV went to air that day, forever changing how we interpret the stuff that hits our ears.

Like Andy said in the original, the videos I liked ( the performance ones as I love live music) were called boring, lame, whatever. Within a few years, they only became marketing devices to promote corporations' agendas of what YOU WILL listen to. Pretty much Orwellian 1984 capitalism. Repetition of the same few artists guarantees that a dumbed down consumer will spend their money for the lastest promoted artist. Not to say this didn't happen before video, but it's near impossible to go anywhere without tv's and touchscreens and iPods not brodcasting this shit. Go to a restaurant or pub, there are TV's, sports on some and videos on the others blasting out a vast wasteland of consumerism, promoting brand above substance. (Note commercial radio's no better) So this brings up a couple questions.

So, do videos amount to an art form?  Of course they could, but THERE is NO WAY that artists on big labels, ie Warner, Sony Etc. are NOTHING BUT shameless media whores, good for them, maybe, but it's been a detriment to the progress of music. Haylie is correct. Everyone can express themselves in any art form, however it's the big companies decide what will be video'd. It's not really any individual's choice, and that becomes the problem. Life might be a bitch, but we shouldn't have to be MTV's bitch. How many potential stars were blocked out of their 15 minutes of fame. There's even irony in it. Let's look at Aerosmith, famous rock stars by mid 70's before videos. Fronted by Steve Tyler, now a judge on a talent show, where 99% of the contestants are camera friendly. Now what if they hadn't rose to fame before videos, now I'm no Brad Pitt, but seriously Tyler's got a face like a can of worms that fell down an ugly tree, hitting every branch twice on the way down.From a video point of view, that's bad, REALLY bad, really ugly dude. Damn good voice and all, but if they started up in 2000 instead of 1972 THEY would NOT have enjoyed the level of success they have acheived. I highly doubt it. Luckily GOOD music always exists, and today thanks to the internet we can access it,for now. Unfortunately our psuedo-capitalistic MASTERS are trying their best to change that, (google Artists.MTV - with a skeptical point of view) you didn't think YOU can promote yourself did you? Of course they want a piece of THEIR pie.  

And is it a spin-off of music? Yeah, in a similiar way soundtracks are in film, I guess, but by nature our most important sense is vision, music seems secondary to what we see and Andy's description of going behind the screen and hearing it is right on the money. To me videos are mostly a hugely unimportant spin-off, to others they claim accolades and even awards for the f'ing tripe. I'm not saying there isn't a visual component to music, going to a concert, festival, open mic, or pub to see a band or musician - but here's the difference - you are a PART of that, as we are social animals, but a video ISOLATES you from the performance, so there's no social feedback. I mean if a group of you and your friends see a band on stage, and one of your chums points out something about that band either good or bad you hadn't noticed you are better able to make that judgement. AS there is NO feedback watching a video, you can't really judge it, that's probably why repetition is such a good marketing tool. Now just watch the damn commercial.

Notice I really haven't put any genre in the crosshairs here, They aren't all guitless here - it's all about SELLING, not art - no different than radio DJ's taking bribe money in the 50's. Pop and country, now written by geniuses on par with Barney the Dinosaur or a really stupid Dr Suess (the real one is brilliant!) seem to be the biggest culprits but I'm  pretty shure SONY hasn't put out any classical videos out there, and I've never seen a commercially produced promotional jazz video... no market. And that's the way SONY wants it... you have been assimilated and didn't even know it. The Buggles were right. Lets hope George Orwell isn't. This said I do like to watch Youtube vids of live performances. Guilty. Should I care - I'm never going to be a rock star anyway.

PS. Try muting a video, and play a MP3 (even a Songcrafter one!) to it...sometimes pretty funny, sometimes creepy. Sometimes the result is the same as the original, which is the strangest. Sometimes it's like a modern pop star concert, really bad lip-syncing. Too much time on my hands.


Martin

[AndyR]

I'm glad I posted now - I wasn't too sure whether I was just being a grumpy old man! (still might be, but I'm not alone )

I very much agree big time with Haylie - my "manifesto" or what ever is this: all creativity is good, none of it is cr@p, ever, it's just that you might not like or even appreciate some of it at this moment in time...

(I kind of find it hard to understand how anyone creative could possibly talk any different - if I were to say so-and-so music is cr@p because I don't like it, to me it would amount to saying my own music is also cr@p... because a lot of folks won't like mine!! But all through my life I've heard talented musicians talk like that)

And yeah, most of the time, my attitude when folks complain is "life's a bitch, ain't it" (in fact, that was my private and unspoken attitude to my peers who were into punk when they were protesting there was no future etc). But, sometimes... it is nice to be able to go "OK, I see where this is going, but I would like to point out that I don't really want it to go there..."

Martin - fab post! Sounds like you've got it worse than me at the moment, I feel loads better now!