Some fashion choices you know you will regret one day. For instance, that huge, black jumper I used to wear in my teens (much like Robert Smith from The Cure) I am happy to never mention again. Some things never go out of style though, do they? I mean white shirt, neat pressed trousers and a nice, short, tidy haircut - what could ever be embarrassing about that. Let Midge Ure show us. Yes, it is September 1985 and Midge is at #1 with ‘If I Was’ a pleasant enough little ditty, featuring Mark King of Level 42 fame on bass.
Perhaps it is a bit unfair to pick on his clothes, with the exception of his trench coat of course, because really it is a combination of his sign language and dancing that fill me with glee and make me cringe in equal amounts. Take the transition at 1:02 for instance, as his rifle shooting mime for ’soldier’ morphs into some of the most truly abysmal dancing ever performed by a pop star for public consumption. You wouldn’t get away with that on X-Factor these days, let me tell you.
This is topped wonderfully at around 2:06 where he mimes ‘poet’ then dances a truly spine chilling dance to illustrate him being a lover. *shudder*
I have not even mentioned the main theme of the video yet, which seems to be “Wow - these pin art things are new and exctiting, lets make an entire video besed around them!” I mock, but I remember being amazed by them and lusting after them. In my defence, I was only 11.
So sit back and enjoy If I Was by Midge Ure, complete with his weird looking guitar that looks a bit like an unpainted airfix kit.
I have decided to set myself a small challenge. It’s not really all that challenging, but just an attempt to make me post things on my blog again. The challenge is simple and thus: find ten music videos I love on You Tube and tell everyone why I love them.
Number 10 on this list - “Good Morning Judge” by 10cc.
By rights, a list of awesome videos should probably feature the two chaps who left 10cc, rather than the two who remained. After all, Godley and Creme went on to have a pretty successful video directing career in the 80s - with the clip for their own single “Cry” being a video that particularly stuck in my mind at the time. However, it was the duo of Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart who persevered with 10cc and produced a video so fantastic in it’s naffness that I can’t help but love it.
It really does have that feel of the early days of music video. Production values seem pretty poor (at least by today’s standards) and in the days before pop musicians had to be pretty, there is a sense that nobody is particularly comfortable miming for the camera.
the video is mostly uninspired, literal footage of the crimes mentioned in the song and the court proceedings that follow. The highlight of the video for me however, the bit that cracks me up every time, is the duelling guitar solo where the court furniture is removed to reveal the accused and the judge were concealing guitars all along. Genius. Also worth a mention is the fantastic use of bluescreen and costumes to make an entire jury out of the two band members.
Other bits deserve a brief acknowledgement are:
0:34 Erect nipples on the only female cast member. A deliberate misogynistic artistic choice, or the result of a cold day of filming and lack of suitable clothing?
0:57 Eric Stewart, as a grey bearded jury member, is the spitting image of Charlie Higson.
1:41 Some excellent gavel playing, in time to the music.
Embedding has been disabled on this video, but as an added bonus, it does feature a Jimmy Saville introduction in which he is touching a young lady. Touching her in a way which can only be described as ‘a bit rapey’
caused by the productivity cancer that is Facebook, I raked out an old CD. It is a compilation of bands from Central Scotland who recorded at Black Market Studios in Larbert, in the early 90s.
The quality of music on offer is… well, I will let you judge for yourself. Each to their own and that.
The album is a rather hefty 85MB zip file, which you can get by clicking here. I don’t anticipate a huge number of downloads, but if the file suddenly disappears, you know my bandwidth was being raped a bit too much.
If any of the artists on the album happen to stumble on this and would rather I did not have their music on my site to download, please get in touch and I’ll remove it quick-smart like.
Since they built the Skye Bridge, that song has lost some of it’s romanticism. I have to say though, that Skye is a lovely place - at least the little bit of it I saw. This despite the weather which ranged from light rain, through heavy rain to hailstones and snow.
It is also despite a couple of locals who were bizarre to say the least. In particular one chap who seemed to be having acid flashbacks every ten minutes. He was rather friendly, seemed to be telling me how much he enjoyed our band, then started mumbling something about 2002 and how he is going to smash somebody’s head in. I declined his offer of a game of pool.
It was pretty much worth the entire weekend just for the journey though. What a beautiful drive. If only the weather had been a bit nicer and I had more time to stop and take pictures. As it is, have this photo of Eilean Donan Castle, just down the coast on the mainland.
An eventful weekend in Inverness last month resulted in the following:
A horrendous drive in the snow, passing other vans which were lying in ditches next to the road
Our foldback amplifier clicking, popping, cutting out and finally dying
Our mixer passing out and breaking beyond all reasonable means of repair
After the bar staff made a couple of phone calls, we eventually sourced another PA with which to finish the gig. It just so happened to belong to a band whose guitarist hails from Falkirk originally and used to play in a band with me. What a small world it is.
The reason I am babbling on about this now, is that I finally replaced the mixer today with a shiny new one. I am sure for the professional audio experts out there, it’s not the kind of high quality, highly expensive equipment they would recommend, but we were paying for it ourselves and I am sure it will do the job fine.
I thought I would start this post in the style of a letter to “Points of View”. It’s relevant too, because I have a complaint about television.
It’s not against a show however, but commercials. More specifically, the commercials done in a “Vox Pops” style, but which are rather obviously scripted and played by actors. Clearly not very good actors, as more talented thespians may have convinced me it was all genuine. Also, I’m sure one of them turned up as a prostitute on “The Bill” a couple of weeks ago.
I don’t know why is annoys me so much, it’s not like I believe there’s any great truth to other adverts. Maybe it’s because I don’t care what random idiots on the street think in the first place, therefore why would anyone think actors pretending to be random idiots on the street would convince me to buy something.
I say less fake vox pops and more commercials doing stuff with bits of cars. I like those.
I recently bought a Macbook Pro. For those unaware of Apple’s current laptop computers, the power cord connects to the machine via a magnetic system - just like the guitar lead I bought a while back.
I have to thank whoever thought of doing it. I have now caught my foot on the power cable on at least three separate occasions, all of which would have been very expensive if the plug had been more difficult to pull out.
Hooray for people who invent technology that allows spack-handed idiots like me to function in normal life.
