Twiggy’s Jukebox.
First time I remember seeing a video was when Olivia Newton-John’s “Totally Hot” (1978) was shown at a movie theater during the pre-movie block of previews, safety warnings, and “Visit Our Snack Bar” promotions.
Trunk, Hardware Wars was a spoof of the original Star Wars. Ham Salad and his copilot the Wookie Monster (played by a Cookie Monster looking muppet that eats a danish off the side of Princess Laid-Up’s hair-do) and a mumbling Darth Nader that no one can understand.
As slortar mentioned, they re-released it recently on DVD. Haven’t seen it yet m’self, but it’s on my list.
I recall the short you mentioned, with the film attacking a projectionist in his booth, but I can’t remember the name of it. In fact, there were quite a few decent shorts I haven’t seen since the days of Short ‘N’ Specials that I’d like to track down again.
And closer to on-topic:
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a vintage “Soundies” machine, but I’ve seen one or two modern video-jukeboxes in bars within the last ten years or so. Decent sized screen, possibly a 19" CRT. Ran on a laser-disc, I b’lieve.
Regarding those shorts, who remembers “FishHeads”?!
“Fish heads, fish heads
Jolly olly fish heads
Fish heads, fish heads
Eat 'em up, yum!”
Sung over a montage of real, stop-motion singing fish heads. Kinda put the “Ick” in ichtheology!
What crap… no offence there to you personally Krokodil… I understand you’re just repeating some stuff that you read somewhere, but man… that is just so much self serving crap on the part of SNL or whoever wrote that.
Here’s a few hints which blow the claim out of the water…
Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen in 1975.
I’m not in Love by 10CC in 1974.
Get it On by T-Rex in 1973.
All of those songs had fully self-contained 4 minute (or therebaouts) cinematic promotional vehicles - and the effort by Queen literally reinvented the concept in one fell swoop. But I will concede that old George was indeed hanging out a lot with his buddy Eric Idle at the time of Crackerbox Palace - hence the Pythonesque influence, and his later production credits on “The Life of Brian”.
Look, what it comes down to is this… if you’re not an American, the concept of MTV is a bizarre one. The instant reaction is “What’s the big deal? Film clips have been in Music TV programs since the 1960’s… why did you American’s feel the need to create a permanent 24 x 7 dedicated cable channel for stupid old film clips?”
And you see… that’s what they were known as long before they became known as “music videos”. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, they were simply known as “film clips” and there were TV shows throughout the world which acted like weekly compendiums of “everything which happend in the music world in the last week” by showing new film clips.
Indeed, down here in Australia, we had a weekly program held for one hour on a Sunday night which was like a national religious experience. It was called “Countdown”, and honestly, if your film clip was shown on that show - even just once - your sales went through the roof. All through the 1970’s, the biggest names in music (you name 'em, absolutely everyone in the game) were lining up to be a guest presenter on Countdown and they’d just talk about other people’s film clips.
Yeah, I gotta say this… sometimes I hear people talk about MTV as though they invented the concept of music videos, but the reality is that in the first year of screening, over 85% of all videos screened on MTV were English and Australian - because they were two countries which had the system down pat.
Speaking of which… anyone here remember the original film clips for “Roxanne” by The Police, and “Wuthering Heights” by Kate Bush? Great stuff…
Or what about “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” by Joe Jackson? Now THAT was a great film clip. Or the original film clip to “Heroes” by David Bowie. Yeah… I saw them all… when they came out, in real time. My American friends here on the SDMB lost out on so much great music as a result.
And now look at what has become of music film clips? A real shame… although, to be fair, my beloved Dave Grohl from Foo Fighters makes some beauties.
A memorable " film clip " from the 60’s is *House of the Rising Sun * by the Animals which was shot in a rather lurid colour scheme. This appears now and then on VH1.
They are available on The Beatles Anthology. Remember the 5 hour TV event in 1995, well it was released in 1996 as a 10 hour video or laserdisc (remember them) compilation. I believe that the missing material on TV included some of the “short promotional films”. For some reason they did not make a big deal of the fact that it contained stuff missed on TV (at least in my recollection). The whole lot was released on DVD last year - but with even more bonus material.
Here is an outline of the contents of the laserdisc. The DVD is currently available new for $60 at Amazon and Netflix have it (free trial maybe??)
I think that everyone knows that MTV’s claim to fame is only the continuous showing of music videos without any other programs. Even the OP mentions 1970s videos that would predate MTV.
But you are right about where they aired here. In fact you are a few years down the track with your choices. In it’s first year Countdown had things like John Denver - Annie’s Song, Paul Anka - You’re Having My Baby, Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, David Bowie - Space Oddity, David Bowie - Jean Jeanie, Stevie Wonder - Living For The City, The Sweet - Ballroom Blitz, Deep Purple - Black Night all on video. Well kind of - they were all transfers to video. I believe that the first clip shot on video was Bohemian Rhapsody.
Even before Countdown ABC had a 5 minute show every week night called GTK (which I think stood for getting to know). I think it had film clips. I best remeber it for making me uncool. At the time that no teenage Stones fan liked Johnny Farnham, I saw him several nights in a row doing old rock standards…and he was fantastic. I was only proved right when he was reborn with Whispering Jack 20 odd years later.
(Slight highjack)
That song was written and performed by the musical duo, Barnes and Barnes. One half of that group is the actor, Bill Mumy of Lost in Space fame.
Back in the late 60s/early 70s a local Atlanta station that later became WTBS (Ted Turner’s superstation) showed hours of music videos at a time. The production values were very low on some of them, just presenting shots of dancers gyrating to the music in some cases. (In fact, I’m a friend of the dancer who gyrated in the video for Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky”).
It was definitely a venue, but cheap … man, was it cheap.
This is why I hedged my earlier claim with “According to some technical definition…” Yeah, TV and Rock ‘n’ Roll developed simultaneously, and you can take any concert clip or Ed Sullivan Show appearance or Sonny & Cher cartoon and call it a music video. But George Harrison and Michael Nesmith developed a sort of visual narrative technique that was missing in the examples you cite, which forms the core of most of what appeared on MTV from 1981-onward. “Bohemian Rhapsody”'s lyrics told a very specific story, but the visuals in their film clip really didn’t. Manfred Mann’s “Blinded by the Light” had lots of trippy, nod-to-the-Beatles visual imagery, but it likewise didn’t tell a story that had anything to do with the lyrics. That’s the difference, and that’s why it’s a big deal.
Lots of people played around with elements of what would become the familiar “music video” format a lot earlier, but the elements didn’t all come together until around 1977.
See The Who’s Tommy (1975).
Yes, absolutely. It was a little long for a music video, but was definitely one of the innovative forebears of the form.
What are the defining elements of a music video? I would say that some of the elements are that:
–A music video depicts (advertises?) a single song.
–It should visually complement the song in a way that tells (or enhances) the same story as is told by the song.
–It should feature, or be made with the creative participation of, the artist(s) whose song is featured.
–It should be between about four and fifteen minutes in length.
What else?
But a lot of music videos are not of this type, the “story” video. I would guess between a third and a half of the videos that appear on MTV and VH1 are not story videos.
France had extremely popular video jukeboxes called Scopitones in the early and mid-1960s. Alongside film clips of French singers you could see clips of many American artists such as Bobby Vee, Nancy Sinatra, the Exciters (“Tell Him”) and so on. They were colorful & often kooky, taking the same basic form of an MTV video, albeit a low-budget one. There is a movie from the late 1990s called Scopitone a Go Go that strings a bunch of these clips together.
Someone alluded to this before, but let’s not forget American jazz/R&B artists who made film clips for jukeboxes or cinemas back in the 1930s & 1940s, among whom I think were Fats Waller, Louis Jordan & Cab Calloway.
Perhaps this is all far afield from the OP, but just the same let’s not give MTV credit for anything at all. They don’t really deserve it.
The following is from the SickthingsUK Alice Cooper website…
http://www.alicecoopertrivia.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/menu/index.htm
>> Here’s my take on the whole video history thing. I might have to take a little credit for the bit of attention that the “Elected” video has gotten because I always tried to make a very big deal out of making sure this was always mentioned in all of Alice’s biographical material. Music Videos (or promo clips as us old timers referred to them before the advent of MTV) have been around before rock n roll even reared its ugly head. Most, if not all of these “videos” were of the artist performing a song–maybe with a backdrop if they got fancy. In the 60’s, The Beatles and a few other bands made some videos that were a bit more like the we know of today. They were made specifically as promotional vehicles for the current single. The ‘Strawberry Fields’ video was very psychedelic and showed the Beatles running around in a park -frontwards and backwards. There were others by the Who and the Stones, etc. as well.
>> The thing that stands out about the ‘Elected’ video is that there was no performance or lip-synching which was very unusual. It also was possibly the first video that had a storyline. And, the most subtle yet significant thing, was the editing. The editing was done in a quick, choppy fashion which ultimately came to be what MTV was most cited for. After people noticed MTV was a force to be reckoned with, commercials and TV shows (Miami Vice) started to pattern themselves to look like MTV with this editing style.
(Renfield, September 1995) <<
(Renfield is Alice’s long-time personal assistant - Brian Nelson.)
On a side note, everyone knows what the first video played on MTV was, right?
Anyhoo…
Ok, just had to ressurect the thread to add this. It’s kinda got hijacked as an Alice Cooper thread, hasn’t it?
So, last night we were on our way through the channels to the news and what shows up on MuchMore “The Story Of…”? Yep!, 'Ol Alice!
Well, rats, right? It’s like the last five minutes. So, today I’m checking the scheduale and I notice “The Best Of…” is on at 11:00 AM. Hey, I wonder…
zoogirl spent a very happy hour!!! 