Our cable company has “VH1 Classic Videos”, so I’ve been seeing and hearing some old-school songs. They don’t show as much stuff from the mid-80s heyday (the one I saw when they were new) as I’d like, but it’s entertaining anyway.
Many of the “videos” are clips of groups performing their songs on shows like “Bandstand”, “Ready Steady Go”, and like that. Some are just old news clips strung together. But a few from the sixties and seventies are actual “films” (the term “video” not having been coined yet). They have shots of the group performing intercut with shots of them, or other people, presumably acting out the song’s theme.
So my question is, where were these films seen back then? I know the Monkees’ videos were produced for their show, but where would people have seen Manfred Mann’s “Mighty Quinn” or George Harrison’s “Crackerbox Palace”? Were they to be broadcast on the variety shows as something a cut above a straight-up performance? Or shown at the movies before the main feature? Maybe projected at clubs or coffeehouses?
Well, on the Beatles Anthology they have the videos for “Paperback Writer”, “Rain”, “Strawberry Fields Forever”, and “Penny Lane”. The “videos” shown for “Day Tripper” and “We can Work it out” aren’t videos in the same sense that the first four are.
Anyway, the point of the videos were basically the same as today. The Beatles were too busy to go to every single show (Ed Sullivan, Bandstand, etc etc) to promote their new songs. So instead they made these short “promo videos” and sent them to the shows, where they were played.
Back in the 70s I remember watching a show on Saturday mornings called “America’s Top Ten” with Casey Kasem. They showed videos for the songs that had them.
When I was at geek camp in Colorado, we found some videos on a late-night TV show. We loved to watch them. I can recall seeing Jack & Diane, Kids in America, and some really, really low budget ones involving a weird snake man and another where the refrain was “Two Triple Cheese, Side Order of Fries!”
“Crackerbox Palace” was shown on Saturday Night Live, I think. I could be wrong, though - it’s happened once before.
And in the late 70’s and early 80’s, HBO used to show lots of videos in between movies on their “Video Jukebox”. If a movie ended, say, 12 minutes before the hour, they’d fill the time with a music video. The earliest I recall was “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, artist unknown. I think they also showed “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles about the same time.
As for the OP, I recall seeing once on a documentary about a “film jukebox” that somebody had invented in the early 1960s. The idea was that this jukebox had a screen on it, but worked like a regular jukebox: you’d insert a coin, select a song, and short film of the performer singing would appear on the screen.
The documentary further went on to say that only a few of those jukebox-films existed, because the “film jukebox” was not popular and only a few such jukeboxes were made. Still, the documentary was able to show Neil Sedaka’s “Calendar Girl” film that was made for the jukebox. It was pretty bad–very grainy, and the sound was awful.
Not all old music “films” were for the film jukebox, though; and I imagine that there were plenty of films made for music shows and the like.
I recall seeing on very-late-night TV a film of the Byrds doing “Mr. Tambourine Man.” They were all seated on horses while they sang, and some of the band seemed pretty nervous about it–at one point, a cowboy has to walk in to prevent one of the horses from wandering away carrying one of the band members with it, who was plainly confused about what to do when the horse started moving on its own.
This was called Scopitone and everything you could possibly want to know about it can be found here. Excellent site, rich with specifics and musical history on “visual jukeboxes” which date back to 1939. No pictures though :frown:
Well, there had to be videos somewhere to provide program material for MTV when nit first started, right? There were a few television stations in some larger markets, mostly marginal UHF broadcasters, that had all-video formats before MTV went on the air.
Gotta’ love early '70s videos – lots of rapid zoom in-and-out, over and over and over again; kaleidoscopes; bubbling lava lamps; or a combination thereof.
Thanks to all for the info. Yes, I remember Video Jukebox. There was one video with Billy Joel where he quaffs a beer between verses: that would not happen today!
I was mostly asking about the ones produced before there was even cable TV. Variety shows sounds about right. I’m just glad someone thought to preserve these.
Cranky, I remember TCCSOOF! Ralf, you’re right, “Crackerbox Palace” was on SNL.
Spoons, that’s funny! Watching the sixties “films”, I keep thinking what a trip it must have been for the band members to see the finished product and think “That’s us! We made art!” Videos today are huge, complex productions, as Mr. Rilch can attest; he’s worked on a few. He says the Byrds probably wouldn’t last half a day on the set of a modern video.
Michael Nesmith, late of the Monkees, claims he invented the music video. So any so-called videos before the Monkees TV show are fakes, and all of them after are rip-offs.
I can name “Two Triple Cheese” in ONE note. That’s by Commander Cody and the Lost Planet Airmen. Yes, I googled, but I do remember the video, well, pieces of it. All I can remember was that it was wild shots involving aforesaid food and, of course, the refrain.
Like the others, I seem to remember various “video jukebox” shows in the '70s where prototypical videos were displayed. The best story I heard was when MTV came around, most of the major groups refused to supply videos, so they had to fill with whatever bands were willing. The small-time bands became big-time groups, and all of a sudden, the big boys had to play catch-up.
Early films were mostly a few minutes long (most less than a minute) and would be shown acompanied with live music played to match the action on screen. Most were of nude, or partly nude women doing ordinary things. The porn film was invented about 5 minutes after the movie camera.
Early movies often had musical shorts that would play before the main feature.
One of the early uses for synchronized sound was to produce music videos (demos) which would then be played before silent movies to attract audiences, which often would be there for the two or three minute short rather than the feature.
In the 30’s, there were arcades where men could go to watch short porn videos with music but seldom any dialog for a nickel each. I think this is the real precursor to MTV.
No pictures though :frown:
