The place for great and not-so-great nearly forgotten videos from the decade of Miami Vice, mullets, and acid wash jeans. All praise to the bands, YouTube, and the original posters of these videos.
One of the prototypical early MTV bands, A Flock of Seagulls gets a bad rap as "that one hit wonder band with the hair." In fact, they were not even a true one hit wonder, as two songs from their debut album broke the top 40 in the U.S. ("I Ran," #9 and "Space Age Love Song," #30), while the LP, a concept album about an alien invasion of earth, peaked at #10 in the U.S. They also had one top 40 hit from their second album, Listen ("Wishing (I Had a Photograph of You)" which peaked at #26).
The band began in Liverpool in the late 1970s, and got their name from a line in The Stranglers song, "Toiler on the Sea." And, in one of the least surprising factoids ever, lead singer Mike Score was a former hairdresser.
"Space Age Love Song" tells a love story in three verses, each verse starting with "I saw your eyes." The songs' structure is unconventional, with no apparent chorus or bridge, just the verses linked with a catchy guitar line. While the sound is a bit dated, we think this ranks as a great rock love song.
As is often the case, A Flock of Seagulls were unable to replicate their success. Although they released several follow on albums, they saw steadily declining sales and finally broke up in 1985. However, in recent years, they have reunited from time to time, and lead signer Mike Score continues to tour under the Flock of Seagulls name.
In honor of the boys (mostly; we miss Michael Anthony) getting the band back together, we'd like to present Van Halen's first real video. While Warner Bros. did release videos for earlier songs, they used concert footage for the videos. (As an aside, it seems that most hard rock bands frowned on doing 'real' videos in the late 1970s and early 1980s.)
At any rate, by 1982 Van Halen were one of the biggest rock acts in the world, but they had also been touring and recording more or less constantly since 1977. Supposedly, the band wanted to do Diver Down as quickly as possible in order to go on some well deserved vacations. As a result, the album clocks in at 31 minutes and includes 5 covers. The result is surprisingly good, highlighting the strength of VH's original lineup
"(Oh) Pretty Woman" is, of course, a cover of a 1964 Roy Orbison song that had spent three weeks at #1. However, by the early 1980s, Orbison was mostly forgotten; he often credited the Van Halen cover with restarting his career. The Van Halen version peaked at #12, while Diver Down rose to the #3 spot on the album charts.
In typical semi-self destructive Van Halen style, the video was banned on MTV due to its sexual content (the folks at MTV were apparently not amused by midgets fondling tied-up transvestites). We remember seeing the video on USA's Night Flight, but it was not widely viewed (= rare!).
Cool trivia facts: Van Halen's frontman, David Lee Roth directed the video, and claims that he wrote the "Intruder" synthesizer intro to fill enough time for the video. (Yes, "Intruder" also appears on Diver Down, as the band needed every second that they could find).
In the interest of completeness, here is the Roy Orbison original. We chose a 1964 Top of the Pops video, as it is the most like a 'real' music video.
Note that David Lee Roth's "Going' Crazy!" video (with the full intro) was posted on ERV in January 2015.
It is easy to downplay INXS; they sounded like a new wave bar band, and were not the most innovative or creative group of their time. What INXS did, however, was churn out a ton of really good rock songs; they had ten top 40 hits in the U.S. and have sold more than 30 million units worldwide, mostly in the 80s and early 90s.
"Don't Change" was the last song on 1982's Shabooh Shoobah and the second single from the album (after "The One Thing.") It reached #80 on the U.S. charts, so it was not a big hit at the time, but is widely regarded as on of the band's best songs. Sound-wise, "Don't Change" comes off almost as a rocked up version of Roxy Music, with big, atmospheric keyboards and a great chorus.
Of course, the band followed up Shabooh Soobah with four consecutive platinum albums, including 1987's Kick (which sold 6 million units in the U.S. alone.) The nineties were tougher on INXS, and the original lineup ended with the tragic death of lead singer Michael Hutchence in 1997. We suppose that the stories of virtually all rock bands are tragic in the end. Still, it is cool to go back in time, so to speak, and see them as a young Australian band doing a simple video of a great song.
Note: The INXS/Jimmy Barnes song "Good Times" was posted on ERV in September 2013.
In the aftermath of The Flirts, please consider Cheap Trick as our apology to you, the (few) readers of this blog. OK, we're just kidding (or are we?)
At any rate, Cheap Trick's "She's Tight" from 1982's One on One album highlights the diversity of eighties music and MTV, as this song came out the same year as "Jukebox" (below) and they may have even been played back to back at some point.
"She's Tight" is your basic sleazy, straight up rock song, complete with semi-ridiculous lyrics and the typical 5-neck guitar in the video. As an aside, this song has some truly great moments, our favorite being Robin Zander singing:
"She spoke ...
I'm on my own, home all alone So I got off the phone"
If that isn't rock and roll, then we don't know what is.
The song peaked at #65, while the album broke the top 40 and went gold. For folks who aren't that familiar with Cheap Trick, they are really worth checking out. Their music is an interesting combination of 60s pop and 70s rock, and they have just a ton of great songs. Their greatest hits are a good place to start, but they have a fair amount of solid, lesser-known songs, some of which may even appear on ERV at a later date.
While there was some great music played on MTV in the early days, the station also played some ... well, not-so-great (or WTF??) music too. High on any list of "what were they thinking" would be The Flirts.
To be fair, The Flirts weren't even really a band -- they were a creation of Bobby Orlando, a New York City based record producer. As a result, the members changed regularly (like every album). Think Menudo, but with pretty young women (for our younger readers, please replace "Menudo" with "Backstreet Boys" above.) Amazingly, they had a minor hit with "Jukebox," off the 1982 album 10 Cents a Dance. The video was played around every ten minutes on MTV for a while, for no apparent reason and no, we are not bitter about that at all.
At any rate, Bobby Orlando then put out a new Flirts album ever 2 weeks or so for most of the eighties, but sadly (yes, that is sarcasm) did not hit it big again.
What is more Halloweeny (yes, we just made up that word) than some good old-fashioned metal? How about some metal with horror clips and a demonic-sounding title?
Iron Maiden's 1982 album, The Number of the Beast, is on a short list of the greatest heavy metals albums ever. Dark, loud and surprisingly melodic, it is the prototypical Iron Maiden record, and the first one with lead singer Bruce "Air Raid Siren" Dickinson. The album also proved to be a tremendous commercial success, and has sold some 14 million units worldwide. It reached #33 on the US charts, but hit #1 in the UK, where both "The Number of the Beast" and "Run to the Hills" broke the top 20 on the singles chart!
While religious conservatives were concerned with the "satanic message," the title song from the album was actually inspired by bass player Steve Harris' nightmare after watching Damien: Omen II. To be fair, though, the band did play up the supernatural angle in interviews, which (of course) seemed to help sales.
Cool trivia fact: the band originally wanted Vincent Price to read the intro (foreshadowing "Thriller") but he proved to be too expensive for their budget. As a result, an actor named Barry Clayton was hired to do it.
The first of three songs in honor of the upcoming All Hallows Even. However, we did not want to be lazy about the holiday and go with "Thriller" and the like; instead we have chosen songs that have a Halloween vibe (to us, at least).
The English Beat (The Beat to all non-Americans) were a 2 Tone ska/pop band founded in England in the late 1970s. The group's sound evolved over time and by 1982's Special Beat Service, it was clear that they were venturing away from their ska roots and into something different ... more like a ska influenced new wave pop sound.
Although it was actually an old song (written before the band formed, in fact), "Save it for Later" fit in quite nicely with this post-ska aesthetic. It is a wonderfully odd sounding song, driven by an unusual open D guitar tuning (DADAAD, if you must ask). Lyrically, it is about a teen's transition into a twenty-something, with a dirty joke thrown it, to boot ("for later" ... fe'llator ...)
But it is the video that places the song here, in late October. The strangle club, the skeletons, the unusual clientele -- it all reminds us of a Halloween party (a really cool one, in England circa 1982).
Sadly, The English Beat broke up soon after Special Beat Services was released, but returned (in a way) as former members became General Public and Fine Young Cannibals.
Another band that had a terrible time with the business end of the music business was The Monroes. The band was founded in San Diego in the early 1980s, and signed to Alfa, a small Japanese label. The first single off their self-titled EP was the catchy new wave/pop song, "What Do All the People Know."
In 1982, the song moved up the charts, eventually peaking at #59. The band had a hit single, was touring and working to promote it with an album surely to follow when ... Alfa exited the U.S. market. The loss of their label was catastrophic for the band, as it meant no support for the EP and no money for an album. Although The Monroes soldiered on for a few years, they did not get another break, and ended up as an unfortunate one hit wonder.
Cool follow up: This clip is from The Monroes appearance on the Merv Griffin Show in 1982. We heard from Tony Ortiz (the lead singer of the band), who informed us that the earlier video is not The Monroes at all (go figure -- something not accurate on the internet!) We believe that the band had problems producing a video for the song, what with the record label shutting down and all. Anyhow, Tony asked us to put up a real clip of the band (and when Tony Monroe asks you to do something, you do it!)
So this one goes out to Tony, with my thanks for the great song.
Haircut One Hundred. Just the name brings us back to early 1982 MTV, when the station was new and fresh and they played a bunch of cool, slightly off-the-beaten-trail bands.
Technically a one-hit wonder (their first single, "Favourite Shirts (Boy Meets Girl)" did not chart in spite of heavy airplay on the aforementioned channel), the band nevertheless emerged as one of the biggest pop/new wave stars of 1982. This was during the "nonthreatening English pop/new wave era" that included ABC, A Flock of Seagulls, Thomas Dolby, and Thompson Twins, among many others.
Interestingly, Haircut's first album, 1982's Pelican West did not chart in the U.S., but peaked at #2 in the U.K. (where it went platinum). However, "Love Plus One" managed to break into the American top 40 at #37. Ultra light and breezy, the singles (and videos) are still remarkably catchy, in a "Walking on Sunshine" kind of way.
With their new found success, the band fell apart almost immediately, as Nick Heyward (the songwriter, singer and guitarist for Haircut One Hundred) left to start a solo career. While he did have a few minor hits in the U.K., he was basically never heard from again on this side of the Atlantic, and Haircut One Hundred slowly faded away ... until now.
XTC might just be the poster child for the under-appreciated band. In fact, one music critic went so far as to call them "the great lost pop band." The reason in simple: they wrote a bunch of great pop songs, flirted with success several times, but never quite made it.
"Senses Working Overtime" comes from their fifth studio album, 1982's English Settlement. Both the song and album broke into the top 10 in the UK, and it looked like a breakout album, until ... singer and guitarist Andy Partridge developed severe stage fright. This prevented the band from performing live (to this day, in fact), and undoubtedly hurt their ability to reach an audience. (The moral of the story is this: do not let your wife throw out all of the prescription valium that you are dependent on right before you are supposed to go on stage.)
In spite of this, the band continued to record great music. In addition to "Dear God" and "The Mayor of Simpleton" (posted on ERV) we would recommend "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" and "King for a Day." All are available on YouTube, for folks who are so inclined. In fact, they just might make another appearance on this blog at some future time (as Chuck Berry says ... you never can tell).
What do you get when you combine the guitarist from Journey with the guy who wrote the theme to Miami Vice? Well, the resulting music is actually not half bad. Although not groundbreaking, "No More Lies" is a decent rock song, and a pretty rare video to boot.
Amazingly, this song is from Schon & Hammer's second album, 1982's poorly named Here to Stay. The duo also released Untold Passion in 1981. At the time, Neal Schon was starting to feel stifled by Journey, and Jan Hammer was a well-regarded fusion and jazz keyboardist. As Schon got his start in Santana, the combination makes more sense that you would first think.
As for Schon and Hammer ... well, Neal Schon remained with Journey until the 1987 breakup, and then co-founded Bad English. Jan Hammer had a huge breakout with Miami Vice and went on to have a successful career scoring TV and movie soundtracks.
Romeo Void was one of the more unlikely bands to have a hit song, and they actually had two, as 1984's "A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)" rose to #35 on the charts.
Their first hit, "Never Say Never," was actually released twice -- first on the 1982 Never Say Never EP and then on the Benefactor album of the same year. It does not appear to have been released as a single, but the video was placed into heavy rotation on MTV, and was even used in some early promos for the station, if memory serves.
As for the band, Romeo Void was formed at San Francisco Art Institute in 1979. While they had obvious punk and new wave influences, there is also an art rock feel to many of their songs. Lead singer Deborah Iyall (Cowlitz Native American, if you were wondering about the last name) penned unusually poetic and dark lyrics that did not follow typical (simple) rock song structure.
The video reflects the artistic and dark punk vibe of the band. Shot in black and white, it has a film noir-ish intro that is captivating, even if it is hard to tell what it has to do with the band or the song. It is easy to see why the folks at MTV liked it, however -- it looked like nothing else on the station at the time.
By the early 1980s, The Cars had become one of the most successful rock bands in the world, due to Ric Ocasek's ability to write songs that seamlessly blended new wave and rock elements. However, in spite of their success, or more likely, because of it, Ocasek began to feel stifled. He decided to release a solo album as a way to experiment with songwriting, while maintaining The Cars as the more commercial vehicle.
His first solo album, 1982's Beatitude, was an interesting and inconsistent album that produced the minor hit "Something to Grab For." This mostly forgotten song hit #47 on the Billboard charts in 1983, helped out by heavy airplay on MTV.
Cool trivia fact: the woman in the video is 1983 Playmate of the Year Marianne Gravatte.
Ocasek's only top 40 solo single "Emotion in Motion" was posted on ERV in June 2015.
In 1982, John Waite released Ignition, his first solo album after he left The Babys (who did some really solid work in the mid to late 70s). Produced by Neil Giraldo, Pat Benatar's guitarist/husband, the album peaked at #68 in the US charts. It also yielded one great video -- "Change," an early story video, and a good one at that.
Waite would go on to have huge success with his next album, 1984's No Brakes, which would include the #1 hit "Missing You" and the solid but underrated "Restless Heart." Cool trivia fact: In the music video for "Missing You," there is a scene where a group of people are pointing to a building (around 1:17), a clear reference to the "Change" video.
"Change" was written by star songwriter Holly Knight. Never heard of her? She wrote: Aerosmith's "Rag Doll," Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield," Lou Gramm's "Just Between You and Me" (love that song), Scandal's "The Warrior," Animotion's "Obsession," and Tina Turner's "Better Be Good to Me," among others. Impressive, yo.
Cool trivia fact #2: The song "Change" charted, but not in 1982. In spite of a bunch of airplay on MTV, the song did not break the top 200. However, it was included on the soundtrack of Vision Quest in 1985, re-released as a single, and peaked at #50.
Cool trivia fact #3: Tina Gullickson is the actress featured in "Change." Although she never became a huge star, she has had a successful career as a model/actress/singer. She is currently a singer in the Coral Reefer Band (Jimmy Buffet's backup band).
[March 2015 update]. So it turns out that Holly Knight wrote this song for her band, Spider and it came out on their 1981 LP, Between the Lines. For those keeping score at home, that makes "Change" a cover, and of course we tracked down the original (below).
So the Universe told us to post this ... no, really. We dreamed about this video last week and then the next morning heard it on the radio (thanks, Mike FM). If that's not a sign, then we don't know what is. So without further ado ...
The Money Man, Eddie Money, had a string of hits in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Born Edward Joseph Maloney, Money was a NY cop for a while, before moving to California to try to make it in music (successfully, it turns out). Cool trivia fact: an older Eddie Money Song, "Can't Keep a Good Man Down," was used in the WNEW-FM TV ads for a few years in the early 80s.
"Think I'm in Love" was the first single off 1982's No Control ("Shakin' was the second single). Personally, we think the video is tremendous and seems to perfectly fit the song. As an aside -- isn't the intro scene reminiscent of Young Frankenstein?
Special shout out to The Universe on this one.
Eddie Money's cover of "I Wanna Go Back" was posted on ERV in September 2021.
The Producers started as a Beatles cover band, but soon began performing original material and ended up as an early (if brief) MTV success story. Their 1982 album You Make the Heat yielded this Top 50 hit, and the video went into heavy rotation on my favorite video music channel. The band was even one of the headliners of the 82/83 MTV New Year's Eve concert. Sadly, their label dropped them soon afterwards, although they still occasionally perform to this day. By the way, there is another Producers video on ERV that is worth checking out, just above -- "What's He Got."
The Producers also deserve a special shout out for their supremely cool keyboard player, Wayne Famous.
Although many sources call The Members a punk band, they sound more like a ska/rock band to me. The band was founded in the mid-1970s, and kicked around the London music scene through the early 1980s. Their biggest UK hit was "Sound of the Suburbs." "Working Girl" was an upbeat, poppy song off their 1982 Uprythm, Downbeat album that received a fair bit of play on MTV in the early days.
The pride of Wichita, Clocks burst on the scene in 1982 with their self-titled debut. Drummer Steve Swain wrote "She Looks a lot Like You" after seeing a Cosmopolitan magazine cover model who bore a resemblance to his ex-wife(!) The video and song both did well, but the band seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle, and their label dropped them before a second album could be recorded. Unfortunately, we do not believe that a CD was ever issued, which is a shame, because this is a one catchy gem. [Edit - 2020: As one of our loyal readers pointed out, a CD was issued in 2009, and there are copies of it on eBay as of this writing.]
