Blog Archives
Rocktober – FNV Bonus Reel
Just for fun… from 1983, listed as “Friday Night Videos opening recorded with the stereo simulcast off the FM radio. Includes a VERY RARE opening of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” made just for FNV.”
Rocktober – Automatic Madness
My wife was watching Todd’s One-Hit Wonderland and said I might be interested in a song Todd mentioned – “Automatic Man” by Michael Sembello is apparently what “Mr. Roboto” would sound like if written by Hall & Oates.
So of course I had to check out the video…
This video is beyond incredible. It’s a Frankenstein monster of music. It even alludes to this (probably unintentionally) with the line “like some Frankenstein.” A mad scientists dances his freaky dance while constructing a male android that looks suspiciously like the TV character Automan shortly before Automan even premiered, and the verses sound like Hall & Oates going on about robots while stealing chords from Olivia Newton-John, with elements swiped from the Doobie Brothers (the pre-chorus is reminiscent of “Taking It To The Streets” and the chorus is similar to “It Keeps You Runnin'”) as Sembello channels Michael McDonald in both vocal style and beardness. The entire thing sounds like random samples automatically(!) pasted together in a music console program, and the video looks like someone at Nickelodeon tried to recreate Star Trek with a $17 budget while tripping on industrial-grade acid.*
The solo features a futuristic stringless guitar that Guitar Hero only wishes it had.
All of this was before I even watched Todd’s video. Turns out there’s a loose Halloween connection to Sembello’s “Maniac” – it was originally written as a song about a serial killer. Knowing this, the lyrics make a LOT more sense. Todd also made mention of Sembello becoming a sort of poor man’s McDonald. The repeated electronic chant of “Ah-be-auto-we-bo-we” sounds like nothing more than a cyberized Michael McDonald, head kept alive and connected to a pirated mixing console in some dark, post-disco apocalypse.
I have to wonder if I’d seen this video back in the day and forgot about it. If, like me, you’re old enough to remember the early days of MTV and, like me, weren’t smart enough to stay away from it, you know that MTV was so saturated with these kind of faux science fictionesque videos that were so weird they made Philip K. Dick look about as surreal as an insurance salesman that they all kind of blurred together. I also believe Sembello’s video didn’t receive much airplay.
But if I don’t recall Automatic Man, I do remember about a dozen songs called “Automatic” or with that word in the title. And Automan. It was the 80s.
* Leonard Nimoy was at Nickelodeon circa 1983, hosting a show called Standby: Lights, Camera, Action, which featured behind-the-scenes info about movies.
Rocktober – Masquerade Music
Friday night, 12:30 AM
The primary aspect of Halloween is not the horror or scary stuff, but costumes and masquerades. People love to play at being something other than themselves once a year, as an escape from their everyday lives. A chance to do something different.
Music sometimes comes in costume too. Consider a chart-topping funk/jazz/R&B song which was actually written by a white guy…
Thanks to heavy airplay on urban contemporary radio stations, “I Can’t Go for That” also topped the U.S. R&B chart, a rare feat for a White act. According to the Hall and Oates biography, Hall, upon learning that “I Can’t Go For That” had gone to number one on the R&B chart, wrote in his diary, “I’m the head soul brother in the U.S. Where to now?” – Wiki entry on “I Can’t Go For That”
…which was later dressed up as a bossa nova by a female singer from Singapore –
For more literal costuming in music, there’s wdydfae‘s request for some Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. Serious costume overdose here –
Insane keytar aside, I’ve never seen anyone play drums with nunchuks before.
Final Friday Finale next week, but there may be more Rocktober sets between now and then.
Rocktober – Breaking Space And Time
12:30 Friday night and Halloween is near \m/
NASA has recorded the sounds of the universe. It is a hauntingly disturbing place. IO and Uranus seem especially unfriendly…
But it was not always so. At first, the darkness was silent… until terrible salvation emerged in rhythm and light and sound –
Rocktober – Nine Eternities Of Doom
It’s 12:30 am EST, another installment of Rocktober’s Friday Night Videos is here.
The first request is from Maeve –
Come As You Are
(because it creeps me out, especially when performed by Civil Twilight)
Creepy indeed, but personally I find the original more threatening, especially considering how unhinged Kurt was.*
Speaking of threatening and sinister… out of all the vampires and pirates and other assorted monsters, possibly the most dangerous is the quiet, methodical, coldly efficient killer. Like, you know, David Byrne.
Live wire he may be when he’s burning down houses, but Byrne is nothing compared to Vincent Price, who lays out his plans to the number with calculating ruthlessness –
This movie has to be seen to be believed. It’s billed as a comedy horror film, and there are some bits of humor (usually very dark), but it’s twisted as hell, and Price is absolutely convincing as a genius bent on killing.
Tonight’s feature presentation – The Abominable Dr. Phibes
* You knew it, everyone knew it, even before he died.
Request Lines Open
Got a song you want played during this week’s Rocktober’s Friday Night Videos?
Leave a comment with your request. DON’T link to a video, or things will bog down quickly. Just Song Title & Artist, with a line or two about why you chose it.
If you weren’t tuned in to NightSkyRadio last year (what’s your excuse?), check out the Ten Nights Of Hell Countdown –
X IX VIII VII DCLXVI Intermission V IV III II I
P.S. Diddy, it’s in the queue.
1st Friday Of Rocktober
It’s Rocktober and Halloween is coming. It’s Friday night 12:30 EST, time for a kickass Friday Night Video.
You do remember Friday Night Videos, don’t you? If not, you can stay but be quiet so you can learn something. In short, it was a music video show (well, yeah) that premiered in 1983 and ran through the 80s and 90s until 2002, well after MTV had stopped running music videos outside the 2AM-4AM timeslot.
Alice In Chains kicks it off –
She’s Been Living In Her BitCoin World
Like her transactions, I’m anonymous.
Look at her reading the Economist’s
Analysis
H/T Cafe Hayek, who gets all the cool digital-currency music videos.
Leftist Turn At Albuquerque
It started with this post, and led to an argument on CNN about white gay males stealing the culture of black women.
It’s amusing to me how gender is a social construct, and can be changed and transformed at will from one to another (or to made-up ones) but culture and political orientation are hardwired by biology. This neatly sidesteps the issue of whether cultural behaviors can have bad effects, since one can only act according to the culture defined by their color. Anyone imitating a culture outside their race is inauthentic at best and mocking at worst.
I don’t seem to remember Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, or Gloria Gaynor(!) being too upset about gay males buying their albums. Diana Ross even did a song, “I’m Coming Out,” written for her gay fanbase.
Makes ya wonder if Notorious B.I.G., P. Diddy, and Ma$e knew they were sampling a “gay song” when they released “”Mo Money Mo Problems,” or just wanted a catchy beat. Speaking of which, Diddy and Ma$e sure looked like they were borrowing from white culture in the opening of that song’s video. Were they mocking white culture? Or does Diddy just like playing golf?
Ma$e appropriated white culture in his video for “Welcome Back,” borrowing from “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” and using a sample of the theme song from “Welcome Back Kotter.” Ma$e and Diddy also sampled Latin music culture with “Feel So Good” which used the chorus from Miami Sound Machine’s “Bad Boy.” The song also brags of taking “hits from the 80s.” I think the 80s should sue.
This rabbit hole has no bottom. Where does the line get drawn? Is Eminem a cultural criminal for his plan – in his own words – “To do black music so selfishly / And use it to get myself wealthy”? Dr. Dre didn’t seem to mind too much. What about black rappers who sampled white music? Peter Gunz and Lord Tariq sampled the white boys of Steely Dan (badly) for their song “Déjà Vu (Uptown Baby).” But Steely Dan was influenced by black jazz musicians. Are the black session players who tour with The Dan race traitors? Tariq and Gunz crossed the Latin border when they sampled, in the same song listed above, Latin performer Jerry Rivera’s song “Amores Como El Nuestro” And isn’t “Peter Gunz” a riff on the old TV show with a legendary theme written by a white dude?
I told my wife about the dustup that led off this post. Her response was “Oh, minority victim war.” There are far worse problems facing the black female community than whether Miley Cyrus or gay males are twerking. But that doesn’t get you on CNN.
H/T to Andrew Klavan
Rock’s Rules For The Road
You must be licensed before performing trumpet solos while driving.
Also, children should not play backseat drums without a seat belt.
nightskyradio 