Mainly unknown weird guy rock band, Miracles of Modern Science, released a video this week that finally answers the question on all music lover’s minds. What would you get if you took 80’s hair band Bon Jovi, 2011 indie rock darlings Bon Iver, and mixed them together into some sort of cross generational pop music stew? To get the answer the MoMS gang take Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” and sing it in the Bon Iver higher than high register. Then they deliver it to us in an overly dramatic Bon Iver-esque music video.
For those of you that haven’t heard of Bon Iver, the video for their song “Calgary” is below.
For those of you that have lived in a cave for the last 25 years, here is the video for Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name”.
Ahh…the movie montage. It is the perfect way to show a lot of action in a short period of time. This was a very popular movie making technique in the 80’s. There were many different versions, but this time around I’m going to focus on “The Dance Training Montage”.
There are 4 basic parts:
The kick ass ’80s song.
Let’s get serious now, you suck.
Let’s goof around a bit now, you’re improving.
After a tough 2-3 minutes you are a professional dancer!
Dirty Dancing
Pony Boy’s big brother teaches Ferris Bueller’s sister to dance.
Kick Ass ’80s Song- Eric Carmen “Hungry Eyes”
His earth shattering advice to get things started? “Ga-Gung…Ga-Gung…Close your eyes. Now dance bitch!”
At the 3:00 mark a dance move requires Johnny to run his hand down the length of Baby’s arm. Of course, at first she can’t take it without laughing.
The training is done after she somehow musters up the will power to handle all of that sexy touching. The sexual tension is oozing out of my computer screen. Something tells me she will be running her hand down the length of his “baby’s arm” real soon.
Footloose
6 degrees of Kevin Bacon has to teach a pre-bloat Chris Penn how to boogie before the big dance.
Kick Ass ’80s Song – Deniece Williams “Let’s Hear it for the Boy”.
For some reason they start things off in that super roomy VW bug.
Halfway through the guys stop for a little manly tussling in the gym.
Around the 2:25 mark the boys high five to represent the final handoff of dance knowledge. Chris Penn then shows off his skills with an epic solo dance number complete with coveralls and farm gloves.
This photo might as well adorn the back of a milk carton.
NEWMARKET, Ontario—The Canadian band Glass Tiger’s worst fears have become a reality: despite pleading for fans to not forget the five musicians when they’re gone, most people do not recall the band’s existence.
The average music fan was unable to identify the band by name when played a snippet of “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone),” even though Glass Tiger topped the charts with that song, and collected a grand total of five Juno Awards (whatever those might be) in the mid-1980s.
“Um, um, Bryan Adams!” guessed Susie Brinks, 36, who was wearing a Corey Hart “World Tour ’87″ t-shirt at the time of the on-the-street interview. “I’d never forget that. I had a huge crush on him…and Howard Jones, if you want full disclosure.”
Although Adams did sing backup vocals on “Don’t Forget Me,” it seems fair to say that Brinks had indeed forgotten Glass Tiger, as she confessed when the answer was revealed.
“Who?” she asked.
In other results:
42-year-old Jake Rima thought the tune was sung by White Lion, which delivered winning tunes such as “Wait” and “When the Children Cry” during the late 1980s. “At least I was in the same realm of the animal kingdom,” Rima said.
Jenny Timcook, 34, said that as a young girl, she and the neighborhood kids would give “air band” performances of this song and others such as the Bangles’ “Walk Like an Egyptian” and Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know?” When pressed for the band who sang the song, Timcook replied, “As far as I’m concerned, that song will always belong to ‘Jenny and the Leg Warmers.’”
Stephen Kimm, 33, punched the interviewer in the face and was charged with simple assault.
Members of Glass Tiger were to be contacted for comment, but Music or Space Shuttle? reporters forgot to call them.
And in a related story, Brit-rockers The Outfield have lost your love. This does appear to be an accidental occurrence; in the past, the band repeatedly stated they did not want to lose your love (tonight, to be more specific). Insiders believe the loss may have coincided with the return of Josie, who had been vacationing far away.
While Todd is busy listening to a new song by the Wusses, er, the Shins, yours truly was rockin’ out with his cock out (well, not really, fortunately for my work colleagues) to “Tattoo,” the new ditty from VAN FUCKING HALEN. If you dare, click the video below…
Um…well, I never said it was great.
“Tattoo” (which makes the bold move of including the word “dragon” within its chorus) is a bit benign. The video is sorta odd and boring at once. Odd because at times the vocals don’t sync with Diamond Dave’s mouth movements. Odd because Wolfgang is holding Michael Anthony’s place as the stocky guy on bass, but without the solid backing vocals. Odd because DLR dances around like he’s trapped in an old Jamiroquai video. And boring because the song just doesn’t blister like VH did during the heyday.
All the same, if Van Halen is going to try some new tunes with three classic members, it might as well be Dave, Eddie, and Alex (and the latter’s thousands of cymbals). Dave might not be able to bring the vocals like he used to, but his singing was never the main asset; being a frontman is in his DNA, and he still has charisma. And if nothing else, this new song brought back some fond memories that involve the Halen.
In no particular order, my favorite Van Halen moments from my life:
Finding a casette of 1984 and keeping it. Someone at St. Patrick’s Grade School must have dropped it on the playground. I spotted the white plastic rectangle, approached it hoping it was something like “People Are People” by Depeche Mode, saw it was that album with “Panama” (the greatest American rock song EVER), surveyed the area for any nosy nuns, and stuck the tape in my Super Denim pocket. (And I never said anything about it at confession. Ha!) And it was on. Phrases such as “I don’t feel tardy” and “Got an on-ramp going through my bedroom” entered that vast wasteland in my brain reserved for AWESOME SONG LYRICS. I played air guitar (behind my head, no less!) in my bedroom while “House of Pain” flew out of my JCPenney stereo speakers. I flaunted the air drums during the “Hot for Teacher” intro and the “Girl Gone Bad” outro. But even then I was a bit of a hipster snob: I never thought “Jump” was that great of a song.
A Microsoft Paint rendering of what The Cool Guys' Club sign looked like in 1986.
Painting the VH logo on our neighborhood clubhouse sign. A few “toughs” residing in northeast Waukon banded together to form a neighborhood gang called, fittingly, “The Cool Guys’ Club.” This was done without irony—it was 1986 and the gang’s members ranged in age of 8 to 12. We had a “clubhouse,” which was actually random planks of wood nailed haphazardly across some low-hanging tree branches. And we nailed a sign to the tree. The sign announced our group’s moniker. The word “The” started in the upper-left corner, and each word descended gradually toward the lower-right, where “Club” landed. I thought the sign was cool, but not cool enough. So I painted the legendary “VH” logo in the upper-right corner. Within days the sign was vandalized and The Cool Guys’ Club’s mojo never really returned. But for those 96 hours or whatever, it was the coolest thing going in the 200 block of Sixth Avenue NE.
Playing air guitar to the intro of “Panama” while driving, annoying the Brothers Schneden. On the way home from visiting Platteville, Wis., to see the Chicago Bears work out at training camp, my friends Travis and Corey Schneden and I listened to one of my infamous “This CD-R Sucks!” mixes. “Panama” was one of the standout tracks on Volume Three. The best part about air guitaring this song? The part where Eddie slides his fingers across the fretboard after the initial few notes, because you can extend that slide right out the driver’s side window if you’re REALLY into it. Which I was, although the Schnedens were not, based on their eye rolls and utterances of “God, you’re dumb.” They were not in The Cool Guys’ Club.
Joining BMG and getting the eponymous debut album as one of my introductory cassettes. Arriving along with stuff like Vixen’s self-titled debut and Bon Jovi’s New Jersey was this awesome collections of tunes, highlighted by “Atomic Punk,” “Ain’t Talkin’ Bout Love,” and “I’m the One,” songs I like quite a bit today, truth be told. (The same can’t be said about Vixen or Bon Jovi.) And the aforementioned Brothers Schneden and I would endless annoy their sister Jami by singing the song “Jamie’s Cryin'” to the point where she wanted to settle things with fisticuffs. The tale of the tape showed that I had all the advantages (age, height, weight, reach) but I knew I was deficient in the intangibles (the blind rage of someone teased mercilessly by her older brothers and their even older friend) so I gave it a rest and probably went back to playing Travis (a.k.a. “The Beast”) in some Nintendo game.
Blaring the opening of “Good Enough” (HELLO, BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABY! [guitar screech]) on my boom box. Always a crowd pleaser when you and your friends are 12.
Realizing the acronym of For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. Huh-huh! Huh-huh! (And feeling good about the decision made at OU812 not to buy any more new material by the band.)
And most recently, seeing Episode 9 of the show Yacht Rock. The story of how Doobies producer Ted Templeman decided to produce Van Halen albums. What they did with the doo-wop breakdown of “I’m the One” and the incorporation of Kenny Loggins’ keys are priceless comedy ingredients. (Big ups to Timothy Davis for bringing this to my attention.) Watch the episode below (you could skip to the 0:38 mark and not miss anything).
I’ve lived a good life, no? Thanks for random moments of joy, Dave, Eddie, Alex, and that other guy…and even Sammy.
Every now and again, my family would leave Waukon (the county seat of Allamakee County) and visit my mom’s sister’s family. My cousin Josh was the coolest kid I knew. Being two years my senior, he had infinite wisdom when it came to cool music, and he lived in Burlington, which seemed truly metropolitan compared with the ‘Kon, which meant actual record stores or at least a better selection of department stores.
Anyway, one trip in 1987 had a tremendous impact. He busted out some old Memorex tapes, and gave me the following albums:
Beastie Boys, Licensed to Ill
Metallica, Ride the Lightning
Metallica, Garage Days Re-revisited
Descendents, Liveage!
Slayer, Reign in Blood
The Cure, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
And from that moment, the era preceding this gift became known as BMCJMMC (Before My Cousin Josh Made Me Cooler). During that era, most of my music purchases fell into three categories:
Respected (Prince and the Revolution, Madonna)
Unfairly maligned (Duran Duran—I will fight this fight until the day I die)
Um, well, I was in grade school (Paul Young! Billy Ocean! “We Are the World”! Big Bam Boom-era Hall & Oates! “Sussudio”! And pretty much everything else I bought…)
So I thought it might be fun to look back at the stuff I liked before Josh high-speed dubbed me into a reasonable realm of coolness, to see if there was anything redeemable about the stuff I listened to. And why not start with Wham!? My friends from St. Patrick’s Grade School might remember them from the folder I had for social studies class.
Yeah, so my favorite song by Wham! was “Everything She Wants,” perhaps because vocalist George Michael uses the word “hell” in the first verse. Or perhaps because it wasn’t as bubblegum as “Wake Me Up (Before You Go-Go)” or as saxy as “Careless Whisper.”
Or maybe it was the video?
Or maybe not. Let’s break down this cinematic masterpiece.
0:33 mark: the frozen extreme close-ups of our two heroes. George looks constipated; Andrew looks dumb.
0:55: George is glowing.
[there’s a lot going on in the next few seconds]
1:33: Andrew Ridgeley extreme close-up. Awkward! But it did showcase his most important contributions to the band, other than spinning around with a guitar that obviously wasn’t plugged in to the sound system (he wasn’t getting tangled up in a cord as he twirled around): “ah ha ah, ah ha ah, oh oh oh, oh oh oh, ah hah ah, ah hah ah, do-do-do da da da da-da!”
1:36: someone on stage does the Crane Kick move (a la Ralph Macchio). Did Mr. Miyagi give these guys the tutelage, much less permission, to execute such a maneuver? Bad form, Wham!
1:38: Andrew is giving an awful lot of hip action to his guitar playing. And with George a little too close for comfort, I might add.
2:03: George and Andrew’s synchronized spinning routine. Who choreographed that move? And I’m embarrassed for the audience, which is acting like the fucking Beatles are on stage or something at that moment. They’re screaming like schoolgirls because a couple of mulleted Brits are spinning?
2:22: Andrew extreme close-up totally breaks the mood that George has worked to create. It’s going to take some serious sass from George to get back the vibe.
3:02: see commentary at 1:33.
3:17: a woman’s hand emerges from behind the blanketed George. Oh, the irony. His disinterest, however, is foreshadowing at its finest.
4:05: see commentary at 1:33.
4:19: the launch of Andrew Ridgeley (or some other brunette-mullet dude) into the air as the background singers gaze upward in awe; a flip is executed, with a delayed copycat flip soon to follow; and then the guy sticks the landing, doing a pose reminiscent of Daniel-san’s aforementioned Crane Kick move. The 1980s asked us to just love goofy shit without asking questions, but this sequence cannot go unchecked.
4:47: a running-in-place routine. I guess the spinning was too much for the lads.
5:25: I stand corrected—more spinning!
5:35: see commentary at 1:33.
5:50: another flip! I get it, this is obviously the extended remix of the song, but didn’t they have any other b-roll footage to intersperse, rather than going back to the well on the gymnastics?
5:52: one of those “3 Men and a Baby” ghost deals. Look at the lower right corner as the flipping guy starts his descent. There’s a face! Who is he? Why is he ogling the flipping guy? Is he alive or an apparition? This is intriguing…and/or evidence of poor production values.
Mainly unknown weird guy rock band, Miracles of Modern Science, released a video this week that finally answers the question on all music lover’s minds. What would you get if you took 80’s hair band Bon Jovi, 2011 indie rock darlings Bon Iver, and mixed them together into some sort of cross generational pop music stew? To get the answer the MoMS gang take Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” and sing it in the Bon Iver higher than high register. Then they deliver it to us in an overly dramatic Bon Iver-esque music video.
Music or Space Shuttle? 