So, I won't pretend this is anything new, it's just a little something that I put together.
While waiting for a phone call last night, i picked up 33 1/3's "Greatest Hits" book and started reading Colin Moloy's capsule sized essay on the Replacement's Let It Be. On their music video for "The Ledge" he says, "Shot in stark, uncompromising back-and-white, the video was comprised of one shot: the various shoed feet of each of the Replacements, while the band members to whom they belonged sat on a couch. For a song that was obviously about teenage suicide, it was a pretty bizarre approach to video making... 'Even though we've signed to a major label,' the Replacements' video said, 'we still don't give a shit.'"
Moloy has the details of the video wrong (although his memory of it is, perhaps, more interesting), still what actually comprises the video is just as disaffected and understated as he describes it.
The Decemberists themselves having recently released a somewhat compromised major label debut, I thought it fitting to remember a band that (for an, albeit brief period of time) refused to compromise their view of music and the various medias that accompanied it.
Shot in stark black-and-white, the video shows the various band members on or around a few couches in an otherwise empty room. Close ups of their faces reveal looks of near pain, but you can tell it's not the emotion that the song expresses, it's that they're bored. That seems to be the feeling that video puts across the most. It wasn't that The Replacements weren't willing to put forth a flashy video because it didn't mesh with their lo-fi outlook on music, it was that even the most minimal music video was a waste of their time.
It's somewhat disheartening to see a band so unenthused, but, I must say, I find that I prefer this approach to what comes out of the heavily compromised underground these days.
The Replacements - The Ledge
Back to business, then:
The Arcade Fire - Black Mirror &
2007's best video
So, here we are in a new year, and Knuckle Up is kicking things off for you all in grand old fashion - as usual, of course.
The Arcade Fire - maybe you've heard of 'em, right? - just announced the first single off their upcoming album, Neon Bible. It's called "Black Mirror," it's so fresh I've barely heard it myself, and it's right here.
And it wouldn't be 2007 without a reference to YouTube, which every newspaper/magazine/TV show in the world assures us conquered/altered everything in 2006. Former Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker had a new album out in 2006, and one of the songs on it was one he wrote for Nancy Sinatra's album earlier in the year. The song's "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time," the version Jarvis sings is miles beyond Nancy's (not that she's untalented, necessarily), and the video has to be seen to be believed.
Download: The Arcade Fire - Black Mirror
Watch: Jarvis Cocker - Don't Let Him Waste Your Time
