by ·Comments Off on What does a love song in harmony really mean?

As we continue the FTABlog summer of 80s music videos, we turn to the early days of MTV and a video that answered one of my nagging questions: When a love song is sung in harmony, by a group, how does that work? I mean, you never hear the lyric “we love you,” but that’s what’s going on, right?

Huey Lewis and the News had been bouncing around the San Francisco Bay Area in one form or another for a decade before they became an overnight success. They took a song written by their former producer “Mutt” Lange, tweaked the lyrics a bit, then shot an innovative video. The whole band sings while under the covers with the target of their love song, Do You Believe In Love. It’s absurd, and it made me nod my head. Yup, that’s what a harmonized love song should look like.

With heavy airplay from MTV, the video was the first of a long string of 80s hits. In a decade full of earnest performances, it was fun to have at least one band that didn’t take itself too seriously.

by ·Comments Off on Who ruled US music videos before MTV?

After too long of a break, FTABlog returns to its important coverage of 1980s music video. Let’s see how many we can fit in before real TV news returns.

I first got cable in 1981, and it’s hard to overstate the effect it had on my TV viewing. Cable back then included about 30 channels of live TV. (The first system carried 36 channels, but some of them were informational filler, like community calendars and the slow-scanned news photos of the Satellite Program Network, whose name prompted ESPN to add the E. But I digress.) For prime-time viewers, that meant 30 choices instead of six over-the-air channels. The difference for me was more dramatic. I worked at a morning newspaper, arriving home around 2 AM. For me, cable meant about 20 choices instead of exactly one OTA channel, the only one that broadcast through the night.

(One more digression: At the newspaper, a copy boy who worked the same shift mentioned watching Marcus Welby reruns when he got home. “I don’t like Marcus Welby,” he said, “but it’s the only thing on.”)

Back then, HBO would run little filler programs between movies, and one of them was the Video Jukebox, which showed a music video or two. Before MTV caught on, this was the widest method of exposure for music videos in the US. Anyway, I’ll always remember one night when the video was the ubiquitous hit Bette Davis Eyes by Kim Carnes. I thought I was incredibly lucky to get this big hit from whatever random video list HBO used; I didn’t recognize that the network carefully chose every interstitial feature. It’s fun to remember when I was young and stupid in different ways than I am now.

Well, hey, Carnes got something wrong too. The original version as recorded in 1974 by Jackie DeShannon suggested that Davis could “make a crow blush” but Carnes’ version misspeaks that lyric as “make a pro blush”. DeShannon’s version made a lot more sense, although Carnes’ did spend nine weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts. At least DeShannon, with Donna Weiss, got some composer royalties out of it.

by ·Comments Off on Okay, here's a much nicer 80s Christmas video


Last week, I admitted that in my head, Christmas plus 80s videos equals Christmas At Ground Zero. Here’s a much nicer alternative to celebrate the holiday season 80s-style.

Wham!, the two-man musical group of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, released Last Christmas in 1984. Michael wrote and produced the song, and the group donated its royalties to the Ethiopian famine relief effort. The song was a huge international success, hitting #2 in the UK and #3 in Australia, but only reached #40 on the US Billboard chart.

This is a lovely example of the production values typical in mid-80s videos for successful recording artists. According to Wikipedia, it also marks the last time that Michael was filmed without the short beard he soon affected. Merry Christmas, everybody!

by ·Comments Off on Here's my favorite apocalyptic Christmas song


To help you get into the holiday mood, I’ve using my Archive.org cartoon slot on the left side of the page to cycle through a lot of Christmas-related shows. It sure seems weird that, in addition to tons of public domain Christmas video, Archive.org is able to offer material that’s probably still under copyright, such as Ziggy’s Gift, Yogi’s First Christmas, Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, and plenty more like them. Let’s hope everybody’s okay with that.

Anyway, I noticed that it’s been too long since I shared an 80’s music video, and when I tried to think of one that involved Christmas, my mind returned to Weird Al Yankovic. Sorry about that. “Christmas At Ground Zero” was recorded in 1986, back when “ground zero” referred to an atomic detonation point. Yankovic wrote and performed the song, then directed this video, which stitches together lots of public domain snippets before ending with a live shot from a real, distressed street in the Bronx.

After 9/11, “ground zero” was co-opted to include other attack sites. This unfortunate extension of the phrase has pretty much killed commercial airplay for the song, which had been on its way to becoming a rock music holiday staple. (In 1994, it was included on the Billboard Rock N Roll Christmas CD with Queen’s “Thank God It’s Christmas”, the Beach Boys’ “Little Saint Nick”, and similar songs.) But we know this song isn’t about terrorist attacks, it’s about nuclear war! Much better, right? Enjoy it with a glass of egg nog.

by ·Comments Off on Rare video of a haunting Stray Cats song

As we continue our occasional returns to music videos of the 1980s, I present one by Stray Cats that you probably haven’t seen before. In 1985, EMI released a “Video 45” VHS tape of the band’s four US top-40 hits to date. Three of them were well-known chart-toppers. Stray Cat Strut and Rock This Town got the band its first serious US exposure when they hit #3 and #9 respectively on the Billboard chart in 1982. A year later, (She’s) Sexy + 17  reached #5. Also in 1983, one more Stray Cats tune peaked at #35.

I Won’t Stand in Your Way by Brian Setzer sounds as if it had been written in 1959. The doo-wop harmonies mingle with the band’s signature three-piece style. (In fact, the flip side to the single had the same song recorded in doo-wop a cappella.) As with the best from that period, Setzer’s lyrics and performance add plenty of emotional depth.

Peter Heath, directing his first music video, did a magnificent job of using a few vintage vehicles and a lot of dark street scenes to take us back to 1959 New York. A young, shirtless Setzer looks vulnerable and dedicated during his guitar solo. Only one blatant anachronism always bugs me when I watch this, but the rest of it is so moody and so well crafted that I can’t help but overlook it. Enjoy the ride.