{"id":3656,"date":"2010-10-22T14:37:41","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T18:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=3656"},"modified":"2010-10-22T14:45:13","modified_gmt":"2010-10-22T18:45:13","slug":"what-the-hell-happened-to-the-age-of-rock-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/what-the-hell-happened-to-the-age-of-rock-video\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Hell Happened to the Age of Rock Video?"},"content":{"rendered":"<iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7Vz7Z42Fl9s?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p><strong>Townsman cherguevvara<\/strong> twice posted this link in hopes of fostering discussion with no luck. That happens sometimes. Perhaps the fact that this <em>20\/20<\/em> piece from 1980 on the bold, technological new age of rock videos went in so many directions that would become\u00a0long-overgrown trails that it was difficult to break down the application of this clip to the futuristic guitar thread in which it first appeared. Watching it again, though, I think there&#8217;s a lot of meat to chew on, particularly around the question of <em>What the hell happened to the Age of\u00a0Rock Video?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Before getting to this theme, it must said that this clip contains scenes of <strong>Boss molestation<\/strong> and a\u00a0<strong>primo Stevie Nicks<\/strong>, a laughable\u00a0segment\u00a0touting the high-tech promise of\u00a0a fingerprint-laden <strong>Laserdisc<\/strong>, and a funny\u00a0excerpt for a 1950s ad for a <strong>45 player<\/strong>. The reporter also refers to <strong>Mike Nesmith<\/strong>&#8216;s music as &#8220;fair to middlin&#8217;,&#8221; which is a criticism that&#8217;s not heard often enough for the one Monkee granted the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/index.php\/the-lennon-pass\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lennon Pass<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>One of the well-known label execs\u2014I think <strong>Clive Davis<\/strong>\u2014doubts that this age of video rock will come to fruition because of issues of repeatability: &#8220;What would you want to watch repeatedly?&#8221; Davis, critic <strong>Dave Marsh<\/strong>, or the reporter eventually ask. Some survey conducted by Nesmith concluded that adults would watch music videos with porn and kids would watch them if they featured cartoons. My long-desired concept of <em>PornMTV<\/em>\u00a0never took off, so clearly the actual answer would be &#8220;Not much.&#8221; Do even box sets of \u00a0rare concert footage from legendary bands get played more than three times? I bought that <strong>Led Zeppelin<\/strong> box set of concert and rare tv performances from about 10 years ago, and although it&#8217;s a great collection, I don&#8217;t know that I&#8217;ve watched it more than three times.<\/p>\n<p>The high-falutin&#8217; video concept albums that the likes of Nesmith and <strong>Todd Rundgren<\/strong> had their eye on went nowhere. Not even CDs with bonus video content make much of a dent, do they? The video aspect often bogged down my computer, if I tried to watch it that way.<\/p>\n<p>What happened to the age of rock video? Few cable television networks play videos. MTV abandoned them altogether, and VH1 only features the same two dozen &#8220;Best of the &#8217;80s&#8221; clips. Videos, as easily accessed on YouTube and other websites,\u00a0have become a worthwhile means for sampling new music, but the rock video as a distinct art form never approached its destiny as <em>PornMTV<\/em>. Or did it?<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It seems to me that rock videos allowed artists to tap into our culture&#8217;s need for morality plays and appreciation of the cult of personality. Their use as artistic add-ons to musical expression have beeen close to nil.<\/p>\n<p>Although the dream of a station dedicated to nothing but videos of the likes of <strong>Madonna<\/strong> freely expressing herself to the sound of her latest single never came to fruition, major artists increasingly followed her lead in using a new video to launch a publicity campaign. <strong>Janet Jackson<\/strong> wanted to let you know that she&#8217;d lost weight (again) and was ready to kick ass and\u00a0find a new man after having been done wrong by her last one, so she releases a video showing off her temporarily buff body while surrounded by extremely buff male models\u00a0paid to oogle over her. <em>People<\/em> and <em>Rolling Stone<\/em> magazine cover stories follow!\u00a0\u00a0The new love of her life is seen <a href=\"http:\/\/naturalismo.files.wordpress.com\/2008\/05\/janet.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">clutching her boobs<\/a>! Her new album charts.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Courtney Love<\/strong> couldn&#8217;t get arrested for her music so she&#8230;gets herself arrested and booted from public places\u00a0for a variety of nasty public displays, whines some more about her dead husband, and releases a new video in which the put-upon star is fed up with all the media attention over her difficult personal life.\u00a0Next thing you know, as her musical career gets\u00a0some attention, she&#8217;s appearing\u00a0as <a href=\"http:\/\/celebrity-pictures.ca\/Celebrities\/Courtney-Love\/Courtney-Love-1193128.jpg\" target=\"_blank\">tarted up<\/a> as possible in whatever glossy will have her.\u00a0 Similarly, <strong>Amy Winehouse<\/strong> scores one hit song about her dedication to drugs and makes a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.solarnavigator.net\/music\/music_images\/amy_winehouse_rolling_stone_magazine.jpg\" target=\"_self\">media career<\/a> out of being a trainwreck.<\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/L53gjP-TtGE?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>And I don&#8217;t mean to pick on the ladies for their reliance on videos to promote their latest PR angle in print media more than to promote their music, per se. Really, what has time proved more important to our culture: the <em>music<\/em> of <strong>Eminem<\/strong> or the intricate morality play of the hip-hop <strong>Mogli<\/strong>?<\/p>\n<p>From his album titles through his videos\u00a0<strong>Kanye West<\/strong> positions himself as a\u00a0young, gifted, educated African American\u00a0artist who still struggles with hip-hop&#8217;s deepest issues of street cred. As a result of this campaign, he&#8217;s ingratiated himself with a broad enough audience to\u00a0forgive him for occasionally acting like a complete ass. <em>That&#8217;s just him struggling to overcome his cultural upbringing<\/em>, you\u00a0know, <em>he actually went to college.<\/em>\u00a0An eventual in-depth, thoughtful interview with <strong>Barbara Walters<\/strong> will\u00a0reassure fans that he &#8220;means well.&#8221;\u00a0<strong>Justin Timberlake<\/strong> has also structured his career, through the help of sexy, &#8220;race-bending&#8221; videos with the\u00a0broader intent of arriving at his current status as a Multitalented Entertainer.<\/p>\n<p>Surely I&#8217;m painting with broad strokes and likely overlooking some truly groundbreaking uses of rock videos. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with any of this, really, to extend one&#8217;s general celebrity. My point is that, among major music figures, rock videos have been more tied into building an artist&#8217;s cult of personality than music appreciation. Imagine how quickly The Beatles would have splintered if <strong>John Lennon<\/strong> could have used rock videos to play out his public therapy sessions and heal his childhood wounds through increased attention and adoration? Imagine the run of &#8220;done-wrong&#8221; videos that <strong>Aretha Franklin<\/strong> could have made, setting up crash diets,\u00a0<em>Life<\/em> magazine cover shots, and chats with <strong>Johnny Carson<\/strong>\u2014and sparing the world the need to actually listen to and feel the emotions expressed within her songs?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Townsman cherguevvara twice posted this link in hopes of fostering discussion with no luck. That happens sometimes. Perhaps the fact that this 20\/20 piece from 1980 on the bold, technological new age of rock videos went in so many directions that would become\u00a0long-overgrown trails that it was difficult to break down the application of this <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/what-the-hell-happened-to-the-age-of-rock-video\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[34,77],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}