Video Of The Week: Walk The Moon

What do you get when you mix the worst haircuts of all time, the visual style of 1980s Red Hot Chili Peppers crossed with Aladdin Sane-era David Bowie and ten-year-olds trying their hands at KISS make-up, the musical stylings of Crazy Town, Fun., Imagine Dragons, The Lumineers, and the worst of Walk Off The Earth's originals, and the lyrical genius qualities of Black Eyed Peas?

Apart from a total lack of originality and a dumbed-down version of sub-par imitators, you get Walk The Moon, who recently released their new album, What If Nothing, which is exactly the kind of empty pretend-deep title you thought their record would have.

These assholes have the nerve to call their musical style "new wave", which is an insult to Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Blondie, Devo, Nick Lowe, Joe Jackson, The B-52s, The Go-Gos, Adam And The Ants, The Romantics, The Jam, The (English) Beat, XTC, Roxy Music and the like.

Walk The Moon's sound is actually much closer to that of New Romantic acts such as Spandau Ballet, Squeeze, Duran Duran, Simply Red and Thompson Twins, i.e. "shitty male-dominated synth-pop".

Director Robert Hales (Nine Inch Nails, Imagine Dragons, Jack White's Would You Fight For My Love) should have left them to die in the Joshua Tree National Park:

Video Of The Week: Sabrina Carpenter

So the biggest video this week is Sabrina Carpenter's Why, a faux-clever take on how opposites attract featuring a song with just about zero instruments and no melody or rhymes. It was directed by Jay Martin, who has directed three videos for Shawn Mendes and one apiece for Nas (featuring Amy Winehouse), Daughtry, and Christina Perri:

The kid's 18 and used to be on a Disney Channel show, so I'll let her grow up and live a bit before passing too mean a judgement on her songwriting skills, but suffice it to say I do not understand how millions of people have tuned into this song so far. Apart from the fact that she likely had a fan base from Girl Meets World and the fact that she's a pretty little blonde girl.

Martin has to be criticized for how cheesy the video is, too. Most of the tropes used belong in the 1980s. Then again, so does keyboard-based music that contains no music, so maybe he was just making a point.

Oh, and I just want to point out that this was released on Hollywood Records. Hollywood is a subsidiary of Disney (of course), but it used to be the "adult" and "edgy" branch, the one that released L.A. Guns' sleaze-rock albums, punk-funk pioneers Fishbone, metalcore band Atreyu, Butthole Surfers, Danzig, The Dead Milkmen, neo-swing/alternative rock band Fastball, gay icons Indigo Girls, Insane Clown Posse, Stryper (a cheaper, Christian, less-prone-to-extensive-solos Winger, if you will), The Polyphonic Spree, The Suicide Machines and trip-hop genius Tricky. They have seemingly lost their soul somewhere in the last decade.

Video Of The Week: Pato & Richie Main

Yes, I have found a more disturbing video than Corey Feldman's.

You may remember Pato (a.k.a. Patrice Wilson) from the rap verse in Rebecca Black's Friday - my apologies if you do. This time, he has teamed up with Richie Main and directors Ian Hotchkiss and Chris Lowe (and, I assume, a first-year photography College student who makes one of the best tree/flower designs in his graphics designs class) to bring you Face Time (download it for free here!), a regular pop song set in a dark, black-and-white studio-shot weird video where the running theme is ''penetration of holes''.

Indeed, when it's not a woman being double-teamed by Pato and Richie whose penises turn into climbing plants and penetrate her simultaneously and making her 30 years younger, it's her younger self vomiting an apple tree whose fruit gets eaten by the two singers, then her swallowing a snake, one of the guys sideways-farting on her, prompting her to grow vines out of her ass that go back into his ass, prompting him to vomit his own apple tree, followed by the line ''Gimme some face time, girl!''

And other lyrics like ''All I need is wi-fi and your mind'' remind me why my own music audience is but a few thousand people.

If one song had the ability to kill pop music for good, this would be our generation's.

Video Of The Week: Corey Feldman

No, that's not a typo. No, it doesn't make any sense. Yes, it's beyond ridiculous.

In this video - apparently the second off his 1st Glimpse of Heaven EP - Corey Feldman (yes, that Corey Feldman) tries to channel Crispin Glover (his overall appearance and demeanor), Michael Jackson (Bad, Man In the Mirror, the song's melody) and the ''Winning-era'' Charlie Sheen (the angels/hookers), references I Love Lucy, pretend-raps and just brings out a general feeling of discomfort to any viewer with a pulse. (Therefore, Corey Haim might be a fan.)

The star of The Goonies, The Gremlins, Stand By Me, The Lost Boys and The 'Burbs needs to stop basing his public personae on 30-year-old work, and perhaps try to get serious about his art. Or not. But I really don't see this ending well.



The video was directed by actress Tanna Fredrick, who plays Feldman's wife throughout the 4 minutes you'll never get back yet may inexplicably want to go through again.

I apologize in advance.

Video Of The Week: Daft Punk Featuring Julian Casablancas

No, it's not one of the year's best albums; it's a collection of rehashed 1980s keyboard riffs you can't put your finger on but know you've vomited to hundreds of times, like a Giorgio Moroder-penned soundtrack to your worst hangover.

But a Julian Casablancas vocal is better than one by Pharrell, and though it doesn't sound like a disco hit as much as Get Lucky or Lose Yourself To Dance, Instant Crush is a much better track as a whole, more subtle (as subtle as Daft Punk can be), yet still miles away from the ''smart dance music'' it claims to be. Which is also a metaphor for The Strokes' career, fittingly - the harder they try, the less they're appreciated by most (though I like all their records).

The video shows off a toy soldier molded after Casablancas and its pursuit of true love, interspersed with footage of the actual Srokes singer dancing on a platform and wearing an outfit that would get him kicked out of The Outsiders - leather jacket, tight pants, bandana at the thigh, and the cheesiest sports shoes this side of an awful 1983 breakdancing video.

When I think about the 1980s - particularly the middle part, but even as a whole, and even up to 1990 itself - or when I hear certain songs that were hits in my childhood, I usually start feeling sick and literally want to puke my brains out. Even songs I kind of like (and at times cover myself), such as Edie Brickell's What I Am, but just about any New Kids On The Block, Milli Vanilli or Bobby Brown song will do. This song here (and this group) also have that effect on me, which must mean it's the real deal.

Video Of The Week: Rob Zombie

At first, I wasn't sure how to take this song. I still don't.

Rob Zombie isn't the most cover-oriented singer, and his attempt at industrializing The Ramones was uneven, to say the least. But I thought he could do well with Grand Funk Railroad's We're An American Band, which he kind of does.

Except it doesn't really sound like Rob Zombie - apart from the gravelly vocals. It's heavy rock, far from the industrial/electronics-heavy material he excels at, and it kind of falls a bit flat, a bit like a Kid Rock cover...

The video doesn't help, either, a compilation of a live performance and behind-the-scenes tour footage with a ton of boobage, it looks like the beginning of one of his horror movies where a family of Southern-state in-breds will take advantage of the anonymity of a weekend-long music festival shock-full of drunken teenagers to go on a rape-and-killing spree.

I'll give it a few more listens, but it could be my least favourite Zombie track so far, though it does capture some of the energy of his live shows. Or maybe I really have grown cynical with age.

Video Of The Week: Steve Miller Band

Sometimes your brain does you a favour and forgets the past. My brain loves me, and it enabled me to not remember a shred of evidence of the existence of this 1982 ''hit'' song...

But first things first: Steve Miller Band were huge in the 1970s, and we owe them a bunch of classic rock staples such as The Joker (''I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker''), Fly Like An Eagle, Key To The Highway, Take The Money And Run and Rock'n Me. Songs your dad (or grandfather) rode on the highway with his top down to, smoking and drinking while driving. All truck-drivin' songs.

And yet, this is the same band that released Abracadabra, a song so bad and cheesy I thought it was by Hall & Oates. But noooooo...

''Abracadabra'' is usually an incantation that precedes a magic trick's conclusion, and in this case, it worked: all matters of good taste have disappeared into the making of this song, just as your self-respect will disappear listening to it.

The rabbit in the hat is long gone, the assistant has been sowed in half twice, someone from the crowd has a knife stuck in their head and another spectator is missing a hand, and someone else is missing altogether.

This song is the result of everything going wrong. So much so that it probably killed Houdini; for sure it ended David Copperfield's career.

Video Of The (Past) Week: Slaughter

When I was growing up, the ''Classic Rock'' category included all rock-and-roll made prior to that soul-less, God-less, taste-less and balls-less decade known as the 1980s, from The Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin, from Foreigner to Kansas, from Cream to Gentle Giant - it encompassed prog rock, psychedelic-based, blues-inspired, country-tinged, and was used from every merchant from Sam The Record Man to HMV to the ''music-by-mail'' Columbia House.

Now, among many blasphemies, it also includes shit from the 1980s and (here's the sign I'm getting old)... the 1990s. We already had classifications for those types of rock, chiefly ''hair metal'' for the ones prior to Guns N' Roses, and ''grunge'' for all things post Nirvana and Pearl Jam until, say, 1998 and the rap-metal craze...

 I was playing a music quiz with friends lately, and the category was ''classic rock'', and the answer was the video I'm featuring today, Slaughter's Fly To The Angels, the band's highest-charting song - and I was appalled. I got it right, but I had to spend 15 minutes explaining how Slaughter was in no way ''classic''.

On the glam rock scale from 1 to 10 where 1 is Trixter, 5 is Ratt, 10 is Motley Crue and 11 is Poison (all that make-up did make up for something), Slaughter would probably rate a 4 - both impact-wise, and popularity-wise. Far from being Bon Jovi (a definite 9), they barely rank higher than Nelson...

Formed from the ashes of the Vinnie Vincent Invasion (who had overextended their line of credit with their record label, Chrysalis!), Slaughter consisted pretty much of singer-guitarist Mark Slaughter, bassist Dana Strum and guitarist Tim Kelly with a revolving door of drummer that somehow always seems to revert back to Blas Elias despite his never appearing on the band's first album, and the band even now booking shows without his being present. Kelly died in a car crash in 1997 and has since been replaced by Jeff 'Blando' Bland.

Having turned 12 at the end of 1990 - with everything that implies - and being a member of the Columbia House record club (they'd give you 12 cassettes or CDs by mail for a penny - plus $10 shipping - in exchange of which you agreed to purchase 6 more at $20 apiece - yeah, I know - in the next two or three years), I gave Slaughter's first two releases a chance on the basis of their covers alone, both featuring the same model, Laurie Ann Carr, a December 1986 Playboy playmate and former wife (divorced in 1991) of a member of Ratt:

 Stick It To Ya:

Stick It Live:

I didn't mind the music so much, but I was a real big fan of the covers. Truth be told, throughout the years, I probably looked at them more often (and longer) than I listened to them, though it was probably close to even at first.

This song appears on both releases, of course:



Their follow-up full-length, The Wild Life, was released in 1992, and featured a harder, heavier sound - an evolution also made by contemporaries Skid Row. Whether it was a natural progression or dictated by the rise of grunge acts and their straightforward, no-nonsense (and definitely no make-up or hairspray) approach remains unanswered, but the Western market did not embrace them anymore. They were, however, huge in Japan, as were Mr. Big.

They now mostly perform on nostalgia tours and cruises. And Laurie Ann Carr is now a chiropractor.

Video Of The Week: Images In Vogue

Canadian New Wave? Yep, Images In Vogue have that niche market covered.

Equal parts Corey Hart, The Cure, Depeche Mode and Culture Club, but as jocks wearing glasses and leather jackets. Among their band members, though, lie dormant cEvin Key (founder of Skinny Puppy) and Don Gordon (founder of Numb, who has since quit the music industry and moved to Vietnam), proving that going cheese-pop once doesn't mean you'll stick with it forever. Those two do not play on this recording however - they'd both left two years prior to the release of this 1985 track, for cause of ''too poppy''.

Video Of The Week: Freeez

After a little too much seriousness of late, politically-charged songs and whatnot, it's time to lighten the air with a bit of cheese in the form of U.K. dance/funk fusion act Freeez with this song from the film Beat Street, produced by Arthur Baker, who had previously worked with Afrika Bambaataa.

But this is nowhere as innovative as even Bambaataa's weakest songs; this is just sub-Break Machine, NYC-inspired music to dance on a cardboard box to. So, well, just take out your fixed bike, do the robot, or just vomit watching this British mistake take on a worldwide movement about to get serious.

Here are things to look for: starting at 0:50, you can witness how a pop act sounds when their instruments aren't plugged in, with the guy on the left looking like a leftover member of Wham! while the guy on the right should be playing ''Uncle Jessie'' on Full House; at 1:20, old folks are enjoying the music (which can't be a good sign according to all the movies I've seen); at 2:05, the 1980s version of Eva Logoria (or is that a Kardashian?) is looking out the window looking for a basketball player to stare at; at 2:22, a kid doesn't yet realize he may like the colour red a little too much; and for the last 20 seconds or so, the blonde seemingly leader of the band does some sort of Walk Of Shame in front of everyone who's appeared in the video, although he doesn't seem to realize he should be ashamed, thus proving British people have no shame. None. Whatsoever.

Video Of The Week: Aerosmith

Aerosmith were in town last weekend. I didn't go, a bit because I'm not too big a fan (I despise everything they made post-1995, for one), it was actually held in a suburb and also because there's a chance I wouldn't have been able to afford it.

By many accounts, they did their best despite having become a caricature of themselves, and rocked out to their 1970s material first and foremost, forgoing their recent decade of ballads and ill-advised attempts at ''blues''.

But between their 1977 heyday and their second golden age (87-89), most people forget the era where Steven Tyler wore eyeliner and Joe Perry wasn't even in the band anymore...

This piece of cheese is here to remind them of those times, and I chose a video with ''special effects'', too, to show that the Alicia Silverstone era wasn't the only one in which Steven Tyler and the boys dabbled with technology...



In all honesty, the guitar riff wasn't too bad, but the lyrics reek of cheese and the ''rock-and-roll'' song structure kind of makes me gag. And the production renders the whole thing Poison-like. And they were also in town a few days ago, with Def Leppard.

Maybe I'm dead, and this is Purgatory.

Video Of The (Upcoming) Week: Albert

Albert is 6 years old - don't get me started on child stars and how fucked up they become - check Macaulay Culkin (USA) and Jordy (France) for proof - and, at age six, is already a playa. He hangs around in pools surrounded by bikini-clad chicks shaking their asses and wants them to ''Booty Pop'' their way into his cheesy YouTube videos. He is well on his way to Bang Bros and Bang Bus...

And his life will probably end up ruined because he'll never escape the public personae he displayed before even finishing first grade.



Oh, and he's from South Florida and claims to be ''the baddest boy in town'', which probably explains why the chicks ditched the legal-age rappers to play in this toad's pond and hang at his (literally) crib.

USA! USA! USA!

Video Of The Week: Northen Lights

After Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas and USA For Africa's We Are The World, Canadian artists of the 1980s also needed t voice their own worries about the situation of starving children, and Bryan Adams and a few associates (Bob Rock, David Foster, Jim Vallance, his wife Rachel Paiement of CANO fame, and Paul Hyde) penned this cheesy track and had Bruce Allen convince a veritable ''who's who'' of Canadian singers from all across the spectrum take part - from respected, political singer-songwriters such as Neil Young,  Gordon Lightfoot and Bruce Cockburn, to the universally-acclaimed likes of Burton Cummings (The Guess Who), Geddy Lee (Rush), Anne Murray, and Joni Mitchell, pop artists like Corey Hart and Loverboy's Mike Reno, as well as the obligatory Québec French-language artists (Véronique Béliveau, Robert Charlebois and Claude Dubois).

All that talent, backed by Paul Shaffer, comedian John  Candy, Tom Cochran, Ronnie Hawkins, Kim Mitchell, Aldo Nova, actress Catherine O'Hara, Jane Siberry and countless others...

And yet...





This song came to mind as I witnessed the 27th, 28th and 29th straight late-night demonstrations (the last one which was violence-free) against the provincial government, where I heard my share of overhead helicopters on top of my house, police sirens, tear gas, concussion grenades, and saw an abundance of useless pepper-spraying and clubbing...

And the words came to me:

''If we could live together...''
''Don't you know that tears are not enough?''

Video Of The Week: Chilliwack

They derive their name from a ''city'' east of Vancouver, which is never a sign of lasting success - although they still tour to this day, 45 years after first forming. Kind of. Because as ''Chilliwack'', they've been at it for 40, with an ever-changing roster of musicians.

But what doesn't change is that they're biggest hits are a thing of the past, 30 years removed from the present.

But they sound like a good time, a guilty pleasure more fun than, say, the keyboard-led likes of Duran Duran or Depeche Mode...



Cock-rock-lite at its best. Well, close enough, anyway.

Video Of The Week: Oran ''Juice'' Jones

There are countless songs about infidelity in love - I'm in the process of writing one myself, called Fuck Doll - and most of them reek of cheese, but none more than Oran ''Juice'' Jones' The Rain, in which the protagonist actually confronts his partner after having followed her during the day, and promptly exacts revenge by cancelling her credit cards and kicking her to the curb.

The video is typical '80s, with the soft colours, vaseline-tinted lense, terrible fashion sense and keyboard-infested soft pop music, and I totally understand how Jones, a serious artist, would have failed to understand that what made this particular track and video stand out was its cheesiness, not its quality. It's a ''magic'' that is hard to recreate.

When his follow-ups (1987's Gangsters Takin' Over and 1989's To Be Immortal) didn't quite meet anyone's expectations, he half-retired from music to take care of his terminally ill mother and raise his kids... until his failed comeback album Player's Call in 1997.

Both of his kids are trying to make it in the business, while Daddy Jones himself is getting back in the game, scoring for film and TV commercials.

My favourite part of the song is when he confronts her:

Did you miss me
You did? Yeah? I missed you too
I missed you so much I followed you today
That's right now close your mouth
'Cause you cold busted
Now just sit down here, sit down here
I'm so upset with you I don't know what to do
You know my first impulse was to run up on you
And do a Rambo
I was about to jam you and flat blast both of you
But I didn't wanna mess up
this thirt-seven hundred dollar lynx coat
So instead I chilled -- That's right chilled
I called up the bank and took out every dime.
Than I cancelled all your credit cards...
I stuck you up for every piece of jewelery
I ever bought you!
Don't go lookin' in that closet
'cause everything you came here with
is packed up and waiting for you in the guest room.
What were you thinking?
You don't mess with the Juice!

Indeed.

Video Of The Week: Vanessa

Olivia Newton-John's huge 1981 hit with Physical spawned a shitload of imitators, but none more ridiculous than Vanessa - real name Cornelia Jacoba (Connie) Breukhoven - whose 1982 video for Upside Down takes place in a gym. Sponsored by World Gym. Filled with beefy men lifting weights.

The Dutch singer is still active today, having just released her 5th album in 2010, named Just Conny since she now performs under the moniker Conny. She hasn't released a single since 1995's Lidia, though. Confused? Good. Because that's the only correct way to watch/listen to this video:

Video Of The Week: Canned Hamm (Again!)

When I was doing research for last week's Video Of The Week, I came across this video of Canned Hamm that I just could not overlook...

So, yes, for the second week in a row, they are the featured artist. O-way-O!

Video Of The Week: Canned Hamm

Canned Hamm are not a joke. Sure, they're funny, they don't take themselves seriously and love hitting their listeners with oddball lyrics, music and songs - and records... like Erotic Thriller, that Gay Disco album.

It's like singer-songwriter-karaoke gone awry., but done extremely well.

Here they offer a song called Father And Son - but not the Cat Stevens song; something deeper, perhaps, if you can believe it.

Video Of The Week: Rockwell

This was going to be my Video Of The Week last week, but time and life got out of hand, I fell ill for 4 days (and still feeling the after-effects) and, well,  now we're this week's Friday.

The story for this one started a week ago, maybe two, when the former Lady Of The House saw my friend Mark coming out of a Pizza Pizza from the bus she was in, then told me at night, prompting me to email him ''hey, my spies saw you coming out of a Pizza Pizza, Big Brother's watching'' and, you know, this song came to mind.

Plus, we were due for some cheese, some Rockwell and some Michael Jackson (his cousin helping out on backing vocals).

Video Of The Week: A. Samuels

According to ''legend'', A. Samuels was a big-time casino worker, or owner, or something. Then he decided he wasn't living ''de life'' enough, which essentially means blowing your money on expensive cars (likely rented for the day) and even more expensive women (likely the same).

Or so this song says implies.

He's got an ok flow for a 55-year old white guy, but claims that he's from ''the hood'' can have no other effect than to leave one laughing out loud and pissing their pants. Which I did.

I mean, Livin De Life, it's got everything that made Livin' La Vida Loca cheesy, but with the added word ''bitches'' and a shout out to Newark, New Jersey.

Look for the infomercial-like speech that starts it off, a lawyer that looks more like a librarian (and also acts as his black friend) 45 seconds in, the 4-person party in his suite at 1:07 (featuring what looks like his nephew, trying not to look embarrassed), all the religions it ''ain't about'' at 1:15, rapping through a cloud of smoke at 1:55 (street cred!), uncomfortable arm-moving at 2:04, a dude who somehow made it onto Samuels' ''private plane'' at 2:28, shout out to the cops at 2:40, Samuels mouthing the speech from Jason Terry's mouth at 3:10