https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyzEWiVW6UA
In honor of Lynda Carter's 64th birthday today, here's a clip of her gettin' down with The Jacksons from the family's 1977 TV show (yes, the chubby-faced one in front is Janet) and acting with two of the brothers in an extremely politically incorrect sketch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyzEWiVW6UA
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This week marks the 30th anniversary of the chart debut of one of the crappiest songs of the 1980s, but I celebrate it here because it also had one of the coolest videos of the entire decade. a-ha's "Take On Me" debuted at #91 on July 13, 1985 - the same day as the Live Aid benefit concerts - and would eventually make it to #1 on Oct. 19 of that year. The song had been released in the UK the year previous and didn't do anything, but a new version produced by Alan Tarney (who earned his coolness factor by writing and arranging Cliff Richard's "We Don't Talk Anymore") had interested the group's record company who wanted a new promotional push behind the song and a new video. (And it is a crappy song with the only memorable thing being that keyboard riff - the lyrics are light even for heartthrob teen pop and lead singer Morten Harket's falsetto on "in a dayyyyy" is tortuously nasal. But the video that mixed live action with comic book graphics was pretty awesome at the time and still looks good today. It would win 6 trophies at the MTV Video Awards the following year. a-ha would only score one more Top 40 hit in the US - "The Sun Always Shines on T.V." - before performing one of the worst James Bond movie themes for 1987's The Living Daylights. Useless Trivia: - The model in the video was Bunty Bailey, who dated Harket for a few years after they met during this shoot. She also appeared in the follow-up video for "Sun Always" and as a background singer in Billy Idol's "To Be A Lover." - The animation took 9 months to complete using a process called rotoscoping where drawings cover already-filmed live-action footage. The animators, Mike and Candice Patterson, would also create MC Skat Kat for Paula Abdul when they directed her 1990 "Opposites Attract" video. They have 7 videos in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. - The video's director was Steve Barron, whose '80s video work included Toto's "Rosanna" and Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing," another animated classic from the summer of '85. Finally, here's the video. Happy 30th!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914 |
Walburgh's BlogMostly retro, mainly music, but generally whatever's on my mind. Archives
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