Best Videos of the Eighties Part 2

Cult Films and Midnight Movies: "From High Art to Low Trash" Vol. 1 by Tom Baker

1. Pete Schilling - "Major Tom"

Ye gods, this video (which clearly continues the saga of the mysterious astronaut "Major Tom," first begun by the late David Bowie who likewise chronicled the space explorer turned junkie in the two songs--"Space Oddity" and "Ashes to Ashes") is as quintessentially 1980s as it gets. Here we have footage of the Apollo Moon Landing, rocket take-offs, and orbits around the Big Blue Marble, juxtaposed with roller-skating outer space carhops bringing you a coney dog full of celestial goodness while doing their thing in a place where dry ice fog is clinging to the ground like pebbles on the surface of Le Luna. And that doesn't even begin to mention how great the song is. No one has heard from Pete Schilling since this song's release, so I assume he's Out There, Somewhere, "sitting in a tin can," with "Earth below us, drifting...floating weightless."

2. Genesis - "Land of Confusion"

Ronald Raygun was lampooned (deservedly so) in this video clip classic from Genesis, which utilizes the grotesque puppets of an old comedy show called "Spittin' Image," which featured said puppets of every celebrity of the era I can think of, to satirize the social and political landscape. Here, Ron is seen in bed with Nance right before he proceeds to have a dream wherein he Supermans across a dream landscape that includes Gorbachev, Quaddafi, dinosaurs, Mr. Spock, and, well, Genesis singing this badass, infectious song that you can't stop loving or listening to once you've let the cat out of the bag. In the end, Ronnie starts a thermonuclear war (the one every 1980s kid feared and expected in time). What's not to love?

If Genesis could have looked thirty-odd years into the future, they'd have known what "land of confusion" really meant.

3. Planet P Project - "Why Me?"

Continuing on with our space exploration theme of the first entry, we have a One-Hitter here from "Planet P Project", which is the pseudonym of singer-songwriter Tony Carey. The song has some pop music space explorer once again traveling in orbit, a guy who won't be "back this way till Two-Thousand Ten." The video features an ice blonde 1980s superbabe driving a car when her kids disappear and she is left with a horny mission control geek in the backseat. A guy goes running around the sort of 80s Nasa complex cum modern architecture facility that might have turned J.G. Ballard on. The song is so good to say it's good is a self-evident truth bordering on an absurd redundancy. Or, whatever. Just listen.

4. Simple Minds - "Don't You Forget About Me"

The Breakfast Club is a movie that just SCREAMS f*cking 1980s teen angst Reagan Era bullsh*t. It's full of Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, and Anthony Michael Hall--the "Brat Pack" celebs of the era who sort of got left back IN the era, a time of shopping malls, video arcades, and 8:30 reservations at Dorsia's. The movie, some encounter group BS about an afternoon in high school detention, nevertheless defined the rebellious aspirations of a "Generation Just Trying to Find Itself." Or, something like that. It's a cult classic today, by the way. I bought a DVD of it in a cut-out bin at Dollar Tree. All these actors were young and good-looking at the time. The theme song by Simple Minds, has passed over into being a cultural staple, and the chorus is played often, and the lyrics are sort of poignant and point at the breakup of a friendship or just general pining for someone to whom the singer has become estranged. The video looks as if some store at the mall with a bunch of unsold toys and items unwrapped them all, and set them in a room with some old tube televisions playing clips from The Breakfast Club.

5. Crowded House - "Don't Dream It's Over"

In the natural progression of evolutionary events, Crowded House seems to somehow follow Simple Minds naturally. This song, the video featuring the sweep-through of a set of rooms that might have seen the aftermath of keggers and kids' birthday bash [1], the gloomy end of which had doomed young 1980s lovers slow-dancing to the Crowded House beat, was actually featured in the first adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand (there has since been a remake, right?) wherein the 80s teen turned 90s YOUNG WOMAN plays it during the mass death apocalypse caused by Captain Tripps, at the beginning of Episode 2, on a Fisher Price record player. it was a heart-touching scene I can't soon forget. "Hey now, hey now...don't dream it's over." Singer Neill Finn might have been singing about the whole, big, beautiful decade. But ask yourself: Why are there always old-fashioned movie projectors in these damn videos? (Also there are some exploding plates, papers floating in the air, and a guy vacuuming. What gives?)

Played, I can assure you, at the soggy end of many a senior prom in the ensuing decades. Here it is:

Well, that's all for this installment. Much, much more to come. But, since we did mention Reagen twice in this post, we decided it would be more than appropriate to embed one final video here, another little piece of send-up or spoofing from the old mega-good cable TV late-night video variety show of the era, "Night Flight" (which has been reborn, apparently, to stream now retro content in the internet age). Here's the 40th President, commenting on the nation's growing marijuana menace. Ciao radical dudes and dudedesses!

Note. [1] A bit more to say about this. The video I noticed features a successive change of costumes on the part of the singer, while appliances go floating by. Some of the rooms are very dour, neat, and orderly in the manner of an old manse, with religious icons and candles. others are stark kitchenettes or bedrooms, seemingly laundries, or tables full of picture-perfect plastic foods. What are we saying here about sexuality and consumerism? A man is ironing at a board; he looks depressed, desperate. The singer flips through an old scrapbook. In the end, he emerges into a brightly-lit yard or clearing. it seems that he's saying goodbye to shifting former lives or environments, finally 'freed." From what? Consumerism? Materialism? Bourgeois convention? Repressed sexuality? The ambiguity of the images belies their hidden, perhaps unconscious, subtext.