80's Weeked Rewind: # 1

Herbie Hancock MTV Music

So I am relaunching the 80’s Weekend Rewind series as we once again focus on a video that defines that era of popular music. This week’s entry: Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit”

As most people know pretty much everything that I learned growing up came from MTV. It is how I discovered what vegemite was, discovered that dance offs were typically used to settle urban conflicts and that robots were super cool. I’m pretty sure that everyone my age who is into robotics (and this is from a guy who has not only improved the AI of his Roomba but added spinning blades of death just to make things more interesting) can point to this video as the source of their love for the field. There is just something awesome about a house filled with robots that serve no apparent purpose.

However, the more interesting part about this video (and song) is the rumor that I knew growing up that this song was so dirty they would not allow the lyrics to be played on MTV. I swore that this was true growing up. The only explanation as to why there was just music and a few highly garbled words was that the song was so blatantly about sex that they had to ban it outright. The idea that there could be a song without words was completely foreign to me.

That said, why are so many of the robots wearing lingerie? What is that one in the bed actually doing? And for the love of God, why is one getting its head smashed into a bowl of breakfast cereal? No one has ever successfully answered any of those questions for me. All I know is this. I so totally have to build a set of those dancing robot legs.