Video cliches volume one

I am going to start a new semi-regular feature tonight. As we all know I am a connoisseur of the art form that is the music video. Sadly, the days of the video are now long departed but I feel that we have a great need to remember some of the wonderful clichés of the early music videos. Tonight I present to you two of my favorites.

Plastic horn playing guy: Back in the early 80’s all videos with even a vague sense of a party vibe had their videos placed in a pool side setting regardless if the song had anything to do with pools, water or parties in general. The pool allowed for a cast of wild and eccentric characters that are at every pool party such as the out of date hippie and the preppie guys in plaid pants. My favorite was the inexplicable horn playing guy.

Every single video that involved a pool had one guy in the crowd playing a horn regardless of whether the band had a horn section or even if the song had one. Typically this was done via one guy seemingly playing a plastic saxophone as part of the song. He, and it was always a he, would be found wearing a white sport coat and a mullet. No one else was dressed formally, all had better hair and no one ever bothered to explain why he decided that he would certainly get the chicks with a plastic saxophone. Maybe Mystery could explain that one to me.

I’ll use this video of “Magic” by the Cars. It lacks mullet boy but does have a guy playing two trumpets for no rational reason.



The Student Strippers: Ah, those wonderful days back before the invention of internet porn. See kids, in my day we didn’t have access to everything one would ever imagine seeing (and a thousand things that you would wish to your higher power that you could unsee.) Instead, we had to make do with music videos.

If a song ever implied that it took place in a classroom the women in the video would then be portrayed as having come to class having completed the night shift at the Harry’s House O’Nudes. Typically it was the teacher (Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” being the prime example of this) but often it was the students. If there was a classroom, someone would be scantily clad. Hell, even in “Jeremy” the kid has his shirt off.

I’ll highlight the epitome of this with J. Geils Band’s classic “Centerfold.” I’ll quell the urban legend and repeat that no Martha Quinn is not one of the students. Does this song need a number of dancing women to portray its meaning? Probably no more than it needs the drum being filled with paint but it is a wonderful example of early 80’s video mastery.