If it's not Charles Bukowski then it's Vladimir Nabokov, but males of the indie rock persuasion absolutely must be obsessed with one of the two. Throw Me The Statue(largely the work of one Scott Reitherman) put the famous Lolita into a jaunty pop song as a 19 year old girl.
The video is ably directed by Matt Daniels and this treatment is just chock full of metaphors for sexual repression: the band are locked in a small place, Lolita in a bathtub fully clothed, the young man at the end who goes into a fit of rage and destroy cakes while coconut and white icing fly at his face, even the young boy digging holes. It's fascinating! We could have a field day!
We approve.
Oh crap, Bobby Digital has a new video and we neglected to blog it! It's fantastic. All those years of Tarrintino collaboaration have really rubbed off on him - you can tell from the song and the visuals.
Video is directed by Todd Angkasuwan - the latter has held the camera on several videos by artists like AZ, Sheek Louch, KRS-One and Wale's "D.A.N.C.E." rip.
We vote yes.
Our office obsession today has been this website that claims to have compiled the top 20 videos on MTV each week between its launch in 1981 to Napster's demise in 2001. Why the arbitrary end date? No idea. How accurate are these lists? We can't vouch at all. How much time can you waste looking at them? Infinite.
It's gonna depend on a formula of your ability to ingest pop music + your age as to what year you think MTV started really sucking musically, but we've been totally obsessing on 1987. Depending on who you ask around here that was the best year for summer camp jams or junior high dance jams.
We think things jumped the shark circa 1989 when pop radio seems to seriously start sucking thanks to New Kids on the Block and the tons of future adult contemporary hits from Bette Milder and Fine Young Cannibals - about half the videos that year are something we might remotely watch again and by 1990 we don't want to see 90% of it.
Plus, as you get to about 1992 you start seeing the same videos sticking around for months at a time - signifying the age of the Real World and Beavis & Butthead coming to MTV while music videos get pushed aside.
At any rate, it's fun to go back and look at the horrid songs you don't remember at all, the terrible ones you're ashamed to admit you love, whose skeevy old manager clearly called his friends to pull a favor, what songs were big fat hits from movies and see in cold hard list form what was actually played. We're always fascinated by the total crap people love.
Sussex native Ed Harcourt turns in a new video from the directing them Good Times - you will probably recognize their signature work from multiple videos for The Go! Team as well as (le sigh) The Bravery's "Believe".
It's a very lovely and textured animated piece that places Harcourt at the center of various landscapes in various color palettes. More conventinet than a trip to MoMA, more fulfilling than U.S. contemporary Ryan Adams, more temperate than a summer's day...
The other item Harcourt fans find him at the center of these days? The raging debate over whether Heavenly/EMI UK have dropped him from their roster under the new Terra Firma ownership. No official announcements have been made but things aren't looking fab.
Remember when we posted that we'd heard the new MMJ album and it's freaking weird but in an awesome way? MTV News put together another package on the guys that includes some nice little snippets of music that illustrates exactly what we're talking about. You watch now.
Let's have some more real talk on the blog today - several of you told us, through various methods, how much you hated the Robyn video we played a few weeks ago. No explinations were offered, just the threat of bodily harm if we ever show it again. Which, frankly, makes us want to show it again cos we revel in negative feedback and do enjoy riling you up.
So tell us exactly why you're not into Robyn. Also we wanna hear from some of the girls - all the haters were dudes. Do you all hate Robyn too?
Some of you weighed in that you liked Lykke Li tho - so do you know that the two collaborate on Lykke's "I"m Good, I'm Gone"? And it's fantastic.
Ok, can we have a little real talk about this video/song? The first time we saw it we were like...OH HELL NO. It is goddam Last Night's Party in 3-D. Who the fark wants to look at that? Maybe it was super funny times back in 2003, but that crap is so old and tired now. Even the MisShapes knew it was time to hang it up and go home for a nap so who hasn't sent the memo to A) The Neptunes and B) the douchier side of Hollywood?
Our second problem with it: the song is not that hot. There, we said it. Maybe Pharrell gave all his good beats away to Madonna, who nose (hahaha), but this is not one of them. We heard some people disagree and this is a real club banger but we have to ask - how much coke did those people do before they listened to this song? Cos stuff doesn't have to actually sound good when you're on drugs for you to run around and dance like a crazy person.
Finally, we basically protest the entire premise and, by extension, existance of this song. The last time we went out there were plenty of dudes on whatever acting like asshats or hippie butterflies or whatever they were inspired to be like. Shining this kind of light on party girls makes it feel creepy. Some might say it's a good thing, shining a light on the seedy underbelly of the allegedly glamorous party life. Some might say it's a jumping off point for crimes against women in an altered state of mind (we might be a little touchy on the subject since a series of bad decisions one night lead to a mugging in Williamsburg). Guess it all depends on what frame of mind you start from. At any rate, we're going to work on getting some Sleater-Kinney albums to the N.E.R.D. guys.
And we remain unimpressed.
One of those things that popped up while we were out - MTV News did a great piece on indie sensation She & Him. Their album is already in Subterranean's top 10 picks for 2008 and Zooey's voice in the live performance clips here sounds fantastic...which may not be what we were lead to believe after their New York appearances.
Lookie, we made something! Currently MTV's video remixer is featuring a TPC's "Tessellate" - you can use the footage we dug up for you and make your own version of the video. Then you go hassle people to vote for your remix.
So, go vote for Subterranean's "everything but the kitchen sink" remix. Or make your own remix that's way better than ours. Whatever you feel like doing.
Er, while you're there you might watch our "My Derrier" remix of that Britney Spears song cos we got funny with the captions.
Hey na - here's your link to watch the Memorial Day weekend episode of Subterranean on MTV.com - no bonus videos this time tho cos we were seriously on vacation.
And hey, while we were gone on-air promos forgot to schedule the Portishead segments! Fun! So after we threatened to shiv them in the bathroom we started looking at our calendar to reschedule.
Things we're bummed we missed while we were away:
* Meeting Los Campesinos! (but we got some pals to tape an interview with them and they'll be Subterranean's guests shortly)
* Seeing Islands live in NYC
* The sheer beauty of coming to work in Times Square every day...oh wait. No.
* Oh yeah and a new Gnarls Barkley video. And a new Weezer video. And...and...and...more posts to come today.
What'd you think of the intern postings?
