ROCK N' ROLL VIDEO EXTRAVAGANZA!

It seems to have become very much the done thing of recent for weblogs to put up posts comprising a bunch of embedded youtube clips, and seeing as how I clock up the majority of my casual internet time at work, this tends to annoy me, as I'm generally hoping for a bunch of new WORDS to get me through the day, rather than such off-limits audio/visual antics.

So first off, I'd like to stress that this isn't going to happen very often, and that words are still going to be the heart of this blog, but, er, I haven't had a chance to get much writing done this week, but I have come across some truly extraordinary video stuff of the kind I probably would have paid $$$ for on fuzzy bootleg VHS in the pre-internet era, so why not go ahead and let these brief pixellated bursts of long-gone pop cultural insanity keep you enthralled for a while.

First up, here's a group called The Preachers beating the hell out of "Who Do You Love?" on some regional(?) American TV show circa 1965. Talk about "punk-primitive", these guys are positively devolved. Imagine being a teenager and catching something like THIS on the local equivalent of 'Top Of The Pops'! Man, I was born 30 years too late...

Also on a garage tip, here's a great TV spot of The Standells miming through "Dirty Water". You know, until now I had no idea that the lead vocalist in the Standells was also the drummer, throwing out all those goofy, snarling ad-libs and keeping the beat at the same time? And he's a dead ringer for Luke Skywalker in the first Star Wars film as well! Amazing stuff. Why, those crazy guys... who'd have guessed they began life as a phony rock n' roll combo playing tame supper club gigs until Ed Cobb decided to make them into a "garage" band to cash in on a bit of the Byrds / Seeds action..?

Disappointingly, Youtube provides slim pickings when it comes to The Velvet Underground. Most of the clips on offer seem to be hack jobs looping brief snippets of film into contrived "videos" with the studio recordings playing over the top (just check out the piss-poor 'video' for Sunday Morning, which repeats about 50 seconds of Lou and Sterling strumming acoustic guitars and Cale on the piano ten times and purports to capture the band 'writing' the song). All the available footage seems to consist of Warhol-endorsed promo stuff for the first album (when they never took their shades off), and sadly it seems like nobody bothered to point a camera at the band at any point between 1967 and the 1972 reunion shows.

About the best thing on offer is this video of the band - including a strung out Nico briefly contemplating a new career on bass before deciding against it, and a weird toddler on percussion - lurching through a segment of the druggy jam that sometimes turns up on bootlegs as "A Symphony of Sound" (ha!). Worth watching just for Mo Tucker, demonstrating once again why she is the greatest drummer of all time; everyone else in the room (except maybe the kid) is in "I don't care maan, I'm a drugs.." mode, but Mo's just layin' it down regardless! (Warning: camera operator quite possibly stoned, or a child.)

Also, here's a tantalisingly brief clip of the VU playing a vicious "Venus In Furs" at some uber-cool basement party, with Gerald Malanga doing his whip thing and a bunch of self-absorbed, cavorting hipsters (dig the guy in the trenchcoat). More of this sort of thing please, if anybody's got any! I KNOW there's some great Velvets footage out there somewhere!

This next one should serve to aptly demonstrate why I almost paid £17 a few weeks back to see The Micragirls supporting John Spencer's new band. I've done the math, and they are my perfect band.

I may not be able to find any records to buy by Wichita, Kansas nerd-punk/proto-indie(??) legends The Embarrassment, but amazingly, the grace of the internet does give me access to a bunch of fantastic DIY videos they made in 1981! Here's the one for their 'hit' "I'm A Don Juan", which you may recall from disc one of the Rough Trade Rock n' Roll compilation album. What can I say: my new heroes.

And this video - for "Don't Choose The Wrong Song" - actually manages to be even better! I can't quite tell whether these guys are trying to do a macho MTV video thing and getting it horribly wrong, or doing a self-deprecating spoof of such and getting it horribly right, but either way, this sums up everything I love about this band: aggressive, unnerving, hilarious, defiantly homemade, musically shit-hot, really fucking odd and.. I dunno.. just watch it.

Guess what? I'm going to see The Donnas on bonfire night! Sadly the gig's not tied in with bonfire night in any sense. I mean, they're Americans, they don't have bonfire night. And I've lost track of the band's activities over the past few years, so I don't know if they're still as great as they used to be. But still. The Donnas. Aah, simple pleasures.... sit back and enjoy, and proper weblogging service will be resumed shortly.

Labels: the donnas, The Embarrassment, The Micragirls, The Preachers, The Standells, The Velvet Underground, videos