This Post is Brought to you by the Gods of Awesomeness.

I'm moving house in a couple of days, and as such, haven't had time to write anything.

That means another lame video post, but thankfully we have three of the flat-out AWESOMEST pop videos I've seen in all my days, all of them of a power-pop/bubblegum/punk persuasion, and all of them hailing from that golden year for such things, 1981.

First, The Modernettes (not to be confused with UK post-punk band The Mo-dettes, who are also ace), doing 'Barbra'. What can I possibly say.... I think about half the youtube playcount on this one is me.



The B-Girls - 'High School Dance'. Again, just The Greatest. Great tune, fantastic lyrics, big guitar riff, killer backbeat - I so want to cover this song. Sadly, I don't think the B-Girls ever actually recorded it in this form - or at least, the only version of it on the retrospective CD of theirs I ordered immediately after watching this video is an acoustic muck-around, retitled "Boys Are Drinking". Even sadder, most of their other material isn't half as rocking as this clip, with most of their studio recordings serving to reinforce the worst women-in-rock cliches by just sounding really weedy and... 'candy-assed', I believe is the term, whilst the sleevenotes seem to imply that they were more notable at their day for the amount of time they spent hanging out with Johnny Thunders, Stiv Baters, The Clash etc. than for their own achievements. It's particularly galling to discover that their version of "Who Says Girls Can't Rock?" (as memorably covered by The Riff Randells) just plain... doesn't. Oh well. Such is life. For these three minutes on Canadian TV at least, they RULED SUPREME. Dennis The Menace jerseys, white cowboy boots, Rickenbacker - now there's a look you can't fuck with.



A dead cert for "best ever power-pop band from Milwaukee", here's the oddly-named SHIVVERS, with "Please Stand By"! (I can only assume there must have been another local group called Shivers or something.) I know I'm only restating what I said at the top of the post, but man this video is awesome. What a singer! It's like if Lydia Lunch had packed it in and joined Blondie instead! Look at her eyes in the close-ups! Amazing! And what a song! Number one w/ a bullet! And say what you like about the guy with the hangglider collar and the red stratocaster, he can't hear you, he's too busy livin' the dream.



CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE: I first saw the Modernettes video over at Last Days Of Man On Earth, as part of a fucking fantastic Canadian punk video post. (There's a similarly great round-up of Japanese punk on the front page at the moment too - check out Friction and The SS - wowza.) Also, my friend Pete sent me links to the B Girls and Shivvers videos, thus meaning nothing in this post is actually the result of my own scholarly pop-culture type investigations.

Labels: 1980s, awesomeness, lameness, power pop, punk, Shivvers, the B Girls, the Modernettes, videos