Some Aussie electronica video oddness this week, courtesy of The Avalanches.
It’s Frontier Psychiatrist, from their 2000/2001 (and so far only) album Since I Left You, created, I believe, using some 3500 samples from old vinyl recordings.
This is, I believe, the original video for the song, presumably created for it’s release in their native Australia, some months before it went on sale in the UK/US, but I can’t be sure. Quality is a bit ropey, unfortunately:
“Following a dream I had three years ago, I have become deeply moved by the plight of the Tibetan people and filled with a desire to help them.
I also awoke from the same dream realising that I had subconsciously gained knowledge of a deductive technique involving mind/body co-ordination operating hand-in-hand with the deepest level of intuition…”
– Specal Agent Dale Cooper
We’ve ventured into the weird and wonderful world of Twin Peaks on Classic Clip Friday before, to pay tribute to the strange and difficult path walked by Albert Rosenfield, but it’s well worth at least one more visit.
In this scene, Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) explains and demonstrates his Tibetan-influenced, projectile-based approach to deductive reasoning as he begins his investigation into the murder of Laura Palmer:
Back in 1985, the second gig I ever went to was, like the first, at Glasgow’s much-missed Apollo.
The headline act was Tears For Fears (look, there was a big crowd from school going, I was young and didn’t know any better) and they were pretty rubbish. Apart from threatening to have audience members beaten up by their security guards, they also only played for about 50 minutes.
Anyway, what salvaged the concert somewhat was the support band, The Adventures. They were far better than Tears For Fears but, sadly, despite critical acclaim, they never quite managed to break through and find the commercial success they deserved.
Here is a live version of my favourite song from them, called Feel The Raindrops.
This advert looks like it’s British but, despite the Manchester United shirt and English soundtrack, in fact, appears to be from Norwegian TV (and to complicate things further, the song used is The You And Me Song by Swedish group The Wannadies).
It’s clever, witty and subtle and, despite having nothing really to do with the product being sold (a chocolate bar called called Stratos that appears to be similar to Aero or Wispa, made by a company called Nidar), is one of the best, most effective TV ads I’ve ever seen.
This one, for the same product, has a similar theme (clever kids getting what they want, but is a bit more cheeky:
This week’s classic theme tune offers another blast from the Choob’s past – in fact it may possibly be my earliest TV memory.
It’s the awesome theme song from The Adventures Of Rupert Bear, the first TV show based on the Daily Express comic strip character – who will celebrate his 89th birthday on Sunday – created by Mary Tourtel.
The puppet-based TV show originally ran for four seasons (a total of 156 11-minute episodes) between 1970 and 1974 but was repeated throughout much of the decade.
The theme song, written by Ron Roker and Len Beadle, was sung by Beadle’s wife, Irish singer Jackie Lee, who two years earlier, under the name Jacky, had also provided the vocals on the theme song for the UK translation of the Yugoslavian/German kids’ show The White Horses, which often tops polls of the greatest TV themes. The Rupert theme was released as a single and reached number 14 in the UK charts.
Here are the opening titles:
And the closing titles:
And, as a special treat, here is “live” TV performance of the complete theme song by Lee:
From Monty Python’s flawed and uneven but sporadically brilliant The Meaning Of Life… it’s Terry Jones as the unforgettable Mr Creosote.
Say no more!
Following on from the recent theme of songs from 80s movies (see here, here, here, here and here), this week, we have El DeBarge’s 1986 hit Who’s Johnny, from the robot comedy Short Circuit.
The video features the film’s female star, Ally Sheedy at her cutest (which is a good enough reason for featuring the video, in my book – and, in fact, the main reason, if I’m being honest…) and a cardboard cut-out of the movie’s leading man Steve Guttenberg.
Insert your own joke about the relative merits of the cardboard cut-out’s performance and that of the real Guttenberg here…
Enjoy!
