Welcome to the second installment of the Third Umlaut. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend stuffing yourselves silly, and that you’ve digested it all by now, because this week features KISS without their makeup and looking to get very, very laid.
Now, as unbearable as the songwriting skills (and fashion sense) of the Simmons/Stanley team could get, I can’t bring myself to hate masterfully sleazy lyrics – Don’t wanna wait ’til you know me better – smell the cheap aftershave off that one! And KISS had plenty of practice by this time, well into their thirties when “Lick It Up” came out, getting right to the point while many a high-haired hopeful was goofing around in the shallow end of the poetry pool with sweet surrenders and burning hearts and whatnot.
By all rights, this song, and the whole post-70’s direction of KISS, should make me grit my teeth – and it has – but I now think that if it’s easy to imagine a bunch of drag queens having a good time with it, it’s quality cheddar.
Last week, barbarism came up as a popular theme in 80’s videos. This one is stocked with warrior women, wearing little tattered gloves, bicep wraps, crawling up out of the sewers…
…because they sense that virility is afoot. And to corrupt the words of Dan Savage, the man in the jeans is game, giving, and girded. What is up with that thigh cord? Ow.
Even though this town is populated by fierce post-apocalyptic chicks, they’re still doing the laundry. On manhole covers.
The male quotient has arrived: someone is wearing a grade of leather that looks quite stiff and cheap, someone else has decided to spiff up his heels with some twine around one leg, and somebody definitely used to shop at Bakers.
It’s like Burning Man with a lot more hair product. This would be Camp Flashdance. (Which, really, would be fabulous.)
Without the platform boots and fire-breathing of their former incarnations, Paul and Gene must resort to the wiles of mortal men to woo the ladies. Did you know the Demon favors conchos? I didn’t. And the Starchild…well, that’s some interesting accessorization, to say the least.
“Oh, look, it’s the boys from Camp Cock Rock!”
Are those armwarmers? Is that an artfully ripped t-shirt? Drop the weird headband and she’s on point for current metal fashion. Keep the weird headband and it’s playafash. Note the girl-girl hinting of the hand on the shoulder.
And everyone comes out to survey the menfolk. Those dresses in the background are looking awfully elven-pixie – even more amusing now that scrunch boots have come back into style. Note the number of people claiming kinship to Tempest Storm. And more girl-girl hand-on-shoulder hinting.
It took them til nightfall to offer the boys hospitality. This is the part of the video we’re not seeing, where they made Paul tell a good joke or prove himself in some way, to earn their company. I sure hope so, because this next part of the video involves gorging and debauching and g-rated sploshiness and I’m going to spare you all that…
Except for this shot, where I was all ready with a comment about gender representation and worn-out sexual metaphors and then I realized the person swallowing the stream was Gene Simmons.
Then, after the debauching, a little rock’n'roll. The set features an abandoned industrial building, stuff on fire in a can. Even though the guys carry an air of not washing their clothes on manhole covers, they blend right into the atmosphere, a rugged, masculine match for these wild women.
Vinnie Vincent is looking pretty butch here, considering how sparkly he got later with the Invasion. This is not an artfully-ripped t-shirt, although it does bear the Japanese rising sun, trendy among metal bands back them.
Eric Carr sports not one but two bicep bands and some weird mesh concoction of a shirt.
Gene is still doing the sinister thing, but it just doesn’t work as well without the batwing makeup and the drooling blood and the studded leather. He just comes off as lumbering, and this is not made better by a lavender chesthair shirt.
Paul, as he does every so often in a KISS video, goes into full vamping mode and forgets he’s supposed to be playing guitar.
I like to think that this is another part of the video we’re not seeing – the warrior women, enraged that their hospitality has been repaid in such an insufficient, pop metal manner, have ripped the flesh from the band’s bodies, boiled their bones over the fire, and saved the Demon’s skull as a cute little memento. No more conchos for you, buster.
We are greeted by a rocker babe doing calisthenics inside a portal to a parallel universe. Is she guarding the entrance? Is she herself trapped? Note the ripped leotard – barbarism was a recurring theme in music videos, regardless of genre, in 1984.
And a very sensual kind of barbarism it was – clothing torn in just the right provocative places, features exaggerated with some serious maneater makeup.
We get quite a few pretty faces on the way in, setting us up for a total bait-and-switch. Pay attention to the hands, that’s foreshadowing. (Yes, really.)
And here’s our frontman, doing the barbaric thing with some ripped spandex of his own, layered even, with the addtion of biker gloves. He is inexplicably singing sideways – perhaps the director wanted to make absolutely sure we register the zebra print on his bicep? This is Don Dokken we’re talking about, after all – who never struck me as the same charismatic caliber as Vince Neil or Stephen Pearcy, and probably needed every last little cool point he could scrounge.
See, like those pants. Wild! Crazy! Instant 1984 cool! Just the thing to slap on a lead singer. And to think this is one of the more pedestrian outfits of the times.
Nikki Sixx and Michael Monroe were much, much more adept at making silly faces onstage – it enhanced their stage personas rather than unraveled them, as is going on here.
OK. So now we go from being onstage to the whole band getting whisked away into an alternate universe, where they end up pushing a dumpster through into one of the less-inspired harem shots that 80’s metal was so notorious for. No whips, no sparkling outfits…
This is the queen? My gods, they really had no budget whatsoever making this thing. This is the chick who’s supposed to shoot lasers out of her eyes, or caress some kind of future-apocalyptic weapon, or at least get an amazing bit of fancy dress out of it. Instead, “just sit so your legs look kind of spidery, honey, and look vaguely menacing.”
This is one of the minions, and she looks hells better. And hey – a semblance of narrative!
Fingernails! Evil female fingernails! Which is a weird theme to focus on – the flames drawing near, love burning bright, consuming Don Dokken’s soul, this song is all about fire.
Which we do get, when the band decides to walk across a giant barbeque grill. Framed by waving hands, setting us up for…
GIANT SMOKING FINGERNAILS ON FIRE!!! Which the band must now climb over to get back to their stage.
AHHHH! Now the fingernails are on stage!! Joined by a pair of dancing girls bookending the band, some fire in the foreground, and, for some reason, a helicopter. And just as quickly as it appeared, narrative slinked back off into the night, perhaps in search of a Cher video.
Jeff Pilson acquits himself admirably, just by not looking overtly ridiculous.
George Lynch? Not so fortunate.
