YouTube Tuesdays: A big hollow man with a fistful of sham came a-walkin’ across the sea

5.18.2010 @ 12:35 pm UTC by lilah wild

Big hair, fabulous full-diva makeup, the primitively extreme use of pop art psychedelia to pad the edges of an 80’s underground pop video. It is the perfect visual storm for this relentless and very very danceable earworm from Danielle Dax. Happy Tuesday!

YouTube Tuesdays: Courtney Love crashing that Madonna interview

5.11.2010 @ 5:24 pm UTC by lilah wild

On the heels of last week’s vid, in which a very young pre-stardom Courtney rocks the Boy Toy look pretty hard in one of her outfit changes, this clip fast forwards to 1995, to a notorious MTV interview disrupted by flying cosmetics – coming face to face with the Material Girl herself (who by now was in her Bedtime Stories phase), catching her very off-guard in the process, and completely stealing her interview. Look how hungry those cameras are to soak up every last drop of drama, and does she ever deliver, right down to the last ass-over-teakettle second.

I have a love/hate/love thing about Courtney – from my impressions over the years (I still have yet to read Poppy’s biography, it’s sitting right here on my to-read shelf!) she’s a very complex character, not someone who comes along very often in the pantheon of female superstars – but I adore her for totally being *not* groomed into mainstream celebrity, and refusing to play the media game during the 90’s. She’s just so raw, and even though her life has gotten to be a mess, she’s still a hell of a lot more interesting than most of the women coming out of the Hollywood machine.

And I love how Kurt Loder just melts into the background, hilariously lost behind these women.

YouTube Tuesdays: Courtney Love on Andy Warhol’s 15 Minutes

5.4.2010 @ 6:54 pm UTC by lilah wild

Three things about this week’s clip:
1. A very young Courtney Love, back when her biggest claim to fame was a role in Sid & Nancy. Before Curt, before Hole, before the whole kinderwhore broken-doll persona. Note the second outfit change – how she must have relished getting close enough to Madonna to pelt her with cosmetics and crash that interview with Kurt Loder. (Which sounds like a fun idea for the next YouTube Tuesday.)

2. Robbie Nevill trying to solve her problems, upping the surreal factor. Hell, the mere presence of Robbie Nevill ups the surreal factor. And now I am going to have “C’est La Vie” stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

3. The perpetually glamorous Debbie Harry!!!

YouTube Tuesdays: This jacket is a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom

4.27.2010 @ 6:29 pm UTC by lilah wild

So this is going up kind of late today, and for that we have one of my favorite David Lynch clips: the “Love Me” scene from Wild at Heart. Laura Dern is GORGEOUS in this movie – I’m loving her early 90’s blonde-in-black getup here – Nicholas Cage, not so much. (And why is the singer from Powermad wearing a fanny pack? Ew.) This is definitely one of those WTF scenes where the surrealism comes not from sunny lawns nor glitzy surfaces, but pounding thrash suddenly turned into an impromptu ballad – and totally eaten up by the crowd. Yeah, totally implausible in reality, but the shot of the other dark-clad girls in the club swooning over an Elvis cover is priceless.

YouTube Tuesdays: Morton Downey, Jr. takes on the devil’s music

4.20.2010 @ 6:01 pm UTC by lilah wild

Lots of screaming, interrupting, provocative questions that don’t go anywhere, and general sound and fury is pretty much the standard stuff of reality TV as we know it today. Back in the late 80’s, however, The Morton Downey Jr. Show was pretty raw stuff, flipping the let’s-all-understand-each-other talk show format of Oprah and Donohue over into a howling, barking arena of belligerent frothing. Lots of noise, lots of yelling, nobody’s mind is changed by the end of the show, but sometimes pretty entertaining with the right guests.

This is the rock’n'roll episode – Joey Ramone!!!!!! – featuring Scott Ian, Ace Frehley, the Cycle Sluts from Hell, Circus of Power, Megaforce Records, and some vein-popping old-guard rock critics ostensibly put there to be mocked and dismissed. I honestly don’t even know what the hell this episode is about, other than “Rock’n'Roll,” because topics quickly descend into shouting matches as soon as they come up. But it’s choice craptastic television, and even better for the fiercely flaunted east coast ripped-jeans-and-fluffy-hair metal fashion sense of 1989. Above is the first clip, see the sidebar for the rest of the episode.

YouTube Tuesdays: Diamanda Galas and John Paul Jones, with a side order of Jon Stewart

4.13.2010 @ 5:36 pm UTC by lilah wild


The bass that powered Led Zeppelin, paired with an infamous three and a half octave range – the collaboration of Diamanda Galas and John Paul Jones made The Sporting Life one of the most chocolate-and-peanut-butter must-hear albums of the decade. Here they are performing “Skotoseme,” plus a very young and cute little Jon Stewart!

YouTube Tuesdays: Aerosmith temporarily forget themselves and channel The Outsiders

4.6.2010 @ 3:53 pm UTC by lilah wild

If you grew up during the 90’s – or, hell, were doing anything at all during the 90’s – you probably have Aerosmith firmly ensconced in the richly deserved Crazy-Crying-Amazing pop-metal powerballad bucket. Or, if you’re more generous, you remember them fondly for “Sweet Emotion,” or that duet with RUN-D.M.C. You probably don’t recall the 20 seconds in 1981 where Steven Tyler swapped his scarves for a leather jacket, greaser hair, and a lead pipe. (Although in the true style of Lead Singer Syndrome, he dances with the lead pipe more than doing anything interesting with it.) It’s a swaggery little tune that does very nicely on a summer booze-and-badasses playlist, and the audio effects on the lightning are the perfect cheddar icing.