Basement Jaxx
"Where's Your Head At"


Oh yes, ladies and gentlemen. FUCK MTV! has been validated. We are The Real Fucking Deal. Do you know why? Because I watched this video on an honest-to-God official record label promo tape, baby. We are IN THE LOOP! OK, so they didn't send it to me, and yes, I did just borrow it from a friend who works at Astralwerks. BUT STILL. IT'S THE PRINCIPLE.

So, since I misappropriated company property for this review, I figure I owe it to the Jaxx (who I actually hope to see live tonight at Roseland) and to Astralwerks to parrot back to you the company line on the video: "When man becomes monkey and monkey wants to rock, hijinks ensue!" Really, I couldn't say it better, but I'll try anyway: A talent scout looking for the hot new thing in music is brought to a laboratory that has apparently transferred the minds (and faces?) of everyone's favorite Brixtonian house musicians into, well, monkeys. Of course it would be monkeys, wouldn't it -- the predominant feature of BJ's album art and the most overused "funny" cliche in modern filmmaking -- but please believe that I have not sold out to the record-label bigwigs when I say that man oh man, it works. The computer effects are halfway between convincing and laughable, and really, I just wouldn't have it any other way. The bulldog's priceless, too, as is the exquisitely trashy song. Five minutes after seeing this sucker, you'll be forced to spend the rest of your life screaming "WHEEEERE'S YOUR HEEEEEAAAD AAAAAT?!?!?" to everyone you meet. And you'll be thinking of howler monkeys when you do it.

God, two four-star reviews in a row? One of you bastards put Paxil in my Coke, didn't you? Admit it! ADMIT YOUR CRIME! I must say, though, I'm loving the sharp upturn in quality video intake I've experienced the last few days (Bush notwithstanding). In the words of Bernard Sumner, "keep it comin', keep it comin', keep it comin'."

reviewed by Chris Conroy

Bjork
"Pagan Poetry"


Bjork porn.

Bet you never thought you'd hear THOSE two words together, eh?

Honestly, though, it's the best short description I can give for this astoundingly transgressive video. Bjork, God love her, is one FUCKED-UP CHICK. As the video opens, you're treated to abstract computer-generated flowing images, much like the goo that pours from her various facial orifices in the "Hidden Place" video (which, frankly, I wasn't that impressed with). But in short order, the CGI resolves to reveal quick -- and startling -- shots of Bjork's naked flesh having strings of pearls threaded through it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is NOT CGI. Bjork ACTUALLY had herself repeatedly bodily pierced for this video -- including her nipples, which are on full display. The final third of the video cuts the CGI entirely, and we're treated to a stunningly beautiful, makeupless Bjork in a topless feathery dress, howling her heart out into the camera while the wind whips her hair across her teeth and eyes. It's a raw, powerful image from a woman we largely associate with ice, sugar, and giggling, and according to director Nick Knight, that's exactly what he wanted: to portray the side of Bjork we never see -- the fiery, passionate woman behind the pop-art pixie image.

The final seconds contain extremely graphic, disturbing shots that would've been right at home in THE CELL (I must stress that this video is rated strictly R; in the UK they won't play it until after 9PM and I strongly doubt this version will be played anywhere at any time in America), and then it abruptly ends. "Pagan Poetry" is one of the few truly dirty, impassioned songs on Bjork's otherwise chilly new album VESPERTINE -- its refrain is the wonderfully organic image "Swirling black lilies totally ripe" -- and this video more than complements it. In fact, it elevates it to a wonderfully sick new level. When's this woman gonna get the Video Vanguard Award already?

You can watch "Pagan Poetry" at Bjork.com now, because MTV sure ain't gonna show it. We remind you again that it probably should not be viewed by minors, but hey, that's just us, and we're fuddy-duddies anyway.

reviewed by Chris Conroy

Bush
"The People That We Love"


Ewww.

You know, some director had to hand this video concept to Bush's management. "All right, here's my vision: We'll slap some shitty computer graphics from 1988 in the background, and then Bush will try very, very hard to look like people who rock." And you know what happened? The dumb fuckers said "Great! We can shoot it this weekend!"

I acknowledge how hard it is to make anybody care again after being absent or irrelevant for over five years, especially when you weren't that big a deal in the first place. And it's even harder when there's a President in office who took your name -- and nobody likes HIM either. (He doesn't even have "Glycerine" to beg for cred with.) Hell, I spent an hour today trying to find a single Bush fan site that had been updated since October of 1999 on my quest for a good screen cap. I was completely unsuccessful. For Christ's sake, the official UK site doesn't have any info on the new album. THEY don't care; why should the rest of us?

That single, solitary, lonely-lookin' star up there is given to Bush only for having the balls to try to make a comeback, instead of just sitting on their AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS soundtrack royalties (ha ha ha, woo hoo hoo, I slay me) and remembering the good times with Gavin's amateur Gwen Stefani porno. But they certainly didn't earn it with the hard text of this video, which is derivative, unengaging, unoriginal, unimaginative, and unnecessary. Too bad "derivative" doesn't start with "un-". "Unrivative?" Well, it is "unrivetING." So we'll go with that.

This review was rewritten slightly after its posting, in order to correct its horrid suckage.

reviewed by Chris Conroy

System Of A Down
"Chop Suey!"


So somebody in the comments to Michele's Slipknot review asked us to review this. Honestly, man, I'd been intending for it to be my next review. It's too bad I have to fuck it in the ass and throw it in front of a truck, dude. Sorry. It sucks. Better luck next time.

Really, folks, this is exceedingly dumb. It's another one of Those Performance Videos, only it's thoroughly ridiculous. Why? Because both the guitarist and the bassist, who I think you'll agree are integral to the whole performance aesthetic, are the goofiest-looking people I've seen on MTV since 1985, the heyday of Duran Duran, who wore equivalent amounts of eyeliner. Michele mentioned to me that he skeeved her out when she saw them live a year or so back. I can totally understand that. It's hard to remain calm when you don't know whether to laugh or puke. God knows I'd like to do both, right in his face. Vomit could only improve that goofy-ass expression. And stop waving your arms like an angel when the singer says "angel." Nobody likes a literalist.

Let's consider the crowd, too: a bunch of teens and twenty-somethings in black singing along and pressing up against each other metal-style. Again, the laugh/vomit reflex is strong, especially when my roving eye picks out (and it always does) the one jock with the bleached-blonde hair with a Very Deep And Touched expression on his face, belting out "Why have you forsaken me?" If you've got a strong emotional bond with any song that contains an exclamation point in the title, you have a severe, SEVERE problem. Unless, of course, that song is The Aquabats' "The Cat With Two Heads!" In which case, carry on.

I'm not going to crack any jokes about the lead singer's facial hair, which, honestly, I have no problem with. I am going to berate Marcos Siega for the shitty unoriginal visual effects -- "Look! I'm making them pass through each other! High fucking tech, man!" -- and up-the-nose Blair Witch sequences. Maybe I'm biased against metal right now. No, scratch that, I am biased against metal right now, because you fucking sheep voted for Godsmack's "Voodoo" over Garbage's "Androgyny" on CONTROL FREAK tonight. But it doesn't matter if I mute the song or let it rape my ears again, "Chop Suey!" is still a stupid-looking three minutes of footage. Away with you.

reviewed by Chris Conroy

Slipknot
"Left Behind"


I reviewed this video because I felt like being cruel and nasty. I'm not a huge Slipknot fan. I'm not a fan in general of bands that wear costumes. I think of Slipknot as an N'Sync for those too cool to admit they like ridiculous costumes and choreographed idiocy. However, it wasn't as bad as I imagined it would be.

Suppose that Home Alone was a Troma production and you will have a general idea of where this video goes. As with most rapcore vids, there is the requisite "disaffected youth with low self esteem and tendency towards violence due to mistreatment by peers and/or parents" vibe. But where other videos fail to get that across without seeming cliched and cheesy, Slipknot manages to convey the message through imagery. Yes, the whole raw goat meat and blood as metaphor for life itself has probably been done by Slayer already. But it's done quite nicely here. Well, as nice as blood and slabs of meat get.

I'm not sure if kids are supposed to get this video. I certainly hope they aren't expected to relate to it. What I did get was that yea, life as a kid sucks sometimes. What I didn't get was the cereal. The latchkey kid goes into his house, the kind of home you see on those Saturday morning television pleas for Appalachian mountain kids, and he gets himself a bowl of cereal. I guess there is no milk in the house, because he eats it with water. Rancid, brown muddy water. Now, if you were hungry, wouldn't you just eat the cereal dry instead of with distilled mud? Ok, then he sits in front of the TV to eat the cereal, apparently getting ready to watch a Slipknot video. So, your house has no windows or milk or clean water, but you get cable? Nice to have priorities, I suppose.

After that delicious snack, the kid is tormented by rock throwing neighborhood bullies. To make matters even more depressing and thus more palatable for Slipknot fans, it starts raining inside the house. He runs outside to get into one of those basement doors that you usually see in twister movies; the kind that just appear in the grass somewhere. In the basement, he plays with blood and I suppose he has thoughts of murder and revenge. I don't know because suddenly he is back in the butcher shop playing with knives and goat meat. Maybe it's not goat meat. Maybe it's the remains of the boys who threw rocks through his windows. Who knows? Who cares? Do horror movies ever make sense? Then why should horror-based videos?

OK. The one other thing I don't get is the band itself. That one dude's mask, the one with the long pointy nose, well every time I look at him I wonder what possesed him to choose a mask that is so phallic looking.

reviewed by Michele C.

Mary J. Blige
"Family Affair"


I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I'm really growing to hate David Meyers. As a result, I'm growing to hate rap videos, because it seems like he directs every fucking one of them now. His style is slowly becoming as "distinctive" (read: frequently repeated) as Hype Williams' was back in the mid-90s, which is ironic since his visual style is, essentially, a boring perversion of Hype Williams': shiny objects and interesting colors. Meyers, however, tends to "spice things up" with altogether too much slo-mo and a lot of uninteresting dancing. "Family Affair," a formulaic but moderately enjoyable Dr. Dre production, receives an equally formulaic and less enjoyable David Meyers video. Mary is decked out in an unfortunate array of wigs and costumes (my God, woman. Three years ago they were comparing you to Lauryn Hill. Why would you DO this to yourself? You've been working so long, you've earned so much credibility...), and she enacts a bizarre sort of chugging dance routine with her dancing posse in a nightclub somewhere. That's the other thing about David Meyers: it's ALWAYS in a nightclub somewhere. I *know* that rap stars occasionally do things other than go to clubs. I mean, come on, arena rockers got over setting every video inside an arena back in 1988. It's time for a similar sea change in the rap world.

This video earns two stars only because I am generous, and because the dancing is not the jerky stop-start teen-pop dancing of every other music video made since 1999. Not that it's any more effective or interesting, mind you; it's just different. God, at this point, I'd take four minutes of quiet foot-tapping as opposed to YET ANOTHER armada of twenty-year-old male dancers with shoulder-length hair looking like they're trying to elbow-fight everyone in the room. Mary, you can do better and we all know it. Get out of that nightclub, get away from that schmuck Meyers, and go find something more interesting to point the camera at then your drunken friends. At least she collects all their keys at the beginning... responsibility is a good thing to teach the young'uns. I would remind you, however, that the responsibility to oneself also extends to one's wardrobe.

reviewed by Chris Conroy