Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)A hard-edged punk sound, black leather fetish suits, hot women, one of them being the musician's girlfriend, and punk's bad boy from Chelsea and Generation X, with that coiffed platinum blonde hair and famed sneer. This compilation is taken from Billy Idol's first three albums, featuring all his best known videos save one.
The first two are taken from Billy Idol's eponymous debut. The stylish "White Wedding" has motifs that indicate that marriage is more a curse than the blessing it's taken for--e.g. the ring Billy puts on the finger of his bride (his girlfriend Perri Lister) is shaped like the crown of thorns, and the kitschy scene of Perri dancing around in her wedding dress while the kitchen utensils explode. But the hammering of nails in the coffin synced in time to the drumbeats in the beginning is a really telling image.
"Dancing With Myself" is my favourite. Yes, this is Billy singing from a rooftop highrise in a post-nuclear city while a band of mutants in gray rags clamber up to here him sing. And when he touches the electrodes that electrify him, he shoots electricity that send the mutants are flying off the roof and back to the ground. And guess what? They recover and start back up again! Crazy or what?
"Rebel Yell" is a performance clip from a live concert, with his ace guitarist Steve Stevens really doing some fiery guitar theatrics, especially when he makes a laser-like sound when he jiggles the slide of his guitar. And doesn't that red-haired girl doing keyboards sort of resemble Cyndi Lauper? But the pumping fist, the black glove with fingers cut out, and studded leather bracelet, that's prime Idol right there.
The haunting "Eyes Without A Face" is notable for a close-up head shot of Idol and a trio of singers with their faces painted purple. I'll bet the scene with Idol standing in the pentagon on fire, with hooded men behind him didn't sit well with the PMRC, or the women who slap their derrieres in tune with the clapping that occurs in the harder guitar part of the song.
"Flesh For Fantasy" has a set of choreographed dancers dressed in black with the painting of a building at night. Nothing too memorable, except that it's the mix from Vital Idol that is used here. "Catch My Fall" isn't too remarkable, but the scenes of Billy in bed and in the shower were clearly aimed for the girls.
The three videos from Whiplash Smile introduced me to Billy Idol. The rollicking cover of Tom Bell's "To Be A Lover" had Billy and Steve performing in a boxing ring while behind them are three backup singers lip-syncing to the music. The one wearing the long black and orange dress is Perri Lister, while the blonde in white also appeared in a-ha's "Take On Me." I can't remember the first name, but her surname was Bailey.
The opening text has a flashing red "Warning" sign, and beneath it, the sober message "Every 24 minutes, an American is shot dead." "Don't Need A Gun" combines Billy and Steve performing on a rooftop intercut with scenes from a convenience store shooting in the menacing urban night, images of a dead body, a gun, cops making the arrest, onlookers looking shocked, bullethole in the windshield, and body haulled of in a stretcher. Also, there's a middle-aged man driving around town who looks over at the aftermath of the shooting. That man is actually mentioned at the end of the song. No, it's obviously not Elvis or Gene Vincent, but Johnnie Ray, the "prince of wails," the "nabob of sob" who died of liver failure five years after the video was released
"Love turned to stone" is the message written in the prelude to The melancholy "Sweet Sixteen", set in a stark dimly lit warehouse. It's in B&W and features just Billy strumming an acoustic, with the lighting really highlighting his platinum blonde hair.
With the exception of "Flesh For Fantasy" and "Catch My Fall," I regularly saw all these videos on MTV. And despite being named Vital Idol, it doesn't have the video for "Mony Mony" originally from "Don't Stop" and then on Vital Idol, nor the infamous one for "Hot In The City," which shows Perri Lister on a cross. However, these are his most important videos, and that's enough for me.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Idol:Vital Idol
0 comments:
Post a Comment