THE VIDEO White Lion, "Little Fighter," Big Game, 1989, Atlantic
Click here to watch the video NOW!
SAMPLE LYRIC "Rise again, little figh-igh-ter / and let the world know the reason why / shout again, little figh-igh-ter / and don't let it impair the things you do"
THE VERDICT This song is so adorably horrible, just like so many of the things White Lion do (except for "When the Children Cry," which is just regular horrible). The other day I made a new Pandora station because I felt like hearing this song. I asked it to combine White Lion, Winger, and Warrant, and boom! This was the first song it played. Pandora's rather genius when it wants to be.
In any event, I've been in the mood for just this type of song -- poppy, inspirational, but with randomly crunchy guitars and a vaguely froggy-sounding vocalist -- for a while. This whole spring has just been a slog of hard work, and so I've really needed the inspiring stuff to get myself to keep at it (and yeah, the Krokus really wasn't cutting it -- especially since we don't even have crocus here on the west coast!). Hence here we are with "Little Fighter," an inspiring song but unfortunately -- not a very inspiring video.
Bracketed by black and white footage of the band walking moodily along the beach (very reminiscent of the "Faith + 1" album art), "Little Fighter" is mostly just White Lion playing on a stage set with about a zillion colored lights. Someone made the decision that the best way to light the video was to shine the lights directly into the camera, making a lot of the video bleached out and pretty illegible. But since all the shots are pretty damn repetitive, it's not a huge loss.
Mike Tramp is at his most teen idol here. I've said it before and I'll say it again -- this man looks like Joey Russo in a wig. Don't even pretend you don't know what I'm talking about, you remember Blossom. You know who Joey Lawrence is. Heck, you probably even remember his other, less successful brothers. In any event, Tramp is a dead ringer and still is today. They could be in some kind of Parent Trap movie about teen idols who are now adults and uh... want their parents to be reunited, I guess. Anyway Tramp is all over this video in a blur of white teeth, blonde curls, and colorful studded leather jacket.
Vito Bratta's also in most of the shots, though he looks way less enthused about being there than the other band members. He's downright subdued through the whole thing, even the solo. I feel like he's just getting the job done. It's especially weird since he doesn't leave the band. In contrast, James LoMenzo -- who is totally about to leave the band -- looks thrilled to be there in his custom Big Game spandex. I'd get started on how much I love custom spandex, but then I'll be back on about wrestling again, and I just dragged readers through a big ol' post on that, so.
Long story short, this video just isn't that interesting. It's really just a lot of shimmying around and making faces at the camera, weirdly (thanks mostly to Vito) minus the usual guitar waving. Why? They could have made such a cooler video for this song. In fact, I have the perfect concept and I can pitch it to you in two words: Baby. Animals.
I mean come on, "rise again, Little Fighter"? I'm sorry, but this just makes me think of baby animals learning to walk. Think about it -- little baby foals and calves and such, trying to stand on their spindly legs, and then toppling over. Or even more exotic animals! Giraffes! Or okapi even! Trying to stand, and falling over, and rolling around on the ground with their disproportionately large heads and eyes. It would be tooooo cute. And it would go with the song. Ohh! And they could feature baby lions, of course.
Then during the most inspirational bits, it could be video of these animals running around! Like "Eff yeah, I figured out how to walk today!!" And running with their moms and stuff. It would be super-inspirational. Plus super-cute. And I mean cute cute, not just Mike Tramp cute. Honestly, if White Lion had made a video extensively featuring baby animals in 1989, people would think they were freakin' visionaries today, and that video would have a gazillion hits on YouTube.
Seriously, try this as an experiment: Find a video of a baby animal (ideally learning to walk, but doing whatever, baby animals always are having troubles with like drinking or eating properly or whatever) on Cute Overload or something, mute whatever audio originally went with it, and play this song. It totally goes, right? I think I've really got something here.
So according to allmusic, this song is about Greenpeace. And yeah, looking at some of the verses in more detail, it totally is. But whatever! I think baby horses are totally also fighters for the earth. Maybe not the sea, but that can be for the baby otters.
P.S.: After all the Joey Lawrence references, don't even pretend you don't get the title of this post.