Great White, "Stick It"

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THE VIDEO Great White, "Stick It," Great White, 1984, EMI

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SAMPLE LYRIC "I'm out on the road, and I'm rockin'! / (Stick it, stick it) / I'm on out the road there's no stoppin' / (Stick it, stick it)"

THE VERDICT Don't let the fact that most Great White songs are either covers or pretty terrible ballads (not to mention the fact that at this point they are way more famous for causing considerable death and devastation than they are for even "Once Bitten, Twice Shy") keep you away from this gem. This is a great song. For serious. They managed a couple of genuinely great songs back in their day, and this is one of them ("On Your Knees" is the other one, if you're wondering.)

This video is no slouch either. Even more than I enjoy songs about the right to rock, I love metal videos that feel like they're from some lost 80s movie that desperately needs to be unearthed. "Stick It" is actually sort of a combination of that with like, a long lost ZZ Top video -- I mean fantasy, babes, a car? That's serious Top territory. And of course, bathing suits of the 80s, which always provide a fun trip down memory lane (or just like, to the ever-pornier American Apparel).

So the video takes us through the (increasingly surreal) misadventures of a youngish teen guy working at a greasy spoon diner that appears to exist well, literally nowhere -- it's surrounded by white space at all times. His boss is a big fat dude with glasses. The colors are very drab and washed out -- the entire diner is more or less gray with some tan and rust, and all the customers are dressed in neutral colors (lots of black).

Things start off pretty normal, with the kid and the fat dude serving the customers sitting at the counter. Slowly, the kid edges away, and heads over to a radio mounted on the wall to turn up the volume.

Doing so causes a sort of video-photo of Jack Russell to come flinging out of the radio, overtaking the screen until we are watching Great White perform. The band is in front of a small crowd of people, and they're lit by spotlights which we can completely see (we can even see the people operating them, always an extra touch of class). Great White are a skeezy band even at their best, and this video is no exception. Mark Kendall is absurdly perky, pursing his lips and waggling his guitar at the crowd. Not-long-for-this-band members Lorne Black (bass) and Gary Holland (drums) similarly telegraph overenthusiasm, and we also need to mention are way better looking than the core of the band, Russell and Kendall (Holland looks like a lighter-haired Tommy Lee, and Black looks about like Rick Savage did around this time, again with slightly different hair). Is it KISS syndrome? Sort of, except none of the various members of KISS have ever been even kind of good looking.



Jack Russell looks, of course, like a total skeezoid. I will forever be baffled by all the anecdotes about the revolving door of skanks that his tourbus was. Him? Really? He's got ratty, thinning hair, and is wearing a white leather vest and a gold chain with nothing else (at least that we can see, I'm sure he is wearing pants. Or at least satiny briefs, ew ew).

We jump back to the diner, where the kid's boss has noticed what he's doing, and yanked him away from the radio. He marches him around to the front of the counter, where the customers watch with blase expressions as he's thrown to the ground. As we see the kid lying on the ground looking up at them, one might notice the perfect fried eggs laying there next to him. Remember those.

We're back with the band for a second, then we return to the diner, where the kid is behind the counter again. Though the customers were eating normal food from plates at the beginning of the video, now there are just these pairs of fried eggs laying all over the place. The diner also apparently is using all its coffee pots to hold slightly blue-tinted water. Remember those, too.

The kid starts to refill one of the customer's water glasses, when suddenly he spots something. We get a close-up of his jaw dropping and his eyes going all wide. What could he possibly see? Come on, it's a metal video, you know darn well what he's seeing! Chicks. The camera zooms out the window, where suddenly we see four women in heels and one-piece bathing suits hanging around a large white sedan. One girl sits on the hood, one lounges on top of the car, while the other two sit partially hanging out the windows, tossing a beach ball back and forth over the top of the car. They all smile and throw the beach ball toward him as they notice his stare. Oh, did I mention the car exists in just empty, white space? It does.

We go back to a close-up of the boy's eyes, then we see that he is still pouring the water. The customer pulls the glass away, and the water continues to pour and pour, splashing all over the counter and getting everywhere. Apparently it really is a bottomless beverage deal at this diner. The kid finally runs out of water, and jerks his head around as if he has noticed something else. Two men we haven't seen before who are dressed I guess as cooks (they have aprons around their waists) are doing a complicated juggling act over the diner counter. Celery, baguettes, pans, and more are tossed back and forth.

The kid looks outside again, and sees all the women now sitting in a row, drinking soda through straws. His attention is quickly distracted though, as his fat boss is coming after him. He looks back outside, and one of the women is smiling as she pours blue water from a coffee pot all over herself.



The boss grabs the kid by the neck again, yanking him around the counter. He shoves a mop into his hand, then points -- the kid is supposed to clean the diner, which is suddenly absolutely filthy, with piles of garbage on every surface. He trudges slowly further into the room.

But then oh, we're back with the band, and Mark Kendall is working his way to a furious guitargasm. The crowd shake their fists, and I love that you can clearly see one guy turn and check whether he's on camera. Congrats dude, you are. I also like that someone else in the crowd keeps holding up a pair of sunglasses and trying to align them with the ones on Mark's face for no clear reason. They're sort of like, "well, as long as we're having to be part of this Great White video, we may as well make the best of it."

Following a long segment featuring pretty much just Mark's right hand, we see Lorne and Jack sort of thrusting away in unison. Jack is indeed wearing pants -- red leather. Could've been worse.

After much screaming and thrusting, we're back at the diner, which is still trashed. Dishes are everywhere, as are those baguettes that were being juggled before. The kid looks disgusted and confused as he walks around, while his boss looks on from the corner. For some reason, the patrons have TP'd the diner, and so now toilet paper is hanging from the lighting fixtures.

The kid looks out the window, and he sees the women getting into the car, which is now facing away from the diner. As they close the doors, we go back to the band, where Jack is encouraging the crowd to raise their fists in unison. We see some girls in the crowd chanting "stick it!" After some shots of Jack and Mark looking and acting lecherous, we see a ridiculous dude in the crowd (with a horrible mustache -- I mean, more horrible than most even) take off his sunglasses and attempt a scary face. I can just imagine some poor AD being like "Yeah! Now show me more metal, more metal, that's it!" Then Jack holds his mic out to Lorne so he can say "stick it!"

The camera zooms out from Great White, and then we're back at the diner. The boss appears to be lecturing the kid, who looks exasperated. Behind them, the diner appears to be on fire. The kid walks away from the fire, his boss, and the filth, and looks out one of the windows, bracing his arms against the windowpanes.

His boss continues to hector him, and he looks back at him before gazing out the window again. Suddenly, he pulls his arms back and punches through the window with both fists, shattering the glass. He jumps out the window, landing on all fours. The ladies open up the driver's side door, and the kid army crawls toward the car (which I'm thinking now is a Cadillac). They all gesture to him to come get in, although the one in the red suit seems underwhelmed at the prospect.



As he jumps in and slams the door, we go back to Great White. The video ends with everyone throwing their hands in the air, and Gary throwing a drumstick in the air. It fades out on a shot of just the drumstick flying through the air.

So given all that, I know there's one question on everybody's minds: Was it all a dream? Is Jack wearing a wig in later Great White videos? His hair looks pretty sparse and ratty here, but especially right up front -- his hairline looks pretty dicey, and I swear there are some shots where you can see right through the middle. And yet within just a couple of years, he's got a lush, full mane of blonde hair replete with thick, straight bangs. On the one hand, possibly he's not just a member, he's also a client or whatever, and he magically grew an incredible amount of thick, evenly textured hair completely unlike what he's working with here. But given that all through their later albums, he's got exactly the same haircut (and never moves his head around that much either, come to think of it), and it's not even a very metal haircut -- do you think it's a rug? I mean, years later, now with shorter hair, it doesn't like it did in the band's most successful years.

I don't know how they didn't manage to use this song in the gymnastics movie Stick It, which if you're wondering was pretty good (and did have some okay music since I do enjoy the occasional Jock Jam), even if the jokes were kind of off and the heroine was seriously the tallest gymnast in the history of elite gymnastics. Dang, now I am wishing I had cable so I could watch (among the zillion other things I'd watch if I had cable) that bitchy gymnasts show on ABC Family. That show looked pretty good.

The one movie alert cinema-going metalheads may have noticed that this was in was the Harold and Kumar sequel (Escape from Guantamano Bay). Good gracious it was horrible, way too topical, and nearly ruined my goodwill toward both the hilarious first movie and Beverly D'Angelo, BUT. In the scene where they are hanging out with George Bush in his little hunting-lodge-type house, you can hear this song playing quietly in the background. It darn near made me burst into spontaneous applause in the theater! Mainly because it was the high point of the film, but seriously, that was the case not just because the movie was awful, but because this song never gets the respect and credit it deserves. Hence, here I am now -- and here you are now. Go listen to it!

P.S.: Remember when I made that whole plan about how I was going to talk less about what happens in the videos and write shorter posts? Yeah, I remember it too. Sigh.