THE VIDEO Scorpions, “The Rhythm of Love,” Savage Amusement, 1988, Polydor
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SAMPLE LYRIC “Ze rhythm of love! / [keeps me dancing on the road] / ze rhythm of love! / [got the groove that hits the bone] / ze rhythm of love / [is the game I’m looking for] / ze rhythm of love / [is the heartbeat of my soooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuullll]”
EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION The camera pans through a depopulated, futuristic urban landscape of oddly shaped buildings (think the Space Needle meets Blade Runner), some of which periodically shoot flames. They’re all done in dark, drab colors but lit by a reddish orange sunset (or smog-filled sky, hard to tell). A crappy looking plane (I guess it’s supposed to be a space shuttle, but from this angle it looks like a fighter plane) comes in from the bottom left and flies between the buildings toward a big mountain (or pyramid maybe) type thing in the background.
A futuristic-looking brunette (her clothes are like Paco Rabanne in the 80s) steps out to look at it, and it zooms on toward this mountain-type thing, which is basically like a mountain but covered in uhhh… covered in the stuff the Terminator is made out of. Not the liquidy silver stuff, but the like, wires and cables and robot stuff. It’s topped off by a super-skinny castle, sort of like an anorexic version of the Emerald City (and also uh, gray and not green). The plane heads straight for that as the sky turns blue-gray and lightning flashes. As the plane gets closer, random plumes of flame shoot up on different parts of the mountain.
Another future babe in a black catsuit thing walks along, lost in thought but still managing to touch herself provocatively. She walks past a window through which the orange sky is visible as she unzips her catsuit. The plane settles down to land on a little landing pad by a rectangular opening in the mountain, but we only see that for two seconds cause as Klaus Meine starts to sing, we see a random shot of a babe mussing her hair with parted lips.
The Scorpions are silhouetted and backlit as they enter the weird opening, then that lady starts sort of dancing a little bit, Tawny Kitaen-style. The Scorps are performing as per usual, but the actual stage appears to be made up of futuristic looking wires, pipes, etc (think a really crappy, like an untalented 13-year-old’s imitation of an H.R. Giger drawing).
Oh wow, they just showed two shots of women in succession that made me laugh out loud. It’s a little hard to tell what was happening cause they were severely cropped and lasted two seconds each, but in the first a woman sort of exposed her cleavage while talking on the phone, and in the second a blonde brandished a gold whip while making what was almost a parody of a sexy face.
We then see a bunch of the Scorps in succession: Klaus, Rudy (with absurdly teased hair), blonde guy I can’t remember the name of. Then we see that the dancing woman is actually sort of bobbing back and forth in front of a mirror while she continues to unzip her catsuit, followed by Matthias who is so into the music (already!) that he has his eyes closed. Then a backlit shot of a woman taking off a bra. Wow.
Oh wow. Again. Wow. As the music picks up a little, suddenly the floor in front of the Scorpions’ stage is covered in crawling, bikini-clad women. There’s a bunch more of different shots of the band members (including Herman) then—amazing—a more pulled back shot of the blonde, she actually appears to be dressed as some kind of futuristic Little Bo Peep. The thing I’d ID’d as a whip appears to be that giant hook that you use on a sheep (god knows how, but I’ve seen them a lot in cartoons). Oh wow, they keep showing her interspersed with shots of Klaus, she’s like playing with her jewelry or something but like…was this her first video or something? The faces she makes are priceless. The brunette’s hair gets blown by a fan one more time, then it’s the chorus.
The various band members nod firmly as Klaus shrieks “ze rhythm of lav!” and we see the brunette dancing around silhouetted behind an orange screen. She’s taking off a men’s shirt, showing that even in the year 3000 or whatever strippers have not gotten that much more creative. The Scorpions' onstage antics (kicking, singing into the same mic) are causing the women on the floor (who I can now see are in torn-up, what I always think of as Les Mis-style outfits) to crawl more furiously. Wow.
Okay, the woman in gold is wearing an enormous cone bra (think what Gautier made for Madonna, but in like a DD) that is covered in gold rope. It looks like she’s wearing a couple of beehives, but I guess this is what we will think is sexy in the future. The woman behind the screen finally struggled her way out of that shirt, and we get a bunch of reaction shots of women making sexy eyes at the camera (which reminds me of Zoolander). Also, I’ve just figured out that the jewelry-type thing one of the women keeps fiddling with is a large pendant shaped like a scorpion.
Okay, verse again, so now one of the women is taking a shower. Matthias (eyes still closed) smiles to himself, and Rudy—between the teased hair and the inevitable porn star mustache—I can’t even bring myself to comment. He’s doing this entire song grinning and leaning forward while standing with legs akimbo. The woman behind the screen is interacting more with the stool she’s got back there now (sorry, forgot to mention—there’s also a pole she keeps grabbing).
In the other room, that one brunette is still in front of a fan, and still engaged in sexy struggle with the zipper on that catsuit. We see more of the Scorpions, then more of the heinous blonde lady, then Klaus mimes the “don’t you close your eyes” line Dio-style, by waving his hands with fingers apart in front of his face. He actually looks like a version of Dio with more delicate features, come to think. Ooh there was a really brief shot of a woman petting a white cat in there—subtlety, always the Scorpions’ strength.
Oh wow! Jeez, they went all out for this one. Okay, there are a bunch of poorly lit boob shots leading up to the chorus, but there is one amazing shot where two of the Les Mis dancers knock their butts together in front of the bass drum. It happens for two seconds, but it is worth the two seconds it takes to rewind and pause. Anyway. Now the brunette is getting into a red sportscar for some reason, and here’s the blonde again—she’s like sitting in some sort of throne, and the thing she’s holding is actually just a bunch of rope. Sigh. She also has an incredibly foolish looking crown thing on her head.
The brunette pulls her legs into the car and touches herself some more for the second chorus. We also see another woman who is silhouetted in blue light and dancing around and playing with her hair. Flash pots have started to go off behind the Scorpions’ stage. One of the Les Mis dancers shakes her ass, and the blonde lady continues to try to make the right face. All the Scorpions continue to punctuate the song with their chins, and also by jabbing their guitars. Now larger explosions are happening on either side of the stage. All of the band members sing along.
For the guitar solo, the camera pans past the torsos of women in very 80s-style bikinis. Matthias dances around like crazy and there are lots of explosions, and for some reason they also show a lot of shots of Herman (everyone else appears to have left the stage in some of the shots). Haha, the women in front of the stage are waving their fists in the air. Oh wow, there was just quite the butt shot. They are only showing these for like not even half a second each. Now the brunette is all the way in the car, but she is sticking her legs (she’s wearing stockings and black heels) out the driver’s side window and rubbing them.
As the vocals kick in again, explosions abound, and that main brunette makes faces at the camera. Whoa, more butts! And now the blonde is sort of rubbing herself with the rope. The brunette keeps covering parts of her face with her hair. Lots of sexy reaction shots (eyes go wide, touch mouth with hand) of the women are interspersed with lots of unsexy reaction shots of the Scorpions. Oh man, now they have all the Les Mis dancers shaking their butts in a row (and the camera is showing only their butts).
There’s also a brief shot of I think the brunette wearing a minidress and walking away from the camera carrying something, it’s unclear what but she is outside. She appears to be attaching whatever it is to the bottom of the Scorpions’ plane. They won’t stop showing the blonde woman. The Scorpions walk away, and we see them in silhouette again (they put Klaus in the middle so he looks especially short).
The Scorpions then sort of evaporate (disappear anyway), and we see their plane lift off. Oh, but that lady’s bomb drops off of their plane -- sorry, forgot to mention that on second viewing, realized she was attaching a bomb to the bottom of their spacecraft in the previous shot. So as the song winds down with the quiet singing part, the ladies’ mountain palace explodes. It’s weird because this whole video had been looking mostly like crappy computer animation, but in this scene it looks like they are blowing up a model. Actually in this scene the whole cityscape looks much less ornate, so maybe they are blowing up a model. The Scorpions definitely very computer-generated plane then flies away as the future babes’ mountain palace burns.
THE VERDICT So I actually wrote the description of this video literally more than a year ago -- in July 2006. That’s crazy. I thought doing what I do now I would have way more time to blog, but apparently being chained to a desk in an office is way better for that kind of productivity than basically having all the time on earth to do whatever the hell you want.
Never the less, this thing has been going on too long for me to give up now, so I’m back. I’m working on fixing up the way this thing looks -- I’m still not so hot with the CSS, but I’m working on it. Or I will be anyway. I still heart the metal, and no matter how many times I move away from it, I always find my way back -- let’s face it, I listen to a lot of different stuff, but this is the only music I consistently like. I never don’t feel like listening to it. Even filthy, filthy tracks like this one.
So, in spite of how exhaustive my description is, I left myself (a year ago) no notes as to the verdict! Well no, actually -- I left a couple. They are these: “Okay uhh, someone watched Heavy Metal a few too many times.” And “One of the most awesome Jonny Quest episodes is where Race kills a scorpion with a whip.” In trying to label this video -- as much as I hate on Blogger, I love the labeling feature -- I realized there is like, nothing that isn’t in this video.
I mean jeez, they’re in friggin’ space, and then all the sudden the brunette is feeling herself up in a car. A car! Not a like, hovercar or anything, just a car. Why is the sports car in space? There are explosions, spaceships, women in every sort of costume, fire, the friggin’ car… I mean really. The Scorpions gave it all they had on this one. Like every Scorpions song, if you only listen to the parts you can understand (basically, “ze rhythm of love!” screamed over and over again), you think it’s kind of romantic (or something), but if you actually look up the less intelligible lyrics, you realize that, like every Scorpions song, it’s hella dirty (“an exploding shot of pleasure / is what I’ve got for you”). Ewwww! I just don’t want to find that beat I’m apparently looking for with Klaus Meine, sorry but true.
P.S.: Like Pigs! In! Spaaaaace!