Enuff Z'Nuff, "New Thing"

What Not to Wear

THE VIDEO Enuff Z'Nuff, "New Thing," Enuff Z'Nuff, 1989, Atco

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SAMPLE LYRIC "Get hiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiigh on a new thing / get hiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiigh on a new thing / Get hiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiigh on a new thing / Get hiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiigh on a new thing!"

THE VERDICT You have to feel kind of bad making fun of ENuff Z'nuff. What can we really do to them that they haven't already done to themselves? Much as I bemoan Trixter or Slaughter, it's the bands who really tried to force glam to keep happening at the very end -- think Nitro or Tuff -- who really get unbearable. But nothing, nothing compares to Enuff Z'Nuff. Except for maybe Nelson, and at least their songs were singable (cue me getting "Love and Affection" stuck in my head. I'm like Cartman with "Come Sail Away," except I'm like that with every song I know. It's a friggin' curse).

Anyway. Even more than any of the bands mentioned above, Enuff Z'Nuff repulsed me even at the time. Yes, you heard that right. As a ten-year-old (albeit one with enough taste in music to hate New Kids on the Block) I thought this band was awful. And no, I'm not backing off it just because allmusic claims we totally don't get them. I know good hard-rock-tinged power pop when I hear it, and this is not it. Want some? Listen to Gilby Clarke's old band Candy. With this band, I just. Can't. Do. It. This song is so hideously repetitive it is hard to make it through more than 30 seconds, which luckily you don't really need to since it just repeats anyway.

The bigger story here is the visual -- which blablabla, that was their problem all along and why no one understood them, blablabla. I'm sorry, but enough really is enough on that one, okay? We've heard it all before. Can't we just be honest and admit that this was not a very good band? Okay, moving on to the visual. This video looks like Lisa Frank threw up all over it. Sure, there aren't any unicorns or kittens, but aren't you kind of surprised there aren't? (Snap, it would improve the video if there were.)



About half the video consists of close-ups of Donnie Vie's face, headband, and ridiculous John Lennon glasses. The rest is Derek Frigo and his dozen or so colorful guitars, Chip Z'nuff doing some kind of Sandra Bernhard impression in a police hat and Ray-Bans, and the occasional shot of Vikki Foxx looking like a long-lost member of the Runaways. All of this occurs on a backdrop of over-sized neon paint splatters -- I feel like the director watched a bunch of Look What the Cat Dragged In-era Poison videos and was like "if only these were more colorful...."

This is interspersed with genuinely bizarre footage of models dressed in 60s clothing dancing around with peace signs, driving in and then cleaning a convertible, and then holding some kind of funeral on a little astroturf lawn. I'm not making this up people, but if you can't endure the video, you'll just have to trust me that this really happens. It's like a really bad episode of Laugh In. Or like a bad trip.

Coincidentally, this song is about a bad trip. Okay, maybe it's about getting out of a bad relationship and meeting someone new, but all the repetition about "getting hi-iiiiiii-iiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiii-igh" implies it's about, you know, getting high. Apparently as an alternative to suicide. Why are their two most well-known songs about suicide? And why do they use the word "high" so dang much?

Ugh, I want to find something redeeming here, but it's like this band just gets crappier. Well, all these bright colors are perking up my blog a bit. There, I said something nice.

Warrant, "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

Swamp Things

THE VIDEO Warrant, "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Cherry Pie, 1990, Columbia

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SAMPLE LYRIC "I know a secret down at Uncle Tom's Cab-iiiiin / I know a secret that I just can't tell / I know a secret down at Uncle Tom's Cabin / know who put the bah-days in the wishin' welllll"

THE VERDICT My boyfriend plays guitar, and every time he picks it up when I'm around and starts playing something, I invariably yell, "play the beginning of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin'!" He always is all "I don't know it blablabla" and best case scenario I get him to play "Cherry Pie," but perhaps this post will provide the inspiration to tackle the lovely acoustic intro to this song.

Speaking of intros, I have to give fair warning now: This post will undoubtedly be full to bursting with digressions, because there is nothing, literally nothing this video doesn't remind me of. Okay, technically, there are lots of things it doesn't remind me of, but... well... why don't we just get these out of the way now?

As per usual, this reminds me of Hanna-Barbera cartoons, and of course, Scooby-Doo. There's an episode of Dynomutt that features Scooby and the gang with a swamp theme -- "The Wizard of Ooze" -- where the villains live in a swamp that looks like this, and turn Big City into Bog City by pumping mud into it.

Even more though this reminds me of the Scooby-Doo episodes that take place in a swamp. In the original Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? there's an episode with a witch and a zombie haunting a swamp ("Which Witch is Which?"). I feel like the backgrounds from that get more or less re-used for the Scooby-Doo Show episode "The Gruesome Game of the Gator Ghoul" which is, you know, pretty much what it sounds like. Monster alligator haunting a swamp.



There must be something about swamps and monsters -- or maybe I just watch a lot of things with swamps and monsters -- because this video also reminds me of the numerous movies they watch on Mystery Science Theater 3000 that take place in the south -- "The Giant Spider Invasion" (which I thought was rural Georgia but is apparently Wisconsin) comes immediately to mind (watch it minus Mike and the bots here), but the one that is most similar to this is probably "Boggy Creek II" which involves a Sasquatch in rural Arkansas.

Though not super-similar to other metal videos (closest that comes to mind for me is Alice Cooper's "House of Fire," which also features the light-shining-through-holes-in-house motif), it's definitely similar to other videos that appear to take place in the south. The first one that comes to mind is Damn Yankee's "High Enough," since that also involves law enforcement, shacks, guns, and shirtlessness. It's also though reminiscent of Alannah Myles' "Black Velvet"... which though it involves a shack and is about the South wasn't shot in the South. What can I say, I'm from New England and apparently really bad at identifying what's actually in the South (that video isn't even in the US, it's Canada!).

This video certainly isn't helping any. The plot is quite confusing, because a) there are a lot of flashbacks and flash-forwards, so it's all out of sequence, b) the lighting is crazy, and half the time there's a big-ass mangrove blocking our view, and c) trying to make sense of what's going on in light of the song's lyrics is damn near impossible. There's no "wishing well" in the video, nor would it make sense for any of the action to have taken place in the protagonist's uncle's cabin.

Anyway, here's the video's plot in order. Small-town cops pull up outside a stilt house in a Louisiana swamp (we know it's Louisiana because the policemen's badges are shaped like the state). The better looking of the two (sort of a working man's Rob Lowe, but from the lyrics we can assume this is Sheriff John Brady) busts into the house and attacks an attractive, bra-less woman. During their struggle, a man comes home and sees what's happening. He rushes in only to be shot by the cop, who then (off-screen, but we see it in shadow) kills the woman as well.



The protagonist (an Eddie Furlong-looking kid typical of the era) and his uncle (think Russell Crowe with a mullet, or a real-life version of 24 from the Venture Brothers) are rowing a rowboat around in the swamp that night, and they see the two cops dump the bodies of the man and the woman into the swamp. They freak out at what they're seeing, and we can infer dialogue from the lyrics ("'Oh my god, Tom, who are we gonna tell / the sheriff he belongs in a prison cell' / 'keep your mouth shut, that's what we're gonna do'").

Once the cops are done with the bodies, Eddie Furlong lookalike and Uncle Tom haul their boat out of the lake, and hurry to a seedy bar, where the Rob Lowe cop is drinking at the bar. They have this moment of mutual recognition, where the camera implies that they have telltale mud on their boots and pants, and that this must let the cop know they've seen him. But based on the general cleanliness of the other bar patrons, either this is not a telltale sign of anything or they were all in the swamp watching the bodies get dumped.

Tom walks up to the bar all casual, but then grabs a shotgun from under the bar and aims it at Rob Lowe. He doesn't see Rob Lowe's partner in the corner (oops, I mean Deputy Hedge), who draws faster, and repeatedly shoots Tom. However, before Tom dies, he gets off a whole bunch of shots that as far as I can tell must spray randomly into the bar. Still none of the other bar patrons seem to have any reaction to the three guns getting drawn, let alone all the shooting.

Eddie Furlong kid runs out of the bar, and here's where it gets even more confusing. The next thing you know, different, apparently non-dirty cops are there, as well as an ambulance, and they're dragging all the corpses out of the swamp. Eddie Furlong ID's the last body, which appears to be that of his uncle (though it's hard to tell because they're a little bit worse for the wear, it definitely doesn't look like the guy who tries to rescue the girl). And that's basically it.

So what the heck happens there at the end? What roused the townspeople to justice? If everyone was so down with the cops being crazy and killing people, why didn't someone just shoot Eddie Furlong? Where did these other cops come from? Did the bad cops dump the uncle in the swamp? The whole thing makes no sense.



As for the non-narrative portion of the video, it's more or less just Warrant playing in an empty room that looks like all those stereotypical "it's the South" buildings -- cane chairs, old ceiling fan, busted apart walls with shafts of light pouring through them. Jerry and Joey are all over this video going berserk with their guitars, but we only see Steven from the side and we barely see Erik at all.

It's mostly Jani Lane, and with good reason -- this video is really his magic hour. I mean, almost all guys have this window in their lives where they look really, really good -- they've gotten tall and muscle-y, but still have the metabolism to pull off eating whatever the hell they want and drinking like fish without getting a gut or a puffy face. Anyway, Jani's really in that window here. Admittedly, it also helps that he's wearing this hat that covers up his vaguely froggy eyes (his worst feature) thus accentuating his fantastic lips (his best feature). All the jazz hands with the random gloves kind of detract from it, but hell, I'll take it anyway.

All in all, though this song completely rocks, I have to question the wisdom of Warrant: Why the hell would they name their song "Uncle Tom's Cabin"? I mean, sure, people recognize it. But they recognize it in a like, hey that reminds me of racism and slavery way. Best case scenario, they associate it with the Civil War. I mean jeez, why not name a song "Anne Frank's Attic" while they're at it!?

Also, I have to admit to having misheard these lyrics basically forever as "nothin' was sleeping down in Uncle Tom's Cabin / no one but the bodies in the wishing well." Seriously! Forever I've sung "nothing was sleeping down in Uncle Tom's Cabin / I know a secret that I just can't tell." So who knows how much of the confusion here is my own, and how much can be pinned on Warrant.

Vixen, "Edge of a Broken Heart"

Truly Outrageous!


THE VIDEO Vixen, "Edge of a Broken Heart," Vixen, 1988, EMI

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SAMPLE LYRIC "I've been living on the edge of a broken heart / I don't wanna fall, I don't wanna crawl / I've been living on the edge of a broken heart / don't you wonder why, I gotta say good-by-eyyyyyyye!"

THE VERDICT Metal is a man's, man's, man's world, but every now and then we have to give some love to the ladies -- and no, I don't mean by looking at the one's who are sprawled out on Jaguars or getting chicken blood smeared all over them. Lest we forget, women can and do rock. Just listen to anything by Bitch.

However, this can be a bit easy to forget given the sexy images of women in metal bands -- take away the guitars, and they're hard to tell apart from the gals posing in the videos. Of course, as I talk about ad nauseam, the men of metal can sure look sexy. (Rather than giving a zillion million examples, just think Zakk Wylde or Phil Anselmo pre-disfiguring ZZ Top beards.) But also of course, given our culture's double standards, we don't think of male hotness as some kind of disability that impedes their ability to play the guitar -- or okay, certainly not in Zakk Wylde's case. Now admittedly, the more makeup, glitter, lace etc. you put on a male band, the more people are going to argue that they're all image, they can't play, etc. But again, we can see this as part and parcel of this double standard, right? Feminized men are not okay in metal.

Vixen were arguably the most successful all-female metal band (remember, most of the other women in metal were vocalists with male backing bands -- think Lita Ford, Doro Pesch, etc.). And arguably, they needed to get extra gussied up in order to be successful. I think though my issue with them is less with their look than with their sound. Vixen has always struck me as being a bit over-produced. This first album in particular just sounds like its all hired guns, which is too bad because if you've seen Decline II (if you haven't and you're reading this blog, what are you waiting for?!?! Click here and watch it now.), you'll see Janet Gardner and Roxy Petrucci all over that movie, and you feel like they're genuinely into it and trying really hard. I always especially like Roxy, who has this weird resemblance to Cheri Oteri, and who gets way more screen time than the average drummer.



My guess is EMI felt like they were taking a big enough risk signing a bunch of women and was like "we're signing you but here's what's happening." I don't know that this was the case with Vixen, but I do know this happens all the time with female musicians. And hell, it worked, at least a little. This song, written by Richard Marx -- if you lived through the 80s, don't even pretend you don't know who I'm talking about -- made a respectable showing on the Billboard charts (topping out at #26 on the Hot 100). Listening to it, you can figure out why -- it's not a bad song, but I mean, nothing happens in it that really grabs or surprises you. You could easily imagine hearing this in the grocery store. I much prefer "Cryin'" ...not that anyone in the band wrote that one either.

But what about the video? Well, not the most happens there either. It's mostly Vixen performing on the usual metal video set -- dark except for spotlights, with cameras swinging around them from every which way. The more interesting bits of the video are the "behind the scenes" footage, which likewise per metal video convention is shot in grainy black and white. We cut to each of these thanks to a hand wearing a white lace fingerless glove and a whole ton of bracelets, scrunchies, etc. reaching across to the bottom of the screen and 'peeling' back the set performance footage.

So what are the ladies of Vixen up to when they're offstage? Well, behind-the-scenes metal video cliches like looking pensive and sleeping while wearing sunglasses (both while on the tour bus), staying in hotels, and looking at themselves in mirrors before a concert. But they also do some sillier stuff, like messing around on playground equipment. They practice their instruments and goof around in a record store. We also get to see Vixen at the gym, wearing more or less the non-lacy versions of what they're wearing onstage (I mean Jan has a thong-over-leggings ensemble during the main performance footage). My favorite part is when they hang out with Rikki Rockett from Poison, and he's wearing this incredible custom-puffy paint Poison jean jacket with portraits of the entire band on the back. I hope he still has that. The part where they meet up with Richard Marx is less cool.



And when they're onstage, they enjoy wearing scrunchy, high-heeled boots -- Janet's are white, Roxy's are black and have elaborate spurs (they may well be the boots on the album cover). Vixen also enjoy bustiers, spandex, and belts. Combined with their ginormous hair -- Janet's is tallest, but guitarist Jan Kuehnemund appears to have just an ungodly amount of it -- and impressive waist-to-hip ratios, their appearance is strikingly reminiscent of one of the era's other all-girl groups. No, not the Bangles. Not the Go-Gos either. I'm talking about Jem and the Holograms.

Which came first? Jem started airing in 1985, and Vixen's first album didn't come out till 1988, but Vixen were around well before then. Did Hasbro know about this? Or was the cultural zeitgeist -- hairstyles growing larger and more elaborate, MTV's shift toward more rock and metal to avoid having to show hip hop, the FCC weakening the laws about marketing to kids -- such that this confluence was simply inevitable?

I guess to really know the answer, we'd need to know more about Vixen. Does some plain Jane transform into Janet Gardner via use of a weird female computer that generates holograms? Let's face it, Janet does actually have a resemblance to Jem's alter ego, Jerrica Benton. Roxy's sister Maxine did later join the band, so there is the sister angle... but did the sisters ever run a foster home for girls? And Jan -- come on, even at the time I thought she looked like one of the Misfits with that crazy raccoon streak in her hair. Oh wait, I do not mean the awesome Danzig band. I mean Jem and the Holograms' key rival. Actually she looks the most like the Misfits' fan Clash, or I suppose like Nancy Wilson with a raccoon on her head.

Anyway. Truth be told, I wasn't very into Jem as a kid, even though you'd think it'd be right up my cheesy alley. Barbie hit me before Jem even existed, and once I had a whole bunch of 11.5" tall dolls, being super anal and committed to whatever amount of realism I could get from my play, it bugged me to no end that the Jem dolls were 14" high. Based on that, Jem was pretty much dead to me, save for a sticker album I got sent once. It was exactly as this blogger describes. I think the idea was to send one free and get kids to beg their parents to buy them more so they could see the whole story. I, however, was content with any stickers I could get my hands on, and thus have in my sticker collection (housed in a Trapper Keeper exactly like this one which is still at my parents' house) a bunch of random scenes (or in some cases, half- or quarter-scenes, since they'd only send you enough stickers to make part of the picture) of Jem et al. dealing with I think a volcano.



Thus at the time I was approximately as into Jem as I slightly later was into Vixen -- basically just not feeling it. I did, however, like Barbie and the Rockers, which Mattel rushed out to compete with Jem. The size difference no longer an issue plus their being released right around my birthday, I had a bunch of these -- Barbie (who came with a four-song cassette that my brother and I listened to over and over on our Fisher-Price jambox), Dana (black-hair, giant parachute pants a la Wham!-era George Michael), and not one but two Dereks (think Ken by way of Kajagoogoo). Once those tiny pink-and-silver-striped lycra pants were off Barbie, they were damn near impossible to get back on, and her little silver leotard thing often didn't want to come all the way up either -- hence possibly why we misheard the lyric "dressing up we're totally in the groo-oove" as "totally in the nuu-uude."

Well, that was quite the digression. We are far, far afield from any discussion of Vixen, let alone metal. But really, at least half of what this blog is about for me is reminiscing about my childhood, so sometimes this happens.

But to bring it back around: If we think about it, Vixen dress more or less exactly like Night Songs-era Cinderella. Janet Gardener and Eric Brittingham have the same hair (okay, technically his is better, but it's the same style). But otherwise, lots of lacy coats, big earrings, spandex, it's the same look. Cinderella did take some crap for it, but I doubt anyone ever asked them if they were "really" playing their instruments or was like "just to be safe, let's have Richard Marx write your songs." Sigh!

Guns N Roses, "Estranged"

Too Big Not to Fail

THE VIDEO Guns N Roses, "Estranged," Use Your Illusion II, 1991, Geffen

Click here to watch this video NOW!

SAMPLE LYRIC "When you're talking to yourself / and nobody's home / you can't fool yourself / you came in this world aloh-one / alone" (Note this is nearly whispered over some tinkly piano. This song has no chorus, so if you don't recognize the intro, I probably can't help you.)

THE VERDICT If you thought the "Is Axl dead no wait is Stephanie Seymour dead" shenanigans of "Don't Cry" and "November Rain" were as over the top as Guns N Roses got, clearly you forgot the final video in that trilogy, the often-overlooked "Estranged." By way of comparison, those two video epics look downright understated next to this monstrosity.

Don't believe me? Okay then, ponder for just a moment what the budget for this video must have been like. I mean, look at what it includes, and tell me this doesn't read like a completely insane person's list of demands:

- Research expenses (looking up words in the dictionary)
- A giant mansion
- A SWAT team
- A rocking Tyrannosaurus Rex. This is like a rocking horse, only it's a dinosaur with handles and a saddle on it.
- Charles Manson tee
- A dozen or so all-white LAPD uniforms (for fantasy sequence; this is in addition to regular uniforms for reality sequence)
- A dozen or so racially diverse child actors to play around your mansion and look befuddled when they drag you off to the loony bin
- A white limo (fantasy sequence) and a black limo (to take you and your fake son to your concert)
- Custom dolphin hood ornament thing-y for the white limo
- Police and permits to facilitate stopping vehicle and pedestrian traffic for several blocks on the Sunset Strip
- Various equipment for Slash to stand on while he plays the guitar solos
- Oil tanker rental
- Helicopter plus Axl stunt double for shots with oil tanker
- Coast Guard helicopter and diver
- CGI dolphins
- Real dolphins
- Not 100% sure, but that one at the end looks like an animatronic dolphin



(Note that if you're really curious about this, and have at least $1.72 plus shipping and handling to burn and a VCR, you can actually purchase the "Making of 'Estranged'" which is apparently "Part 4 of the Trilogy" [shouldn't this tell you something?]. Amazon reviewers tell us parts of the video were filmed in a wave pool, as if this weren't abundantly clear already! To be honest, I'm very tempted, but I don't have anything that'll play VHS.)

It sort of reminds me of when I was in first or second grade, and every time it was someone's birthday, the teacher would have everyone draw pictures for that person of what they wished they could give them for their birthday. Being relatively young kids, and this being the 80s and thus six and seven-year-olds not being considered tweens, we were pretty nice about it -- everyone gave everyone more or less the same gifts, so it wasn't a popularity contest.

Anyway, the most popular gifts included rainbows, a money tree (this was not a check-cashing place but a tree that grew money), and exotic pets. Obviously, "Estranged" has got the last item checked off on the list, but honestly I wouldn't be surprised if they had had to tell Axl the rainbows and money tree were going to put them too far over budget.

I mean I remember around this same time I had a special issue of Life magazine that someone had given me because it was their music issue (I still have it, in horrible, tattered condition). It had an article about Guns N Roses in it -- the text is here, but what really made this article were the pictures, most of which showed GNR having one of their after-show parties at some arena catered as if it were a Roman feast, complete with togas and laurel wreaths, a roast pig carried on a tray, and some really ugly strippers. Compared to this video, that pictorial is downright quaint. (Though let me also mention, you know who else liked ridiculously lavish Roman-theme parties? Executives from Tyco. Though in GNR's case, they were one of the reasons Izzy left the band.)

Or let us remember back to their first video for "Sweet Child O' Mine." All that is is GNR playing the song on a set, with some b-roll of them with their actual girlfriends and a Rottweiler. They didn't need a Coast Guard helicopter or CGI dolphins to know how to rock!



Seriously, it took Guns N Roses barely four years to live out the entire life cycle of the major label rock band, a cycle that used to take bands nearly twenty years to complete! From the underbelly of the Sunset Strip to double albums and eight-minutes-plus songs, beating up supermodels, blowing off shows, and this song, which combined with "Don't Cry" and "November Rain" more or less constitutes a rock opera in my book. The second half (movement?) of this song (beginning with "when I find out all the reasons") is actually pretty good, but it's easy to forget what with how absurd this video is.

In case you've already forgotten (even with our handy list of expenses above), let me remind you of some of the things that happen in this nine minute, forty-one second opus:

- Axl evades an enormous SWAT team by sleeping on top of some kind of shelf above his closet.
- Guns N Roses fans storm an arena for a general admission seating concert. No one gets trampled and Axel doesn't cancel the show.
- During this concert, while the band is ostensibly playing "Estranged," a shot captures Axl's teleprompter displaying the lyrics to "Welcome to the Jungle."
- Taking a nap after the concert, Axl has an out-of-body experience in which he uhh... well, he curls up in the shower in a fetal position while fully clothed.
- Looong fantasy sequence with everyone wearing white, as per above. Between the erratic behavior, crazy mansion, and army of little kids who aren't his, Axl here is a bit reminiscent of Mr. Jefferson.
- Oh did I mention that last section is all shot with some kind of wiggly gel on the camera, while (present-tense) definitions of the (past-tense) word "estranged" show at the bottom of the screen?



And really, at this point, things are only getting started. We aren't even quite halfway through the song! It hits maximum ridiculousness -- well, for the first time anyway -- at five minutes, twenty-three seconds in, when the members of GNR walk up to a large cargo plane... and a humongous CGI dolphin swims out of it. Didn't anyone think to say to him, "Axl, this is kind of ... uh ... maybe not the best direction for the band?"

A bunch of hot women (and their kids) who had earlier been watching live footage of GNR now start watching dolphins on TV, and in an homage to the opening scenes of "Welcome to the Jungle," we see Axl leaning against a store's grate, with TV screens showing dolphins behind him. Yep, it's dolphins from here on out folks.

Axl walks along the sidewalk from the Roxy to the Rainbow Bar & Grill. Beside him, the street is full of water, which is full of giant dolphins swimming alongside him. Still more gigantic dolphins emerge from a billboard above the Rainbow, and then Slash emerges from its door. He appears to be riding on a people mover as he plays the first solo, since he sort of floats past everyone else on the sidewalk without having to walk himself.

Next thing we know, we're on a giant oil tanker (I know, this video just keeps going and going) that must be empty because it's riding really high in the water. We see Axl walking around on deck, and next thing we know, he's jumped off the dang ship. Not sure on this ID, but I think it's Gilby Clarke who inexplicably next appears and throws him a life preserver. Luckily by this time, Axl is thrashing around in what is obviously a tank of water on a set, so don't worry, he's safe. Still, that doesn't stop what appears to be a roadie in a rowboat from coming out to try to rescue him.



Throwing away the life preserver and ignoring his other potential saviors, Axl's drowning until suddenly he finds himself surrounded with what appear to be real dolphins. He grabs the fin on one of them and rides away. For some reason, this causes the water to turn red and the sky orange, and next thing you know a fully-clothed Slash has risen out of the ocean to play the second solo.

Keeping this video's ever-so-tenuous grip on reality vs. fantasy intact, we then see Axl again thrashing around in the ocean, but fear not -- here comes Matt Sorum in a Coast Guard helicopter. Okay really -- how did anyone come up for the ideas for what happens in this video?! Anyway, a diver jumps in and saves Axl, and pulls him up into the helicopter.

The video closes with one of Axl's customized kicks sinking beneath the surface of the water. It's no wonder that ship looked like it was riding high -- apparently the water Axl was just nearly drowning in was about six feet deep! It concludes with what we can only term a WTF moment: A wet Axl, bundled in a towel, sitting next to what we can only hope is an animatronic dolphin, wearing one of Axl's flannel shirts.

I mean really people -- where could GNR have gone from here? Practically every shot in this video involved a helicopter, a crane, underwater cameras, or CGI. I mean, I know metal is all about excess, but seriously, this is the video equivalent of that Enron guy's apartment that had the $6,000 shower curtain and the $15,000 umbrella stand. Sure, everyone needs a shower curtain -- just like any band needs a video -- but did it really have to be that shower curtain? Did it really need to be this video?