THE VIDEO Loudness, "Crazy Nights", Thunder in the East, 1985, Atco
SAMPLE LYRIC "Rock n' roll crazy ni-iii-iiights / You are the heroes tonight! / Rock n' roll crazy ni-iii-iiights / You are the her-oooooooooooooo!"
THE VERDICT Loudness are pretty amazing. They are in many ways like Japan's answer to Spinal Tap, which makes sense in a way since Tap find their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow touring the far east.
But seriously, this video features so many Tap-esque cliches it's hard to even keep them all straight. Let's try.
The clothing! I know, I always talk about what people are wearing. But I can't help it here. Loudness look like they got these outfits from one of those ads they used to have in Circus and Hit Parader that say like "Rock Star Clothes." I'm not making this up, these things used to exist! These companies sold like spandex, sleeveless Union Jack tees, and all manner of studded accessories. Let's review Loudness' apparel here.
Vocalist Minoru Niihara is wearing a white leather vest over a sleeveless "rising sun" t-shirt — they totally sold those alongside the Union Jack tees! He also has on black pants. Most amazing though is that he has on basically white leather legwarmers that are turning his white sneakers into knee-high boots. You know who else rocked this look? Barbie, of Barbie and the Rockers. Yes, I totally had that doll (I think I've even talked about this before), and she had white faux-leather legwarmer things that you could put on her to transform her normal white Barbie heels into Rockers-esque boots.
Guitarist Akira Takasaki has on a full-body suit of red spandex, with a large number of zippers, chains, etc. criss-crossing it. I think he was going for kind of a Nikki Sixx look, or maybe early Dokken. It's got shoulder pads, and separate arm bands — uhoh, I feel a digression about wrestling attire of the 1980s coming on! Don't worry, I'll fight it. This time.
We don't see as much of bassist Masayoshi Yamashita, but he's got on a similar thing in black-and-white tiger stripes. I debated whether this was meant to be zebra or tiger stripes for a minute, but comparing it in my mind to the team-related apparel owned by a friend of mine who is a huge Bengals fan, I've come up with tiger.
We can really barely see the drummer, Munetaka Higuchi. It's kind of amazing — watch the whole video. He's in a zillion shots, yet they have almost always managed to line up the camera such that a cymbal is obscuring more or less his entire face. Munetaka doesn't once get to like make a pouty face for the camera, or wink, or point a drumstick at it, though he does get in some dramatic arm raises. In any event, I think he's wearing a black vest over a sleeveless tee, and maybe some kind of scarf, but it's a bit hard to tell.
The lyrics "Crazy Nights" is astonishing in its sincerity and its focus on rocking. It seriously is like a love letter to nerdy metal fans: Come to our concert, here's what's going to happen, you will feel awesome. Shoot, they should have the Y&T robot get out on stage with them while they're at it!
I think for me the best part of the lyrics is when Loudness proclaim "we're gonna do our best." Oh gosh, the sincerity is almost too much.
Long story short, "Crazy Nights" is basically the Loudness version of "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You (Tonight)." I mean yes, "Crazy Nights" is in no way sexual as "Tonight...," but it's a similar message: "Tonight I'm gonna rock ya, tonight I'm gonna rock ya, tonight."
Wait, no: This is like the Loudness version of KISS' "Crazy, Crazy Nights." But oh snap. Loudness did it first! I know it kind of doesn't matter because "Crazy, Crazy Nights" is literally the worst song KISS ever made (I would rather listen to any other KISS song), but still. It's like come to our show, it's going to rock, you can let it all hang out here, etc., etc. KISS, I can't believe it. Did you seriously rip off Loudness? (I know, I know, probably not — but what is the internet for if not reckless speculations?)
Wall o' amps + guitar face Akira is seriously channeling Nigel Tufnel in this video. Loudness have set up gigantic walls of Marshall amps on either side of the stage which they use to good effect here, since besides some colored lights (and let's not forget the gong) they don't really have much happening onstage. In any event, Akira uses them the most, doing total rock star poses and making all kinds of guitar face in front of them.
The gong! Who started the whole gong thing? Was it Neil Peart? I don't know the answer to this. But I remember reading a thing in Spin magazine years ago — I think it was in some kind of list issue — the gist of which was you can tell what kind of show you're in for just by looking at the drum kit. A gong behind the drummer meant it was about to rawk.
This video doesn't disappoint in this regard, with a whole sequence of Munetaka banging the hell out of that gong. Yes, we can't actually hear it, but it looks cool. Even if writing about it is making me get the awful Power Station cover of "Get It On (Bang a Gong)" stuck in my head. Ughh.
It's Tap-tastic, right? Then again, there are aspects of this video that aren't as relevant to Spinal Tap that are still worth mentioning. The following aren't Tap-related, but I would be remiss to talk about this video without mentioning...
The fans Do the people in this video even know they are in this video? And I don't mean the people doing the chanting (we'll get to them below). I mean the couple of throwaway shots they have of metal fans to try to convince us that Loudness are performing in front of an audience — this despite the fact that it could not be more obvious that they're not.
There are a couple of versions of this video floating around — the performance parts remain the same, but the fan footage (and the chanters) change. In most though, you get to see a blurry, red-tinged shot of what appear to be a group of pre-teen-ish white boys with short hair sort of bopping along to the music.
In others, you'll get to see a bunch of Japanese fans leaning over a railing. Trust that in either case these people are not watching Loudness perform as we see them during this video. But again, the bigger question — were the people in this footage ever watching Loudness anywhere?
The chanting! For most people, this song's nonsensical chant of "M! Z! A!" is the most memorable bit. For years I assumed that this was an abbreviation that meant something in Japanese. No. What I have since heard is that "M! Z! A!" was initially put in as a placeholder — they knew they wanted to have a chant, but didn't know what. In the end though, they just kept its kind of nonsense chant.
I just tried to substantiate this version of events and succeeded: In an interview with Metallian.com, Minoru says, "It is like shouting 'hey hey hey' or 'wow wow wow' or whatever. Except M, Z and A came out of me. I have been asked this question and I used to tell people it stands for 'My Zebra Ass.' Of course, that's nonsense."
Also apparently they wrote all the music for this song before writing lyrics, which may explain some things, like why the guitar's so badass, but the lyrics are so, well, see above!
In any event, in addition to being sonically memorable, this video also makes the chant visually memorable, as we see all different people doing the chant.
We first see the band members do it. But we also get to see Japanese policemen, school children, even a woman dressed as a geisha. Depending on what version of the video you watch, you'll see different people doing the chant.
They also do collages of the letters a couple of times, using letters from signs, a varsity jacket, etc., to get the message across. It's not Tap-esque, but you've still got to love the chant. Plus it allows them to do a couple of quick "meet the band" sequences — win-win.