Great White, "Stick It"

It's Shark Week Again

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

Click here to watch this video NOW!

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.

Scorpions, "I'm Leaving You"

A League of Their Own

THE VIDEO Scorpions, "I'm Leaving You," Love at First Sting, 1984, Mercury

Click here to watch this video NOW!

SAMPLE LYRIC "Ooh, girl, I'm leaving you / yes, I'm leaving you / I've got to go to tonight" (repeat ad nauseam)

THE VERDICT It's almost the fourth of July, so I felt an all-out patriotism-fest was in order. Yes, the Scorpions are German. But this WTF-fest of a video feels like it could only have been made in the USA. There's no apple pie or fireworks (the latter of which, yes, invented by the Chinese, but heavily associated with Independence Day, right?). But what this video lacks in apple pie and fireworks, it makes up for with everything it does have. It's not movie footage, it just feels like you're watching some long lost "late night comedy" from the 80s (as Netflix so charmingly euphemizes it).

The Scorpions' ridiculously adorable old tour bus (not their real tour bus, I'm going to venture) rolls into the town of Bedford, which the sign announces to us has a population of a mere 405. The bus appears to break down or run out of gas or something pretty much right away, which is lucky for the Scorpions, since about half this town's population (or okay about 1/25th of it) is a klutzy ladies' softball league that plays braless in rompers. We're talking uniforms made out of hight-waisted hotpants connected to halter tops, people. If American Apparel hasn't brought this back yet, they will soon. (FYI, they more or less have, without the collar. So I'm sure a collar version is on its way.)

Anyway, these skinny white women, who appear to range in age from about 15 to about 40, are terrible athletes. It probably doesn't help them that they're being heckled by local good ol' boys, or that there's a dog running around in the outfield. One lady is so distracted by seeing the Scorps' bus roll by that she fails to notice the ball laying by her feet, even though we see another lady yell "Get the ball!"



Following their game, all the ladies pile into a diner and enjoy a giant meal of what looks like hamburgers. They all freak out and press against the window, as it's right outside said diner that the Scorpions' bus comes to a halt, and the denizens of Deutschland pile out looking like rock gods. (Come on, it was the 80s people, this was how we thought it was cool to look.) Herman Rarebell is wearing black leather pants and a black leather jacket with no shirt. Francis Buchholz is also sporting black leather pants, but with a sleeveless tee. Rudy Schenker has on the same outfit, but Matthias Jabs steps it up in leopard-print pants, a white tank top, and a jean jacket. Klaus Meine makes it off the bus last, in black leather pants and a red shirt unbuttoned much to far for my comfort.

The Scorpions all pose around the bus, while the women continue to excitedly jam their faces at the window to get a better look. Weirdly, the Scorpions are very well reflected in the window, so I don't think the band can see in. One of the ladies makes an "I'm getting an idea" face as one of the local boys sort of stumbles past the Scorpions. She then says "come on" to the other gals in the restaurant.

Next we get a "getting ready" montage, always one of my favorites in any movie, but particularly 80s movies. This being a "late night comedy," it's also a prime opportunity to show the girls running around in teddies. They all keep running across a porch past a guy who looks like he's in his twenties but is clearly meant to be an old man -- gray wig, reading the newspaper on the porch, dressed like George Costanza's dad. Why couldn't they just cast an actual old man? That's just one of the mysteries of this video. Anyway, he stares after them as they run back and forth. As one of them finishes putting on perfume, we get a close-up of her vanity table and see -- ew!! -- an actual scorpion zipping around.

No sooner do the Scorpions arrive in their hotel rooms (okay, it looks like they're staying more at a bed and breakfast or a boarding house than a hotel), the ladies are all over them, asking them to sign copies of their records. Every time one of them sits down or enters a room, ladies are popping out of closets, climbing through the windows, and crawling from under the bed to get autographs and to take pictures of them with cameras with those old-time flash cubes -- remember those? The things that looked sort of like stacks of light bulbs, and you got to use each of the light bulbs like once? I also enjoy that apparently Matthias and Herman have to share a room, but no one else does.



Next thing we know, the fake-old-man guy is fake-limping down the street with a shotgun. We see the ladies talking to each other in the boarding house hallway, and running back and forth between the rooms, when suddenly the fake-old dude shows up brandishing his shotgun and fake-limping even more ridiculously (he's basically pogoing on his left leg). Um, are we meant to believe all of these girls are his daughters? He chases some of the girls through the rooms, threatening the Scorpions.

Meanwhile, this one lady is walking down the hall, dropping actual, insect scorpions onto the floor. What?! As she drops each one, we see sort of a semi-transparent shot of each of the band members whipping around to face the camera dramatically superimposed over the shot of the insect walking on the floor. Ummm... are we meant to believe the scorpions are the Scorpions? Is this a magical transformation sequence? Or is this lady just trying to like, get a bunch of the girls' feet all swollen up from stings? Maybe she's on a rival softball team. That doesn't make much sense though, because these girls' softball team was incredible horrible.

She turns around and looks pleased with herself once she's dropped all the bugs, who are crawling into the different rooms (no one seems to have closed their doors). It's either this or the guitar solo that makes Rudy suddenly jump up, grab his guitar and run out of the room. The girls are displeased by this.

The rest of the Scorpions follow suit, and they all meet up downstairs in the lobby, where for the first time in the video, we actually see them with instruments playing the song. The girls all run down after them, and pile up on the stairs watching them play. We then get a weird second meet-the-band sequence featuring each member of the Scorpions, in profile in front of some venetian blinds, singing directly to a different one of the women. Matthias and Herman seem to have had some luck in their double room, as their girls are most enthusiastic, while Francis' one just looks pissed.



Without warning, the Scorpions fade and disappear from the room, and we see the women -- now looking much less fresh-faced and all-American, and much more like heavily made-up concert-goers, looking pouty and depressed. Suddenly the lady who was dropping all the scorpions appears in the middle of the lobby (where, for some reason, all of the instruments except the drums have disappeared along with the band). The girls look exasperated with her, and she makes a sassy face in return before spinning on her heel and also evaporating into thin air.

What, what, what!?!? This video is the Scorpions' weirdest by far, I have to say, and they are known to do some weird stuff in their videos. I think it's taking this sort of mundane realistic presence -- they blow into town, ruin all the women, and leave -- and adding the insects and disappearing and stuff, which makes it totally bizarre. Okay, I mean not that the like, sexy women's softball league wasn't kind of weird to begin with. But it wasn't supernatural!

P.S.: I know, this one's not at the beach, but it still feels like a summertime video to me. It also reminds me strongly of one of my favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes, Zombie Nightmare. Seriously, click that link! You can watch the whole thing. The parallels are there, I'm telling you. Baseball? Yup. Babes? Check. WTFery? Can't check this enough times.

Trixter, "Give It to Me Good"

Just Good Ol' Boys, Never Meanin' No Harm

THE VIDEO Trixter, "Give It to Me Good", Trixter, 1990, Mechanic/MCA

Click here to watch this video NOW!

SAMPLE LYRICS "So take me home tonight / like you know that you should / when you're ready to be bad / just give it! / give it to me good / (give it, give it) / give it to me good"

THE VERDICT I was in Seattle a couple of weeks ago and saw this CD in a $1 bin (technically it was a 92 cents bin, I think the 8 cents was tax) and didn't buy it. Even for a mere dollar, I just couldn't own a Trixter CD, even if it included this, their only real hit.

Why the anti-Trixter bias? Well, there's the obvious you-showed-up-to-this-party-six-years-late aspect. (Just because you got together in 1983 doesn't change the fact that your first album came out in 1990 -- and it's not like you hear old Trixter cuts on Metal Massacre.)

But more than that it's that I associate them with the other bands who also made this kind of derivative pop stuff with very bright, jangly guitar and got called metal because they had long hair and power ballads that appealed to the ladies -- think Bad English, Firehouse, and (shudder) Mr. Big. I definitely hate this song much less than I hate "When I See You Smile" or "When I Look into Your Eyes" (which are indeed not the same song), but that isn't saying much. I mean, a song like "To Be With You," makes me want to give up on music. Or long hair. Or both. He waited in a line to be with her? That's a little bit skeevy.



Also as long as I'm ranting: Bad English -- I mean for pete's sake, the singer is the "Missing You" guy and half the band was in Journey. "When I See You Smile" was written by the lady who brought us "Because You Loved Me" and "If I Could Turn Back Time." People, for the last time, long hair does not metal make! By comparison, this makes Kiss making records with Michael Bolton totally okay.

Anyway, I associate Trixter, fairly or not, with these bands who sort of come on the scene in the 90s and still have the long hair, but don't use any product and maybe pair it with flannel shirts (as if that's going to help their cred). In some ways, you can see this as an extension of the Bon Jovi/Def Leppard school of dressing like a regular guy who has a more elaborate than average grooming routine.

Actually this reminds me that I just finally got my hands on the book American Hair Metal (which I highly recommend for the ah-mazing photos), and it contains a pretty interesting and useful typology of this kind of metal. It breaks up glam/lyrical/lite/hair metal in four ways: Glam is the most obvious; colorful, over-the-top style (think Vinnie Vincent Invasion, early Crue, Poison). Frilly is sort of dandaical, adding in some lace and velvet and stuff (e.g. Britny Fox, older Cinderella, half the members of Faster Pussycat). Biker is less makeup, more leather and tattoos, lots of black (so LA Guns, later Motley Crue, the other half of Faster Pussycat).

Trixter fall into the fourth category, Heart throb (as do bands like Bon Jovi and Winger) -- guys you'd meet at the mall. Yes, there's long hair, but they're wearing jeans and loose-fitting shirts with pushed-up sleeves a la Sonny Crockett. Cute, non-threatening (except for Kip Winger), these are guys you could fantasize about, if not bringing home to your mom, then being the kind of nice guy who'd want to meet your mom.



And indeed, the whole point of this video seems to be to demonstrate that Trixter are precisely these kinds of guys. I don't even mean the song, with it's "take me home tonight, like you know that you should" lyrics. I mean purely the video, which shows the band in all manner of regular guy fun and hijinks. From playing in the garage, we're taken to riding ATVs, touch football in the park with some Tiffani Amber Thiessen-esque girls, and hitting a Jersey diner (so far as I can tell, the aptly named Suburban Diner in their hometown of Paramus). And this is not to be outdone by the actual performance segments of the video: PJ Farley can not stop elaborately tossing his hair and Steve Brown sings along while making completely ridiculous faces the entire time.

The weirdest thing is, if you actually listen to the lyrics (especially the first verse), this song is kind of an ode to sluts. Ignore all the cutesy harmonizing -- "and that's all riiii-iiight / I'm just a man, baby" is in response to "got your fancy cars, and your diamond rings / you don't need a love to last." (Wait, is this an ode to cougars?)

Okay, I digress. But really, did all the starry-eyed girls dialing MTV back in the days of DIAL MTV because they thought Pete Loran was dreamy and they wanted to ride around in a Jeep with him actually listen to this? All this "always did things my own way" and "I'm gonna teach you a thing or two / hey girl, you got a lot to learn" sounds at best noncommital, at worst threatening.

(Also you'd better click on that link because it actually goes to a video of Pete and PJ ON DIAL MTV with the toothy John Norris!!! And here he is with 'Downtown' Julie Brown. Wow. The fact that he is actually posting these videos himself makes this even more amazing.)



I mean really, Trixter. Really. I'm sure you don't love being lumped in with all these pretty boy bands that actually feature fairly ugly dudes (again, Mr Big par exemple). I'm sure you want to party it up with Jack Daniels and Jack Russell. But when your music sounds like this, and your videos are like a live-motion version of Non-threatening Boys Magazine, it's not like people are even going to notice your macho lyrical posturing.

Especially when your videos feature you doing somersaults (in jams no less!), playing guitars with 'Slaughter' written on them, and repeatedly giving the camera the thumb's up. And dirtbikes! Seriously, what is the average age of the audience here? We see a silly photo shoot, we go to a diner -- don't get me wrong, you seem like nice guys having a good time (which we always know I like). So why write a song that implies anyone in this band is about to be "bad"? Or is going to show a woman anything more lascivious than (I'm going to guess here) chicken fighting.

I know I usually try not to be this harsh, but this video is testing my patience. It's like one of those bad early 90s college series books for girls (Sweet Valley University or Freshman Dorm) come to life. So listen to my blog, like you know that you should, and when you're ready to be less lame, then I'll hear it -- give me something good!

P.S.: Yes you were supposed to sing along for those last couple lines, thanks.

Krokus, "Screaming in the Night"

The Stuff of Nightmares

THE VIDEO Krokus, "Screaming in the Night," Headhunter, 1983, Arista

Click here to watch this video NOW!

SAMPLE LYRIC "Screamin' in the night / fightin' for my life / I di-iiied for you / I knew it all along / headed for the sun / our loooo-ooove was true"

EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION The video opens with a head-on shot of some bizarrely dressed women doing a high-kicking dance with some kind of strange structure in the background. Because the film has some kind of weird effect going on in order to make the sky all black, it's hard to tell exactly what's happening. Anyway, they do slo-mo jumps and kicks while carrying giant staffs and wearing outfits made of various leather scraps tied to their bodies sort of randomly.

This shot fades into one of a number of plainly dressed people wearing metal masks or helmets who are all pulling a large wagon. We quickly see the band, then see a woman in a black leotard waving something around. Then we see the band again -- the guitarists are standing up on some sort of platform, while the lead singer is clad in nothing but a loincloth (and what the hell is that giant thing between his legs! Who are they kidding! If that thing were real, it would mean the guy from Black Oak Arkansas was hung like a toddler, if you see what I'm saying). He's sort of semi-crucified on a wooden thing.

The camera then pans past a strange open-air structure decorated by mannequin legs. It enables us to see that the Krokus dude is being pulled forward on the back of a wagon (probably the wagon we saw the front of before). Behind him are coming a punch of people in blue-gray coveralls and black hoods or masks carrying a wooden casket on their shoulders while more women do goofy modern dance moves alongside them. Other people walk behind them carrying staffs and such, most of whom are festively dressed in sort of a pseudo-Renaissance fashion.

Next we see more hapless masked men, these ones are using rope to drag along an old car that has had its windows painted over (what the hell was the point of this? I know I could say that for anything I've described so far, but this detail really begs the question). As the song finally starts, we get a close-up of the singer getting all growly as he sings whilst chained to that post thing. Next we jump back to the beginning of the procession, and the lady in the black leotard (who appears to be layering it over loose gray sweatpants tucked into knee-high black boots). She's carrying a helmet, too, and for no reason, the sky has turned red.

Now Mr. Krokus is not on the cross and he has been given his shirt back. He's walking along face-to-face with a Pat Benatar-ish girl in a silvery corset thing, both appear to have their hands tied behind their backs. The leotard lady leads the group up to that big cage from "Rock You Like a Hurricane," only now it's outside in a sort of post-apocalyptic courtyard. We can see pinkish-red clouds in the distance and people (guards?) standing on top of buildings. Along with a ton of masked men, she throws the whole band into the cage, and at the last minute pulls out the girl. The Krokus dude runs over to the fence, and the girl calls out as the lady drags her away toward some stairs.



A bunch more masked folk turn a giant contraption, and fake lightning flickers in the sky as the leotard lady drags the girl through a crowded marketplace full of futuristic weirdos. The lady shoves people aside while dragging the girl. They finally make it up to the same set they use in Krokus' "Eat the Rich" video, which is some statues beside several tiers of stairs leading up to a throne with a giant spire coming out of it. Tons of the masked guys are standing guard all over it, and there are people doing fruity partner dances too.

The lady pulls the girl to the top of all the stairs, where she gives her over to a heavy bald bearded dude who is sitting in the throne. He's dressed sort of like a futuristic biker dude, with an army helmet and vest on but also a big cape. He nods approval and then grabs the girl, who struggles with him. He cackles as they forcibly embrace.

A shot of a fake sunset fades to black to establish that it is now night. A hand reaches out to the face of the Krokus dude, who is sleeping on the floor of the cage. He startles, but then realizes it's the girl. He of course gets up right away to make out with her, but then the evil bald dude runs in and grabs her away. We see the Krokus dude's insanely lame reaction shot as the bald guy pulls out a knife and stabs her. He laughs all crazily as her body slumps to the ground with a line of blood above her right breast.

The scene fades out, and we again see the masked coverall guys carrying a wooden coffin with some dancers cavorting about behind them. They are followed by more of the same guys carrying the Krokus dude (shirtless yet again) chained to a platform thing. The sky is artificial black again, and they carry the whole kit and caboodle into a smallish striped pyramid thing with some statuary outside of it. They load it all in, and the bald dude waves his arm around, and they seal off the entrance.

Fake lightning strikes the point of the pyramid, and the assembled crowd scatters. Lightning then strikes the door of bricks that they just propped up, and it falls over. Lastly, lightning strikes inside the pyramid, causing the chains binding the Krokus dude to disappear, and he sits up and rubs his wrists. There is a small explosion behind him, causing a burst of light from a box. He goes over to the box and finds sneakers, jeans, and a lame, pirate-esque shirt, which he puts on. A trap door opens in the floor, and he looks over and then heads over to it. As he runs he peeks out the main door again, and sees the masked guards approaching, so he hauls ass through that trap door.

Coming out the other side, he finds himself climbing down a ladder into a diner. He looks around the whole room -- yes, typical urban diner -- and is rubbing a hand through his curly locks when he realizes the waitress is the leotard lady. And then, the cook is the bearded dude! And then, there on the TV hanging above the counter, there's him and his band playing on the futuristic set!



He makes a disgusted face, and as that ends the TV changes over to a blue screen that says "Rock + Roll" on it in white and the VJ is none other than the love interest from the future. In his shock, openmouthed, he climbs up onto the counter and walks across it, stepping into everyone's food and knocking over cups and plates along the way. The last four people at the counter (who are especially disheveled and not really eating) are the other band members, and they all look up at him, as does the chef dude from his little window.

The Krokus dude grabs the sides of the TV and sings the final chorus to it, giving it all he's got. The leotard lady/sassy waitress nods her approval. Two of the band members look up at him, one holding a coffee cup and the other gesturing while holding half a sandwich in his mouth. The girl on TV just goes on talking, oblivious to his remonstrations, and he makes many, many wussy faces. The last shot we see is of one of his bandmates looking up at him while pouring the entire sugar container out onto his plate.

THE VERDICT It's been a while since I've done a video that's pretty ridiculous and requires truly excessive description, but whatever, I'm worth it. But is Krokus? Though not pretty boys by any stretch of the imagination, these five Swiss lads are considered by many to be the lowest of the low. The All Music Guide, which normally can find something good to say about practically anybody (at the very least, they find in favor of the bands via their having been "underappreciated," "underrated," etc.), dishes out nothing but bile for Krokus. Ok, wait -- at least I thought they did. Reading this again, it is sounding not so harsh. Jeez, did they retract their previous statements about the band being musically inept opportunists looking to make a quick buck? I'm confused. Oh man, it seems that Headhunter has even been made an album pick.

A-ha! Here's what I'm remembering -- not the band bio, but the album review. Here's but a taste to whet your palate: "Shameless bandwagon hoppers that they were... singer generally makes a nuisance of himself with his grating speech... guitarist Fernando Von Arb's incessant pouting remains an especially horrifying image...." Okay, so it's not actually quite as bad as I remembered. But still.

Do they deserve it? Well, maybe. Much of the criticism involves their having been a crappy prog rock band who spotted a quick buck when they switched to metal (this fad was a precursor to the numerous glam metal bands who switched to heavier stuff, not all of whom are necessarily bad -- viz. Pantera). I'm not sure if the name was a leftover from their trippier days or if in Switzerland crocuses are considered more badass than they are over here (they are, after all, very hardy flowers), though simply changing the C's to K's doesn't make it that badass. It reminds me of that Danish band D:A:D (a/k/a "Disneyland After Dark") -- could no English speaker at their record label tell them that that acronym was not so badass across the pond?



I digress. To me, Krokus' weak point is neither their name nor their willingness to change genres. Their wussiness stems from two things. First, for every single they put out that was actually an original song, they also put out one that was an abominably crappy cover (e.g., "Ballroom Blitz," "School's Out"). Their original songs are no picnic either (particularly "Midnight Maniac," which is kind of unbelievably bad), but at least on those you feel like they're sort of trying.

The second thing is the tendency of their non-performance videos to hinge upon a relationship between the toad-like lead singer (who's also got to be what, like 5'6" max?) and an 80s babe. Like David Coverdale, this dude is no stranger to the open-mouthed kiss on camera. But compared to this guy, David Coverdale is a total fox. Apparently they didn't think the rest of the band was even worth showing off stateside, as they tend to figure into their videos very, very little. Now sure, those dudes are not good looking, but they really believed the lead singer was so good looking that he needed to be shirtless practically at all times? This I find hard to believe.

Also, what the hell happened in this video? (Besides that the record company was like "We built this set, and you need to use it at least twice" -- and apparently later it was lent out for Babylon A.D.'s craptastic "Hammer Swings Down.") I'm guessing it was like, he had this whole persecuted in the future nightmare, and then he woke up.... Uh okay, maybe it's like, he works in the diner, or he lives upstairs from it, and he had this nightmare that he was in the future and his evil coworkers were running everything and he had this hot girlfriend from TV but like, they were unjustly persecuted? And then he woke up and came back down to work, and couldn't believe that like, it was such a coincidence that that girl was on TV? So he decided to make a big mess on the counter? Or something?

Note: To give credit where credit (or perhaps blame) is due, the members of Krokus are vocalist Marc Storace, guitarist Fernando Von Arb, guitarist Mark Kohler, drummer Freddy Steady, and bassist Chris Von Rohr.

Another note: Yes, I'll fix these murky-ass photos as soon as I can -- I am in the process of upgrading my computer to OSX four years too late, so it may be a while before I can actually get anything done.

A last note: It took me fully five years to actually get around to updating these images (9/6/10). What can I say -- while my personal technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, the quality of the copies of Krokus videos floating around out there has remained static.