Faster Pussycat, "You're So Vain"

I Betcha Think This Post is About You  

THE VIDEO Faster Pussycat, "You're So Vain," Rubaiyat: Elektra's 40th Anniversary, 1990, Elektra

SAMPLE LYRIC "Yoooooou're so vain / [insert lots of bad scatting and weird mouth noises here] / I betcha think this song is about you, don't you, don't youuuuuu" 

  

THE VERDICT Faster Pussycat covering Carly Simon? Wha-aaaaa-aat? Where does this song come from? Well allow me to answer that! We can thank an uneven but actually kind of awesome double-album that Elektra put out in honor of the label's 40th anniversary, with bands who were currently on the roster covering classic Elektra hits. (If you're wondering what a rubaiyat is, technically it's a collection of Arabic verse. I think maybe they were trying to play on this being their "ruby" anniversary.) 

 

Anyway, if you don't know Rubaiyat, it's the album responsible for all kinds of random greatness, like the kickass Metallica cover of Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy", and the Gipsy Kings' version of "Hotel California" that everyone knows from The Big Lebowski. 

And of course, it's what brings us to Faster Pussycat covering Carly Simon — two great tastes that indeed, taste great together. There was a lot of drama around this song — the original Carly Simon version — about a year ago, as Carly purportedly revealed who it's actually about. Is it Eric Clapton? Jackson Browne? Some random music exec? Who cares! The entire point of this song is that if you think it's about you, you're probably kind of a jerk. I feel like I have a lot of people in my life right now giving off that vibe, which put it in my mind to do this video.

 

After all, unless you're just here to search for pictures of a young Christina Applegate (which, statistically, a lot of you are), you've probably noticed I've been away for a while... four months almost. Just had too much going on to keep up. I kept just barely getting posts up on time, and then one week, I just missed it. And yet, life went on. And on. 

But as I'm writing this, having just found a month-old email from one of my most devoted readers, I know I miss this blog too much to let it go (and besides, I have to keep identifying which Great White girls look like Kelly Bundy). I mean, it's nearly March — Power Ballads Month! I don't know that I'll be able to keep up with weekly posts, but I'll do what I can to serve up at least some meager morsels of metal. 

Like this gem, which is like a time capsule of what people thought was cool in the early '90s (and what people thought was kitsch). I think in the intervening twenty freakin' years the two have reversed themselves at least once, and now seemingly swung back around, at least from what I can tell by the preponderance of velvet at American Apparel. That said, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous of Taime's fainting couch. I love that kind of useless furniture. (Though I'm not so much with the animal prints these days ... another trend that has definitely come back around.)

 

Not to sound like Stefon, but this video has it all. Sexy women's shadows. Wildly swinging cameras. Saturated colors, including of course the de rigeur Yves Klein blue. Mannequins dressed as cops. Louis XIV-style portraits. Burlesque dancers. Contortionists. A crap-ton of mirrors. Aging beauty queens. Velvet curtains. A woman who looks just like her poodle (or a poodle who looks just like it's woman, depending how you want to look at it). Sunless tanning. Human furniture. Human furniture? You know, it's that thing of when the members of the band who aren't the lead singer just have to sit through the video. (Sorry, no midgets... so far.) 

 

Oh no wait, behind curtain number six-zillion we do finally find Faster Pussycat actually performing the song instead of just sitting on furniture that looks like it got rejected from Singled Out or left over from like, the original Real World apartment (wow, I'd totally forgotten that they had that guy who looked like Matt Dillon in Singles!). 

The boys seriously seem to be in some kind of contest as to who can wear the most velvet. I think Brent Muscat is winning with the red suit. Okay, but then the video ends with the roles being reversed — now the members of Faster Pussycat are playing in the little areas behind the curtains, and a bunch of model-types are posing and preening on the rotating furniture (completely ignoring the band, though I suppose that's the point). 

But for real — they finally let the guys play, and then they just throw tons of other stuff in front of them. Oh wait, now everyone's singing. And everyone's there at once, too. I guess New York's hottest club is the "You're So Vain" video.

Enuff Z'Nuff, "New Thing"

What Not to Wear

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

Click here to watch this video NOW!

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.

LA Guns, "Never Enough"

The Tracii Guns-Kurt Cobain Connection

THE VIDEO LA Guns, "Never Enough," Cocked and Loaded, 1989, Polydor

Click here to watch this video NOW!

SAMPLE LYRIC "(aaaahhhhhh) It's never enough just to hold you / (aaaaaaaahhhhhh) It's never enough just to please you / (aaaaahhhh-aaaaaahhhhhhhh) ooh baby, it's never enough"

THE VERDICT A couple of years before Nirvana shot more or less the same video plus retro costumes, the LA Guns made a video that shows off one of their many talents -- making great, straight-ahead pop. Yes, the LA Guns can rock your ass off -- I mean, just listen to "Bitch is Back" or "Sex Action." But Phil Lewis and co. also made some terrific pop songs, and this, like "I Wanna Be Your Man," is definitely one of them.

In spite of the fact that we see Ed Sullivan show parodies long before this -- think Spinal Tap's "Gimme Some Money" -- I'm going to argue that the LA Guns ushered in a new era here. Though parody videos came before this one (notably "Just a Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody"), "Never Enough" is different in that it isn't really trying to be funny. It's more of an homage than a parody. Given that the LA Guns are certainly no Beatles, it's a bit of a stretch. But if we think of them as like a much less successful version of the Dave Clark Five, maybe we've got something.



In spite of feeling relatively straightforward, this video comes off a bit tongue-in-cheek -- the LA Guns never achieved the level of stardom they pantomime here. But also, in their hammy stage antics (particularly Tracii Guns' exuberant guitar solo), they seem to be giving us a knowing wink. Or to be devolving into self-parody. But no, I mean the LA Guns' various members kicked around the LA scene and did enough time in enough bands that I think they were probably pretty self-aware by the time they made this video. I mean they come off here a lot better than say the members of London (a similarly long-lived band with likewise a roster of went-on-to-be-famous former members) do in Decline II.

I talk about the clothes a lot, but this is a video-oriented blog, hence an emphasis on the visual. And let's face it, with the exception of Steve Riley (who I have heard admit as much himself!), LA Guns are a great-looking band with overall just a great look. Yes, it's harder to tell them apart than the members of say Faster Pussycat, who share their late 80s/early 90s LA style, but that kind of makes them cooler. Lots of dyed black hair, black leather pants, and polka dots a la Theatre of Pain-era Nikki Sixx. And you know I love that.

P.S.: This is by a considerable amount the shortest post I've ever written, so why is it so damn popular? Oh wait... gulp... is that why it's so damn popular?