Great White, "Stick It"

It's Shark Week Again

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

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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.

Dokken, "Dream Warriors"

Mr. Really Scary

THE VIDEO Dokken, "Dream Warriors," Back for the Attack, 1987, Elektra

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SAMPLE LYRIC "We're the dream warriors (dream warriorrrs) / don't wanna dream no more! / we're the dream warriors (dream warriorrrs) / and maybe tonight, maybe tonight you'll be gone"

THE VERDICT It's always tough to decide what video to cover each week, so any time some outside event prompts me to have an inspiration, I take it. Such is the case with this week's video, prompted by last week's release of a new remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Why they had to make a new version of this, I don't know, given that they've kept the plot almost exactly the same (and that the original was so critically acclaimed).

Anyway, it's much, much easier to just remake an old movie than to come up with anything new, so maybe I should save this post for the inevitable remake of The Dream Warrior. But given that it's more likely they'll either a) give up on remaking this series or b) take it in a completely different direction, let's just look back on this one. (Which, now that I'm thinking about it, seems to be the most well-regarded of the sequels, which probably means it will get remade. Sigh.)



The gist of ANOES3: The Dream Warrior is that Patricia Arquette has the power to bring other people into her dreams, allowing the characters (under the tutelage of the heroine of the first movie, who is now a therapist at the hospital where they have all been committed) to team up to fight Freddy.

This was Patricia Arquette's first movie, but heck, her career has kind of come full circle, right? From Dream Warrior to Medium: She might not have reprised her Elm Street role in The Dream Master, but to this very day she's still playing women with creepy dreams.

The video kicks off with Patricia Arquette making a sort of little craft dollhouse out of what appears to be a popsicle sticks and some old copies of Circus magazine. It comes out half looking like the creepy dollhouse thing that's actually in the movie, and half like the creepy dollhouse thing from Quiet Riot's "Twilight Hotel" video.

Some of the next scenes in the video more or less mimic a lot of the first scenes of the movie -- Patricia Arquette dreams about seeing a little girl go into a rundown house, follows her in there, next thing they're in a boiler room, next thing "Freddy's home!" and they need to GTFO. A point of difference, however: In the video, Mick Brown is somehow drumming inside the chamber that heats the boiler!



I should clarify that unlike nearly all other videos from movie soundtracks, "Dream Warriors" does not feature scenes from the movie intercut with scenes of the band performing. Instead, it has actual sequences that appear to have been filmed just for the video intercut with scenes of the band performing. Yes, this video relies heavily on reaction shots: Cut to George Lynch. Cut to Patricia Arquette looking repulsed. Cut to George Lynch. Cut to Patricia Arquette smiling. And so on and so forth.

While most of the action takes place in the abandoned house, Dokken appear to be playing in some kind of papier-mache cave. The closest we see to a genuine interaction where Nightmare characters appear to come into contact with the band is when Freddy's arm drags George Lynch backward through the wall. Freddy is so obscured in this though it's hard to say if it's actually Robert Englund or just someone in a felt hat and claw glove. Never the less, it's more love than the Vinnie Vincent Invasion ever got.

And as per always, Dokken are killing it. Okay technically Don is looking pretty old and tired. But Jeff Pilson has teased his hair to new heights, and makes really intense faces as he does the backup vocals. George as per always is my favorite. He has his Mr. Scary guitar, and his sleeveless tee is making him look extra lanky (pre-body builder George is sooo much hotter than post).



Long story short, I totally don't get the remake thing. They're all "we're reinventing it for a new generation." Umm, as far as I can tell from everything I've read, the main thing they're changing is that the teens in the movie were all molested by Freddy as children, which while adding an upsetting undertone isn't exactly a game-changer. I'm also assuming that the new "more serious" Freddy won't be rapping with the Fat Boys anytime soon.

And I know, I know, blablabla CGI blablabla, but isn't it kind of cooler being like "damn they did that with pancake batter" or even just like, tons of red dye and corn syrup than just "oh yeah that's computers." It's making buckets of money, sure, but critics sure seem to hate it. But you know, buckets of money, so. They've already contracted a bunch of the actors for one or both of two planned sequels. Let's just hope they bring Dokken back for the third one.

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.

Bon Jovi, "Living in Sin"

Parents Just Don't Understand

THE VIDEO Bon Jovi, "Living in Sin," New Jersey, Mercury, 1988

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SAMPLE LYRIC "Baby can you tell me, just WHERE we fi-it in / I call it love, they call it living in sin / is it you and me or just this WORLD we li-ive in / we're living on love, or are we livin' in sin"

THE VERDICT I have to give this song the award for the greatest ode to premarital sex (sorry, Winger). So what if the allmusic review claims that Bon Jovi's "trying to recreate Born to Run using cheaper materials." I don't know man but for me, this song puts JBJ dangerously close to Springsteen territory. Let's face it: No matter how I really feel about the state, if there's one thing I love, it's a good story-song about doomed lovers from New Jersey. The Boss is king in those parts -- I mean, "The River," "Atlantic City," etc. -- but Bon Jovi's no slouch.

And "Living in Sin" is the best of his story-songs -- though all the details about squabbling parents and Catholicism don't do it for me, his voice is so choked with emotion at the song's opening that it brings a lump into my throat nearly every time. And the video -- oh, the video. It's a total sobfest!



To review: This is the video MTV originally banned back in the day because it was too racy, though I'd argue they actually banned it for a couple of reasons. One, it contains a lot of Catholic imagery, and this was just a little before the whole "Like a Prayer" controversy. If the church didn't enjoy Madonna burning crosses and getting stigmata, I don't think they were going to exactly embrace Bon Jovi showing a vaguely sexy communion and crossing himself repeatedly while singing about the hypocrisy of religion and the idea that love is more important than the legality of one's relationship.

Two, the video is actually not that racy -- lots of clenched hands and unidentifiable swaths of bare skin (between the long hair and the lights being out, there are a lot of shots where it's not clear who we're looking at). This is particularly true of the shorter version, which omits the one brief peek of silhouetted side-boob (see below for an overly-long discussion of the different versions.) Call me crazy, but I think the bigger problem is that it shows sexuality in a positive, loving way -- this is no "Girls, Girls, Girls," which shows way more skin even in the censored version they show on TV. It also has way less nudity than Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game," which has a very similar overall look and feel. Compared to both of those, too, the shots in this video are too quick to really figure out what's going on; you kind of just get a sense of what you're seeing. Which at least for some of us is, admittedly, probably more titillating than the brazen sexuality of say, Motley Crue's love letter to the ladies of the Body Shop.



Instead of Sunset Strip strippers or Helena Christensen, we get a couple of people who actually look young (particularly the girl -- the guy looks vaguely like the friend who dies in "18 and Life"), and who for metal videos are strikingly good actors! They're adorable together, and he's so affectionate with her, it just ... oh no, here it goes. I'm getting teary. It was going to happen at some point, so let's just let it come. Anyway, they're a pretty realistic couple in the sense of they look like people you could've met in New Jersey circa 1988. I feel like this as well was likely part of MTV's problem with the video -- these folks look underage.

There's also an interesting class aspect in here -- while in most Bon Jovi songs, its implied both lovers are working class (think his other big "Living" song, i.e. "On a Prayer"), this video makes it appear that the boy is working class while the girl is middle class. Her family dresses neatly and eats dinner around the table, his keeps a junker car in the front yard and eats in front of the TV. So the video adds the implication of disapproval of downward mobility to the whole no-sex-before-marriage thing (in other words, it's not just the sex her parents disapprove of, though we can assume they disapprove of that too).



But they're in looove! I mean just look at these two, on the beach, in the car, at a motel... can't anybody take the "if you're going to do this, let's do it at home and be safe" approach? I can't stand the thought that this couple isn't going to make it!

If you see the full version of this video, it includes bits before and after the song ends that give a bit more context (it also includes more explicit sexuality than the shorter version, which is also considerably tamer). Both show the girl having dinner with her parents, and standing up to look out some large windows (or maybe French doors?) out to the street. The beginning includes a voiceover (we assume from the boy) saying, "There's always something that we have to do for them, but this is one thing that we have to do for us."



In the longer ending, we see the girl looking out the window again, and the boy's car driving by. We then see the girl running out to the boy's car. Some folks claim this means she's decided to run away with him. However -- since a) she's wearing different clothes and b) we also see this shot of her running to the car in the beginning of the video (when they're leaving for the motel?) -- I've always taken this to be a memory. In other words, she's looking for his car, but it's not there anymore. Noooooo!

Then again... there's also the shot of them being discovered in bed at the beginning of the video, which is obviously foreshadowing and repeats again at the end. So maybe... hmm. Maybe the whole intro is foreshadowing her leaving with him at the end. But doesn't she need more than that tiny backpack? I mean that'll barely hold her Aqua Net, let alone her enormous supply of giant hoop earrings! Nonetheless, I think further study is required to solidify my interpretation of this video. Are they truly star-crossed, or is this "Tommy and Gina: The Early Years"?

P.S.: Yes, I got the idea for this title from Parks and Recreation.

Twisted Sister, "I Wanna Rock"

We Don't Need No Education

THE VIDEO Twisted Sister, "I Wanna Rock," Stay Hungry, 1984, Atlantic Records

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SAMPLE LYRIC "I wanna rock! [ROCK!] / I want to rock! [ROCK!] / I wanna rock! [ROCK!] / I want to rock! [ROCK!]"

EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION We briefly see a classroom filled with kids talking loudly and throwing paper at each other, then cut to a pair of legs clad in slacks and men's dress shoes striding in authoritatively (the sounds of the kids' ruckus still audible throughout, along with the sound of the shoes hitting the linoleum). Suddenly, all the kids stop what they're doing and face the camera, and one kid runs through the room to grab his seat.

The camera pans up from the feet as the teacher makes it to the front of the room, and in addition to the fact that he's wearing a suit and bowtie, we also recognize that its Niedermeyer, the mean ROTC dude from Animal House. He smiles maliciously at the students. He says "hello, students" and snaps his fingers, making (from the sound of it) a door close and all of the kids sit straight up in their seats.

Taking off his jacket, he continues, "School has begun. The summer is over. I am in command." The students all groan and look down, and he says, "What was that? For that little outburst each and every one of you will spend three hours in detention, today, immediately after school, in the basement." The volume of his voice increases as he speaks, and he begins to walk up one of the aisles between the desks.

He stops beside one desk, and we see him looking incredulous. "What do you think you're doing?" Then we see a chubby rocker kid, with longish brown hair and a jean jacket, looking sheepish. The teacher holds up a hardcover book on which the kid has just scrawled a large "TS" Twisted Sister logo. Continuing to look stunned, the teacher says "Twisted Sister?" He then begins to get pretty histrionic, while the kid nervously looks on. "What kind of a man desecrates a defenseless textbook? I've got a good mind to slap your fat face." With that last line, the teacher, now obviously sweating, grabs the kid's cheek in his hand.



The teacher continues on, now yelling hysterically. "You are destroying your life with that, that garbage. All right, 'Mister Sister,' I want you to tell me, no, better yet, stand up, and tell the class," as he pulls him to his feet. "Whatta you wanna do with your life?" The kid, standing there all pitifully, suddenly cries out in the voice of Dee Snider, "I wanna rock!" and with the first chorus of "rock!" spontaneously transforms into Dee Snider, just as four of his classmates instantly appear as the other members of the band. This causes the teacher to be blasted upward, out of his shoes (which we quickly see on the ground, smoking). His head breaks through to the floor above, which is apparently the gymnasium -- as he looks befuddled, a basketball bounces just in front of his head.

He continues to make panicky faces, and a basketball player (who we see only as a pair of legs) appears in front of him, dribbling a ball. Meanwhile, back in the classroom all the kids have left, and Twisted Sister have made their way to the front of the room, where they grab the teacher's wildly kicking legs. They push him up through the hole in the ceiling, and we see him fly through the air in the gym.

We actually hear him yelling, even though the song has begun. The teacher flies through the basket, taking the net and rim down with him, and we see the scoreboard give Twisted Sister two points (for those keeping score, its Twisted Sister 02, Teacher 00). The teacher, with the net and rim twisted around his head, makes a growly face.



As the first verse begins, we're outside the school where we see a guy laying cement (surely, that won't come into play later!). In the background, we can see a group of people advancing (the video's too poorly lit to really see who it is). For the first big "No!" we see a concert-style shot of a bunch of kids shouting along, then we see Dee in full makeup for his first big "nono, nono, nooo." Okay, now that the people are getting closer, we can see that it's Twisted Sister along with a bunch of fist-shaking kids walking forward. The guy laying cement stops what he's doing to gesture to them to stop.

Then we cut to the teacher, who's up on the roof of this sort of breezeway thing. He sees the crowd coming and looks back with a devious expression. He then crawls toward the other side of the roof. For the second round of "no"s, we're back at the concert again, first seeing Dee, then A.J. Pero, then J.J. French, then Dee again, showing off his pasty midriff. As we launch into the chorus, the teacher jumps off the roof at the kids running by below. Of course, though, he jumps straight into the wet cement that they're all running past.

Dee opens chainlink doors, then we see the teacher lift his cement-covered face with an annoyed look. We then see kids yelling "rock!" along with the chorus. There's one really overexcited blonde kid wearing studded wristcuff-style things who is kind of amazing. They all rock out, and we cut between them and Twisted Sister, who are there with them. We then see the teacher sneaking out toward them, holding a grenade. Smiling, he pulls out the pin, and then throws the pin so it lands right at Dee's feet.

We now see a shot that shows us that all the kids are sitting in bleachers beside a pool, with the band standing in front of them with their backs to the pool. The second verse begins, with Dee and kids singing enthusiastically, then we see the teacher grinning. He holds his hands to his ears waiting for the explosion, then realizes that in one hand, he's holding not the pin but the grenade. He looks over at the grenade in horror. After seeing Dee sing, we then see the teacher trying desperately to throw the grenade away, but for some reason it is stuck to his hand.

As the second chorus begins, with Dee crawling through the railing around the bleachers and the kids in the audience enthusiastically headbanging, the teacher jumps into the pool. On the second "I wanna rock!" we see the explosion lifting him straight up out of the pool with water going everywhere, even though when we see the band the pool water behind them is absolutely placid. The teacher's ascent is stopped by the diving board, which he sort of ricochets off with the bottom of with his head.



For the bridge, Dee & Co. go back inside the school, and now on the "rock!"s we see a line of kids banging their heads into lockers. These are interspersed with shots of Twisted Sister coming down the hallway. We then see the teacher making wily faces, and he starts to sneak through a door holding several sticks of dynamite (we saw him just a few seconds before setting up the detonator thing). As Jay Jay kicks into the guitar solo, we see the teacher crawling along the ground holding the dynamite in his mouth.

In the meantime, a butterfly is buzzing around the uh… I don’t know the word for this… the t-shaped bar you push down on to make the trigger the explosion. It's marked "danger." We see the teacher crawling behind Jay Jay's legs, placing him now somehow onstage behind the band. But outside, the butterfly has settled on the t-shaped thing, and its delicate weight is enough to push it in. The dynamite of course explodes, and the teacher is blasted straight up in the air in a giant plume of smoke. Somehow, this also causes the butterfly to explode (or at least, its wings to snap off).

The teacher is caught by people in the crowd, and the band continue to rock out. The crowd pump their fists with every "rock!" We then see the teacher crawling down one of the school's hallways. He opens a door marked "Principal" and crawls into an office as we see each member of the band yelling "rock!" The teacher pulls himself up on the desk, and the person at the chair behind the desk spins around. It's Flounder, the fat pledge from Animal House. He gleefully says, "Oh boy, is this great!" then sprays the disheveled-looking teacher in the face with a seltzer bottle.



THE VERDICT It's weird how many battles Twisted Sister felt they had to fight, since they're so patently inoffensive. Yes, wearing makeup in a most unattractive way is odd, but it in no way marks them as offensive in the way that the bikini-clad strippers and casual pseudo-occultism of other bands' videos might to some eyes. Never the less, Dee Snider in particular has always been willing to fight for rock, as a mostly self-appointed spokesperson for the metal genre.

It seems a lot of people at the time were not that into him as a voice for metal, but at the same time, you didn't see most of those lads testifying before the Senate, did you (you did however see Frank Zappa and uh, John Denver -- and no, for the record, I'm not happy about having to link to a site that bills itself as a "a conservative news forum," but it was the only place I could find the excerpt -- and honestly whatevs, because Dee has since gone on to make peace with Al Gore).

While I don't always agree with Dee's opinions on things, I will say that he is much more well-spoken than many of these folks as well as being a very thoughtful person, so its not surprising he puts himself into the positions. Hey, he was also the host of the original rock program on MTV, Heavy Metal Mania, which eventually got turned into Headbanger's Ball (sans Dee).

It is weird though that people would go after Twisted Sister, and the fact that they did has got to be all about the makeup. Everything else about them is very, well, teenage, for lack of a better word. Actually, pre-teen. The majority of their hit songs are pretty much about rock, rocking, and one's rights thereto. Their two most famous songs, this one and "We're Not Gonna Take It" are both basically about the struggle between headbangers and various authorities over the right to play music loudly (whether you're the one actually holding the guitar or you're just playing it over a stereo). Both feature almost exactly the same plot, with a hapless young male turning into Dee Snider and the dude from Animal House (in this video as a teacher, in the other as a father) attempting to thwart the band's rocking.

Both videos are very intentionally cartoonish. I have heard Dee Snider say multiple times that they wanted the videos to seem like Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons, and they definitely succeed in that. Honestly, practically the only difference is that we don't see Neidermeyer receiving all his bombs and stuff in big boxes labeled "Acme." They aren’t really violent (they’re actually a lot less violent than the Roadrunner cartoons). They’re basically fun, and definitely made to appeal to a young audience (the kid in this video looks 16 max, the kid in "We're Not Gonna Take It" looks significantly younger, maybe 14).

If I had been the PMRC (shudder, shudder) would I have been worried about the youth of America listening to Twisted Sister? No. Yes, all their songs are about rebellion, but only in a very mild sense. They seem really to be more about affirming the unity of the people listening to the music than genuinely plotting the overthrow of those who would make them "turn it down." "We're Not Gonna Take It" made the "Filthy Fifteen" for its "violence." But bear in mind that Madonna's "Dress You Up" also made it on for "sex"! Trust me, there are much more lewd innuendoes out there than "gonna dress you up in my love."

It's like once they'd made it past W.A.S.P. and Prince and his army of protégés (Prince, Sheena Easton, and Vanity all made the list with easily the dirtiest lyrics of the bunch -- the Prince song, "Darling Nikki," is anecdotally the one that started the whole mess. If only Kristen and Karenna hadn't had that copy of Purple Rain, America might be safe for rock!).

Okay, wait, I am getting off track. Point is, it's like they were looking for anyone to fill out the rest of that list just so they could keep the alliteration going (I guess "Filthy Five" didn't sound threatening enough). I guess the idea of the youth of America putting on blush and eyeliner was enough to make this band scary. It's weird to me because to my mind, hell-o, it's totally possible for guys to look hot in makeup, just look at Poison. But then again, other bands… I guess maybe we should be glad Iron Maiden never recorded a song called "Can I Play with Gender?"

Dio, "Rock N Roll Children"

Dio is for the Children

THE VIDEO Dio, "Rock N Roll Children," Sacred Heart, 1985, Warner Brothers

Click here to watch this video NOW!

SAMPLE LYRIC "Rock n roll chilllldren! / uh-looone uh-ga-ai-ai-ai-ain / Rock n roll chilllldren! / without a fri-ie-ie-iend / but they got rock n roll!"

EXCESSIVELY DETAILED DESCRIPTION The video opens with a lengthy prologue that is usually cut up, but I'll present it here in full because, you know, I'm like that. Stuff that is in brackets is what usually gets cut, no brackets means it's what you'll always see (if that is, like me, you are often in circumstances where you would see the video for "Rock N Roll Children").

[The video opens on a dark, damp street, with the camera hovering above it. A man walking towards us drops a newspaper in a garbage bin while another man, walking away from us, approaches a girl waiting beside a building. Even though costumes will soon place us firmly in the 80s, a car from the 40s or 50s is visible parked on the street.]

[Camera zooms in behind man's head: "Excuse me, I think you're really sexy."]
[Close up of girl's face. She's approximately 14 and definitely not sexy: "Get lost."]
[Guy's head, from side: "Hey, I was just saying I like you. I think you're really beautiful."]
[Girl shrilly interrupts him: "I said beat it!"]
[Super-hot teenage boy approaches, gently shoves guy: "Yeah, beat it!"]
[Guy moves away: "Hey, you know you should be more polite."]
[Girl, turning toward him: "And you should mind your own business."]
[Hot guy: "Yeah, I said beat it." Shoves other guy's chest.]
[Guy, pointing at hot guy and turning away: "Watch your step."]
[Girl rolls eyes at hot guy, who's looking hot -- he totally looks like a young George Lynch! Other guy, still pointing, finally walks away.]
Girl opens her arms in exasperation. "You're late."
[They start walking down the street. Hot guy: "Hey, I rescue you and you complain?"]
Girl, upset: "Where's the guitar?"
Guy, looking especially hot: "I wanted to..." (Girl interrupts: "What's in this bag?", rummaging through the shopping bag he's been carrying the whole time.) Guy: I wanted to talk to you about that."
Guy: "You see, I sold it."
Girl, incredulous, or at least incredibly pissed: "You did what?"
Guy: "I got myself a job, okay? But I needed to invest a little money."
Girl: "You gotta be putting me on!" [Points at herself and says, "Hey, that was mine too, you know!"]
Guy pulls valet hat out of bag. "Come on...(silly voice) Can I park your car, madam?"
Girl: "This is it. This is the end. You look path-et-ic." She turns away from him.
Guy, indignant: ["Look, I could pay for the guitar in a couple of weeks.] I could be making 200 bucks a week."
Girl, disgusted: "Oh, so you sold out. Yeah, well maybe I'm getting out now, too!" Lightning flashes and they both look around, startled. Thunder crashes.
Guy: "Crazy weather..."
And the song at last begins as the girl pulls the guy into the dusty curio shop they have been standing beside the window of the whole time.

The camera's above them as they enter the shop, which is dark, deserted, and full of crap like empty bird cages and old globes. As lightning flashes again, we first see Ronnie James Dio, who's looking rather dandaical in a white collared shirt with some kind of large brooch at the neck and a rather foppish black jacket. He's expressionless as lightning illuminates his face, and since he's pretty much out of context with what's been happening so far, we can't tell where he is.



The girl and boy pause to look into a crystal ball (which contains something we can't see) while a marionette spins over their heads, then we're back with the lightning and RJD as he begins to sing. We cut away from him, and back outside the mean guy is back, gesturing toward the curio shop, and he's got a cop with him (imagined dialogue: "See, officer? The chick I was sexually harassing was right here").

The boy and girl lean in close to the crystal ball, but its still unclear exactly what's inside (a person, probably Dio). The girl notices the guy and cop through the window (we also see a large model ship) as rain streaks down it, and she gestures to the boy, who looks up. They run backward into the shop and take refuge in a large wardrobe. We then see Dio singing again, more animatedly, and we can now tell that he is also inside the curio shop. As he sings, "Just like somebody slammed a door -- Bang! Yeah!" the doors of the wardrobe slam shut on the boy and girl. The doors then reopen, to reveal that the boy and girl are gone and have been replaced by light and fog. Meanwhile, Dio has crept over to the door (the way it's shot, he looks about three feet tall) and he turns the sign in the door's window from "open" to "closed" and draws the shade, giving us a meaningful look.

The boy and girl emerge, finding themselves in a shadowy, spooky world made entirely of two-by-fours. They walk cautiously, and we cut away momentarily to see that RJD is now watching them in the crystal ball, which he waves his hands around dramatically. The light from it causes him to look especially creepy. The boy says, "What's happening?" and we see an overhead shot of the world they're in -- it is actually a giant, spooky maze made entirely of two-by-fours and lit by a full moon. They're starting off, as far as we can tell, in the center of the maze.

Before we go any further, allow me to give a quick description of the two main players. The Girl is quite short (probably about my height, 5' 2") and a little heavy. Okay, by a little heavy, I basically mean not built like the women in every other heavy metal video. Her face looks like a 50-50 mix between Ashlee Simpson and Kelly Osbourne (I'm not kidding at all), and she has medium-length dark brown hair cut in a sort of rocker shag. She's not wearing much makeup. She has on a sleeveless white t-shirt with a large red cross on it accompanied by black silhouettes of airplanes, and she has a black bandanna tied around her neck. She's also wearing two studded belts (one wide, one narrow) over the shirt, and yellow and black tiger-stripe leggings. I can't see her shoes well but they're flats, possibly Converse.

The boy is, again, so hot. He totally looks like a young George Lynch. He has kind of spiky, somewhat long hair that's very teased. It's dark brown but has been highlighted blonde, and he has that sexy olive skin (just like George). He's wearing a t-shirt I can't see very well underneath a black, sleeveless vest, and he has a red bandanna around his neck. He's also wearing slim black jeans, and has another bandanna (that's I think yellow but might just be white -- the lighting in this video is horrible and all of the colors are washed out and very drab) tied around his left thigh. He has another one tied around his right calf. He's definitely wearing Chuck Taylors.

Anyway. They're in the spooky room, walking around horror movie-style (eyes wide, arms out, moving sideways). The girl's holding her arm out toward him, but he's already peeping down a hallway. As he passes through the doorway, a gate crashes down, trapping him there, and he turns and runs up to the bars as the girl panics. She brings both her hands to her face and we can see that she's got a bunch of bandannas, bracelets, etc. tied around both wrists.

She begins walking toward him, slowly, with one arm out, then we come in close to her face as a look of puzzlement comes over her, and she slowly turns her head to look over her left shoulder. There, behind her, we suddenly see a woman in a red dress holding a wrapped gift standing next to a Christmas tree, while a man and another teenage boy sit on a couch beside it. There's also a coffee table with some more gifts sitting on it. The man stands up and crosses his arms, and the woman holds the gift out and says either "Merry Christmas, dear" or "Merry Christmas, Sarah" (sorry, not sure), causing RJD to really go nuts with waving his hands around his crystal ball. In the ball, we see the girl start to smile and walk toward them, while the boy slams his hand against the bars and turns and walks away.



The girl accepts the gift from the mother, who clasps her hands together in delight. She takes the top off of the box, and we cut to a shot of the boy running down the halls and falling and sliding. The girl (who, I'm sorry, is actually wearing fingerless gloves with two large, studded cuffs on her wrists) has unwrapped a bouffy white blouse with a Peter Pan collar. She looks at it oddly, and as she holds it up to herself she suddenly sees herself in non-rocker clothes with un-teased hair and no makeup on. Disgusted, she hurls the shirt to the ground and starts crying. We see both the real her and the illusory non-rocker-her cry and run off, and the father points after her. The mother crys, the brother laughs, and the father admonishes, and as we see them all closely we can see that they're all a little weirdly made up (like if Andy Warhol touched up a Norman Rockwell painting).

Dio waves his hands over the ball, and we see that the boy has happily found his bedroom, which contains a messy twin bed covered in clothing and crap, a pile of albums, clothes, and so on on the floor, and a bulletin board with lots of posters, flyers, and a paper skeleton. He sits down on the bed, happy to find that in this weird, wooden universe he apparently hasn't sold the guitar. Just as he picks it up, a thuggish older man in a wifebeater and jeans enters and shoves him, hard. He recoils and the man yells at him (inaubibly), tears one of his posters off of the bulletin board and shreds it up, then begins taking off his belt. The boy takes off and we see him running down different wooden hallways.

Next we see the girl running (and I see now she has black bandannas tied around her legs -- clearly the costume person on this video had a big Punky Brewster fetish). She sees a white door with a man wearing black pants, a white dress shirt, and a bowtie standing beside it, and tries to run through it. He holds the door closed with one hand and with the other, grabs her and pulls her aside. He then opens the door for two blonde girls (one of whom is wearing a really strange hat not unlike the one the boy had at the beginning of the video), who look at the girl in disgust before walking through. The girl tries to go as well, while the door is open, but the man grabs her by the ear and pulls her back the other way.

We see another shot of the whole wooden maze from above as the boy runs through the center room, then we see the girl enter a classroom where several girls in white shirts, socks, and blue plaid skirts sit at desks and another girl writes on a chalkboard, and a man in a suit passes out papers. The girl, confused, carefully sits down at a desk, and as the man comes to her gestures to herself. He holds out her paper, tears it into tiny pieces, and throws the pieces in her face, and the girls at the other desks laugh at her. She shoves the books off of her desk, stands up slowly, then runs away.

Next we see the boy run up to a windowed door, pressing his hands against it. A closer shot reveals a handwritten "help wanted" sign in the window, and an older man with glasses wearing a white coat approaches the door from the inside, sees the boy, and jerks the sign away and pulls down the window shade. The boy whirls away.

The chorus is reprised as RJD waves his hands, and in the crystal ball we see the boy catch a basketball, toss it back to someone, and then catch it again as it is thrown at him with force. We then see him struggle for the ball against a gym teacher in green sweatpants while several other boys in green shorts jockey for position by the hoop, then the boy gets the ball away and makes a throwaway shot. Mercifully, they don't ask us to believe that he makes the shot, the ball simply goes away, and all of the guys yell after him as he runs off.

Dio waves at the crystal ball, and the girl stops running suddenly, surprised to see herself working on a motorcycle with two boys. One of the boys reaches over the bike and either simply shoves her or tries to grab her breast (hard to tell, but I'm leaning toward the latter -- making me love Dio even more for his sensitivity to sexism), and as she falls away we see both of the boys laughing and high-fiving each other in the crystal ball (assholes).



Next the boy is stopped short as he runs into a vision of himself having his long hair cut off by a slightly crazy looking barber. He turns and runs away, emerging in that main room again, where the girl has just shown up as well. They approach each other cautiously, and she puts out her hands and touches him to make sure it's really her. Realizing they've found each other again, they embrace, and he lifts her off of the ground. Suddenly they break apart, and realize they're surrounded by all of the people from all of the different scenarios -- the scary dad, the creepy guy, the laughing girls, the barber, the teacher, and they yell and circle around them until Dio picks up his crystal ball and smashes it against the ground.

This breaks the spell (or whatever), and the boy and girl run out of the wardrobe, which is still full of light and fog. They leave the shop, and emerge (somehow the boy has recovered his shopping bag). There's someone else standing outside the window but apparently it's not the guy from before. They grab each other and kiss, and we see Dio inside waving his arms to show that he's actually been wearing sort of a poet blouse (or whatever they call those things) and a cape the whole time. As the girl and boy embrace, the boy reaches behind her and drops the shopping bag into the garbage bin. They turn and walk up the street, and she grabs his ass (lucky). We see a close up of the outside of the curio shop's door, and from inside Dio's hand reaches up to raise the shade and change the sign from "closed" back to "open" -- ready for business, or at least, to teach some more rock n roll children a life lesson.

THE VERDICT I'm quite enamored of this video, even though I find it a bit discomforting to watch (it's the same thing as videos like "18 and Life", I always feel bad for the people). Anyway. My main revelation in writing about the video, and more importantly, in finding the complete video, is that having the entire prologue explains some mysteries but creates others.

First, it makes the girl more sympathetic. In the edited version, it just seems like she wants the boy to be there for her and (it is implied) become a rock star and take her with him. Its only in getting all of the dialogue that we find out that the guitar was a joint purchase, so it no longer seems that she's just being belligerent about his getting the job.

Adding in the whole exchange with the creepy guy helps to explain why, once inside the curio shop, they run and hide. Though the video always includes them seeing the guy and the cop outside the window, without the prologue there's no reason for them to run and hide, unless they're a lot sketchier than they had seemed (they're not doing anything illegal just by being in the store). Though it's still unclear what pretext the creepy guy brought the cop over on, it at least serves to not just make the kids seem unjustly paranoid. (As Dio might say, "it's always a mystery").

The one part really still unexplained is why, even after realizing that they do truly only have each other, the boy still throws out the valet uniform at the end. The prologue makes him slightly less sympathetic (after all, he pawned the guitar they both owned) but at the same time more so (in the usual edit, we just hear him say, "I could be making 200 bucks a week," making him indeed sound like a sellout, but in its entirety he prefaces that statement with, "Look, I could pay for the guitar in a couple of weeks," implying that he's at least made a plan to get it back). However, as they make their jaunty exit, uniform in the garbage, now he not only doesn't have the means to keep his job, he also by extension has thrown away their shot at getting the guitar back. D'oh! Clearly, after their reconciliation, when the girl figures this out she's going to kick his ass.

This video reminds me a lot of the Stephen King book Needful Things, only instead of trapping its victims in their nostalgic fantasies, keeping them from living in their crappy realities, it instead traps its victims in their crappy realities, later releasing them and encouraging them to return to living a nostalgic fantasy. This video is often criticized for being Dio's label's desperate attempt to put a youthful, attractive face on his music (since he was basically neither), but I do like it because it really embodies the almost uplifting message that Dio is constantly trying to put forward to his true believers -- that you don't have to be youthful, attractive, or embraced by mainstream society to find community in music. What can I say, it's Dio! He is seriously the nicest guy ever. How can I be snarky? I'll save it for "Rainbow in the Dark."

P.S. Giant new photos added in memory of Ronnie James Dio, 5/16/10.