Thursday night videos
Today, I heard the Clash song Rock the Casbah on the car radio. It's one of those songs, like Stairway to Heaven, that if you admit is your favorite song of a particular band you hemorrhage music credibility because it's the dreaded everybody's favorite song of that band. But, like Stairway, Rock the Casbah became a cliche for a reason -- it's a great song.
The song, released in 1982, tells the tale of a group of villagers who dare play newly banned rock music in the infancy of the Ayatollah's Iran. The "king" tells his jet-pilots to bomb the revelers. The jet-pilots wait until the "king" departs then defiantly listen to their own favorite rock music over their cockpit radios, leaving the revelers be.
The lyrics are difficult to understand without the liner notes, but the clarity of the line "drop your bombs between the minarets" and the general themes of Arabia and militarism made Rock the Casbah the unofficial anthem of our soldiers who fought the first Gulf War, and one of the most requested songs by soldiers in Iraq during the current conflict.
The Clash were a punk band but Rock The Casbah is a dance song. Its electric chorus has delivered bolts of energy through any and every frat party or Upper East Side/Georgetown bar its been played. (Probably other places too.)
When I was listening to the song in the car, I couldn't help but think of its wacky video, which was a staple of early MTV. Lo and behold, I was able to retrieve the video, via the magic of Youtube, when I got home.
What makes the video so amusing is the video's director, like our soldiers, didn't really understand the song. So he just picked up on a couple of the easy to decipher lines like "The sheik he drove his Cadillac" and "he thinks it's not kosher" to concoct a ridiculous tale of a Sheik and an Orthodox Jew drinking whiskey, eating Whoppers, attending pool parties and being stalked by an armadillo in oil-boom Texas. As the jolly duo mingles with the cowboy hat crowd, the band plays in front of an oil field. The video ends with the Arab and the Jew front row at the Clash show, dancing away.
The video is a fascinating mixture of early 80's music video technique, whimsy and all-too current politics. It can be summed up in a word:
Spectacular.
1 comment:
I've also seen the original video of that women. Their movement is really just a very large family. Judging from their tactics, they want attention at any cost, so it might not be such a good them keep putting them on TV. I also think she would benefit from a new stylist.
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