DO YOU WANNA HOLD ME? by Bow Wow Wow (1983)

How many chances spring up these days to see a guitar solo performed by a guy in a Ronald Reagan mask? Precious few. How many opportunities arise to hear Mickey Mouse denounced as a “demon” by a teenage girl with a mohawk? Even fewer.


Furthermore, the odds of turning on the TV and seeing a gang of British hooligans poking good-natured fun at American culture have dwindled to practically nil. Happily, there is one classic video that can fill this void in our modern society: Bow Wow Wow’s DO YOU WANNA HOLD ME?, an all-but forgotten pop treat from early 1983.

Like the prepackaged, empty-caloried snacks featured in the clip, this song and video contain all the substance of a Dolly Madison zinger and less depth than a fluffer-nutter sandwich. But what they lack in nutritional value they more than make up for in flavor, a sugar high and a free prize inside the box. Bow Wow Wow’s appeal lay in their exuberance and enthusiasm, two important ingredients often missing in today’s world of manufactured pop entrees.


Bow Wow Wow were manufactured also, but their creator’s intent was not merely to sell records. His much loftier goals included singlehandedly reconstructing the sound of popular music and toppling the entire record industry by advocating home recording and tape-copying.

When former Sex Pistols Svengali Malcolm McLaren formed a new group from the remnants of the recently-split Adam and the Ants, his search for the perfect lead singer led him to Myant Myant Aye, a pretty fourteen-year-old girl who worked in a dry cleaning shop after school.


A new name and a mohawk haircut later, Annabella Lwin and Bow Wow Wow were born. McLaren then set out to conquer the world with his energetic young band, his first step being to title their 1981 debut album See Jungle! See Jungle! Go Join Your Gang Yeah! City All Over, Go Ape Crazy.


A couple of years later Bow Wow Wow outgrew McLaren’s totalitarian leadership, hired a new producer and released their final album, the appropriately entitled When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going. After that, they were gone… but at least they left a few fun, campy videos in their wake.

The DO YOU WANNA HOLD ME? video perfectly illustrates the song, a rhythmic, cartoony concoction with a catchy chorus, irreverent lyrics (“Life is wasted on illusions/Tom and Jerry’s no solution”) and a surf-inspired guitar hook. The words and images seem to poke fun at American culture — particularly the Southern California/Disneyland brand of American culture — but by the end of the video it feels more like an affectionate, if mocking, tribute.


After all, the band admitted to being smitten with the hyperactivity of the U.S.A. and bored with the dreary London punk scene, which had worn out its welcome by the early 1980s. Considering Bow Wow Wow’s cheerful, enthusiastic style, it’s no wonder Annabella referred to the London post-punk sound as “depressing”; the band’s music catered more to the prosperous, upbeat American market.

The video immediately conjures up a delightfully disposable fast-food feel simply by being shot on videotape rather than film, an unfortunate decision for many early music videos but in this case it works. Videotape enhances the flashy, cheap, trick-or-treatish costumes worn by the band as they parody pop culture heroes such as Pinocchio, Donald Duck, the Pink Panther, Carmen Miranda, Charlie Chaplin, Superman, cowboys and of course, the then-president, all against the backdrop of a giant American flag.


Behind the Reagan mask is guitarist Matthew Ashman, who later explained, “We weren’t slaggin’ the bloke. I don’t mind Ronnie — he’s alright.”


Amid scenes of the costumed band prancing around like Frankie Avalon on hot sand is a variety pack of subliminally-spliced stills of surfers, shopping malls, freeways, futuristic cars, U.S. football players, rockets, and heaps of TV-commercial food.


The guys in the band are even seen stuffing their faces with pizza in a mock display of American excess. Clearly our nation’s obsession with conveniently-packaged gluttony inspired the barrage of deviled eggs, chocolate bars and canned spaghetti that dominates the visuals.


There is nothing resembling a story or plotline to hamper the sheer sensationalism here; nothing standing between the audience and the madcap makeup painted on Annabella’s eyes or the close-up of a salad topped with ranch dressing. It’s a junk food masterpiece.


Perhaps inevitably, Bow Wow Wow's career was sentenced to the same fate as the disposable kitsch culture they mocked in DO YOU WANNA HOLD ME?, but then longevity was never expected to be a characteristic of Malcom McLaren’s creations. He preferred to ignite explosive fuses rather than foster long-burning blazes.

At least for a short time in the early eighties, there was a small, optimistic explosion called Bow Wow Wow that provided a much-needed vacation from the somber self-importance of the current music scene. Kind of like a Disneyland for punks.

WHAM! RAP by Wham! (1982)

You got soul on the dole
You’re gonna have a good time down on the line
You got soul on the dole
You’re gonna have a good time down on the line

I used to sing along with these lyrics as a kid, their meaning completely escaping me. The dole? Was George rapping about a brand of banana? I had no idea this was a colloquialism for the UK’s unemployment benefits, and that “Wham! Rap” was a rallying cry against work… or at least against young people wasting away in dead-end jobs.


Written by George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley, both only 19 at the time, the song has a ballsy, in-your-face message: We’re not only refusing work and dedicating our lives to having fun, but we’re going to make sure the government funds it. And we’re encouraging others to do the same.

Later, in a 1987 Spin interview, George attempted to explain away some of the song’s sheer audacity by claiming it was intended to be a something of a joke.

When we did ‘Wham! Rap’, we were trying to do a parody. We were trying to say dough is shit by saying dough is great. I was trying to say that just because you don’t have a job doesn’t mean you’re shit. There were a lot of elements that people took serious [sic] about Wham! When we were being totally tongue-in-cheek.

Tongue-in-cheek, sure, but a parody? I hope not. What makes the song – and, consequently, the video – so enjoyable is its utterly earnest devotion to the pursuit of sheer play; the cause of young people living for a good time. Obviously, George, Andrew and director Chris Gabrin injected it with a healthy amount of humor. But I can’t imagine it being a cunningly-contrived parody of itself – the boys are having too much fun, and performing with too much soul.


The first few scenes in the video consist of your basic, low-budget set-up. Andrew, flipping though a magazine and being told off by his parents for lazing about the house jobless, is rescued from this suburban malaise by a leather jacket-clad George, who whisks his mate away to a parent-free fantasy land that closely resembles a bright white soundstage with red vinyl letters spelling out WHAM! on the back wall.


This is where the video really takes off. Suddenly, it’s a community theatre production of Grease, with George and Andy – flanked by backup ladies Pepsi and Shirlie – performing simple, ABBA-esque choreography in capri-length jeans and ballet flats. (Yes, you read that right. The men are wearing capri-length jeans and ballet flats. The ladies are in black pantsuits.)


There is something so irresistibly cheesy about this dance, combined with the song’s uber-catchy chorus (“Wham! Bam! I am a man!”) and the bravado of its message, that it transcends the boundaries of cheese just a little bit. When watching the clip, it’s easy to find yourself wondering if pop music was ever this much fun, just as you might find yourself wondering, while watching The Wizard of Oz, if any place on earth ever resembled the Emerald City.


Intercut with the dance scenes are shots of Andrew and George in the London streets, observing the 9 to 5 jerks as they scurry to and fro clutching briefcases, one man who symbolizes “Mr. Average” making a particularly goofy face into the camera.


As the clip progresses, the mood grows steadily crazier, until the end where all the stops are pulled out. The stage flashes bright colors, a crowd of partiers has swarmed the dance floor, and even Andrew’s stuffy mum and dad begin to sing along, right into the camera, presumably pulled into the fracas against their better judgment by the buoyancy of the song’s hook.


In an old standby ending later used in Cyndi Lauper’s GIRLS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN video, the parents finally succumb to the beat as the pop music party takes over completely and life becomes one big episode of Top of the Pops.


It’s a glorious moment in Britpop history, with a hint of foreshadowing at George’s solo-career-to-come. During the song’s break, when he raps “Maybe leather and studs is where you’re at,” watch closely for a glimpse of the first George Michael butt-shot!


Even at the tender age of 19, five years before his arse got more screen time than his face in the video for FAITH, George’s bum was already hogging the show.

ROCKIN' LITTLE CHRISTMAS by Deborah Allen (1984)

I’ll never forget the Christmas of 1984. Santa finally broke down and brought me the neon orange fingerless lace gloves from Limited Express I’d been begging for all year – a look inspired, of course, by MTV’s new reigning queen Madonna.

I also got a blinding chartreuse sweater, pink day-glo socks and a vivid orange scarf that matched the gloves. The crimping iron and big puffy pink jacket with the padded shoulders would have to wait until the next Christmas, but I had my lace gloves, so I was happy.

Clearly, I was not the only one begifted such tokens by Saint Nick in ’84, as one look at Deborah Allen’s ROCKIN’ LITTLE CHRISTMAS video indicates. The country-pop singer was rockin’ more than just Christmas in her rhinestone-studded Lycra dress with asymmetrical miniskirt, black lace fingerless gloves and a long mane of painstakingly crimped hair.


Though Deborah looks eighties-licious in the clip, I can’t help agreeing with this list that rates the crimping iron the 14th worst invention of all time, right behind guns, New Coke, and crack cocaine. All it seemed to do was make hair simultaneously more stick-straight and frizzier, which is the worst of both worlds if you ask me.


But details like Deborah’s crimped hair are precisely what make ROCKIN’ LITTLE CHRISTMAS so fun to watch. The song, a lightweight but catchy blues-country-rock number with a few mournful bars of “Silent Night” as its intro, simply cries out for a New York City-in-the-eighties video, and that’s exactly what it gets.

The clip begins with a saxophone player on a brownstone stoop, setting the mood while Deborah writes her letter of longing to Santa Claus. All she wants is a rockin’ little Christmas with her beau (apparently the male model whose picture came with the frame that sits by her side). Bundled New Yorkers in the streets sip hot coffee and smoke cigarettes, and women in their miniskirts and pumps hop up and down to keep warm.


Enter Deborah, posting her letter to Santa in her big pink jacket zipped over a neon green blouse and low-slung belt, black leggings with fuchsia and lime green scrunch socks topped off with black stiletto lace-up booties.


As she passes by shop windows, sings into a payphone and flirts with a street corner Santa, we see the full glory of her accessories: piles of rhinestone bracelets, rhinestone drop earrings and a pin, a chunky necklace with pastel stones and the ultimate eighties winter accessory, her multi-colored knit gloves – black over the hands, but each finger a different bright color.


Deborah bops around the city emitting her neon glow, getting double takes from random men, doing some last-minute shopping, foiling some gay sailors who seem intent on following her and taking a spin with a pair of street break-dancers as they pop and lock. These scenes are intercut with Deborah slinking around in her aforementioned blue Lycra dress and lace gloves to form a simple, upbeat, innocently sexy video that should have been more popular than it was.


ROCKIN’ LITTLE CHRISTMAS never made much of a splash at the time and is largely forgotten today (except by plundering country singers who’ve re-recorded Deborah’s number and released it on their own Christmas albums), but I think it – unlike the crimping iron – deserves to be resurrected each December.


At the end of the clip, Deborah finally gets her Christmas wish, falling into the arms of her picture-frame hero as she purrs “You can jingle, jingle… jingle my bells,” her rhinestones sparkling, her smoky blue eye shadow shimmering. Merry 1980s Christmas, everyone!

CANDY by Cameo (1986)

Q: What has sugar, spice and “looks real nice?”
A: Cameo’s CANDY video!

Made by director Zbigniew Rybczynski in November of 1986 as a follow-up to Cameo’s monster hit WORD UP, CANDY has the distinction of being the first HD music video.


Using what was cutting-edge technology at the time, Rybczynski applied his “instant video” technique of shooting and post-producing simultaneously (previously seen in clips like Simple Minds’ ALL THE THINGS SHE SAID and Pet Shop Boys' OPPORTUNITIES) to the latest High-Definition process to create a sweet treat for the eyes and ears.


Shot entirely on blue-screen with a projected pan of dazzling Times Square as a backdrop, CANDY layers in the members of Cameo with fashion models, adding more Cameo members and more models until an almost hypnotic state is achieved by the constant repetitive motion and image multiplication.

CANDY is the kind of polished creation that could only have emerged from the midst of the Reagan era. Everyone is sporting their best shoulder pads, harem pants and hair gel. In the background a flashing movie theatre marquee advertises Top Gun and Stand by Me. Glamorous women float into the air licking lollipops and giant candy canes, tempting the band members who frolic in front of Sbarro and McDonald’s neon signs. It’s a deliciously 80s confection.


Unlike earlier videos with layered effects, such as the Cars’ YOU MIGHT THINK (1984) in which images look flat and cartoon-like, the HDTV process allows the images in CANDY to appear more 3-dimensional, and to resemble film more than videotape. And all for a mere $80,000! “The whole thing might have taken 10 months and cost millions of dollars, but it cost us less than $100,000 to get a million-dollar look,” said the video’s producer Stewart Samuels in a 1986 interview about the video’s then-state-of-the-art technology.


About halfway through the clip, Cameo lead singer and founder Larry Blackmon creeps into the frame like a benign Godzilla, suddenly enormous and towering over the rest of the video’s cast who scurry around his ankles. “That scene would have taken George Lucas months to do,” said Samuels, “but we did it in hours.”

But the technology, the glossy effects and the pouting models would be nothing special without a great beat and a sense of humor, which is what allows CANDY to endure as a classic 24 years later. The slick, funky track can still fill the dance floor in 2010, and the band’s slightly off-beat sense of humor shines through in the video.


In addition to the always-humorous Godzilla effect, there are silly grins, ridiculous poses, goofy dance moves and a well-timed butt-bump. Blackmon delivers the vocals in his signature nasal, monotone shouts, barking out phrases like “Look real nice!” and “Indeed I do!” as he dances and prances in an outfit most men just couldn’t pull off: a black body leotard, an oversized codpiece and thigh-high Pretty Woman hooker boots.


Perhaps the most hilarious moment in the video is when one of the models opens her jacket, withdraws Blackmon’s red patent-leather codpiece, and discards it with a shocked expression. Rybczynski and the band were clearly having a laugh with this clip, and showcasing what would become a world-famous piece of – er, clothing – for years to come. Disturbingly yet not exactly surprisingly, there’s currently a Red Codpiece group on Disgracebook devoted to it. (And no, I’m not linking. You’ll have to find it yourself.)


These days Cameo still tours actively, and Larry still wears the renowned piece of armor on stage. In a recent interview with Charlotte, NC radio station WBAV, Larry admits that the group’s fans won’t let him take it off! “Everyone looks forward to that,” he says, “and we try to accommodate our audience as much as possible.”


However, Blackmon went on to soberly reveal that he does not wear the codpiece at home, disappointing thousands of die-hard Cameo devotees who probably imagine him harnessing the shiny red protective cup over his jammies every night. Guess those of us who want to see Larry in his codpiece will have to buy tickets. And, in the words of Larry, “Yes I do!”

Celebrity Cameos in '80s Music Videos

You've asked. You've begged. You've patiently awaited the COMPLETE LIST OF CELEBRITY CAMEOS IN 1980S MUSIC VIDEOS I've been compiling for months now. Well, videophiles, your wait is finally over! I have completed the exhaustive volume of the famous (and not-so-famous-anymore) faces who graced your favorite music videos with their presence in the decade of excess.


From Joe Piscopo to Tawny Kitaen, from Hugh Laurie to Ally Sheedy, in chronological order, click here to see them all. Enjoy! (And please give me a shout if I've left anybody out.)

Top Ten Creepiest 80s Videos

Remember when music videos could scare the (parachute) pants off ya? I do. I remember having recurring nightmares about a dark, gloomy gothic church filled with spooky wedding guests, a shrouded groom and cobweb-covered coffins. An ominous sense of vague terror hung in the stale, dusty air and stayed with me after I woke up. Even as a kid, it wasn’t difficult for me to decipher the inspiration for my terrifying dreams: Billy Idol’s WHITE WEDDING video! I hadn’t been watching scary movies before bed, I had been watching MTV.

In the 1980s, it was not uncommon for music videos to contain enough macabre images to rival the latest horror film, or at least to feature a few disturbingly eerie scenes. Naturally (or supernaturally?), Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking, much-acclaimed THRILLER clip is the hands-down scary music video chef d'oeuvre, but there were quite a few other creepy videos haunting MTV in its heyday. Here are my top 10 picks:

10. MISLED by Kool & the Gang (1985)

This one isn’t exactly horrifying, but it features a midnight danse macabre with a ghostly (and very sparkly) woman in a disturbing nightmare. It ends with the cloaked and hooded band members turning slowly toward the camera to reveal their death masks. Rebbie Jackson’s CENTIPEDE clip and a few others used this type of scary trick ending, obviously influenced by the shock ending of THRILLER.


Kool & The Gang - Misled
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9. SELF CONTROL by Laura Branigan (1984)

I’m pretty sure Exorcist director William Friedkin intended this video to be sexy, mysterious and/or theatrical in that Andrew Lloyd Webber way, but the haunting music and seriously disturbing masks make it into “good old-fashioned nightmare fuel,” to borrow a line from MST3K. There’s something unnerving about the little porcelain doll watching as Laura is mauled by a shirtless brute in a Michael Myers-ish mask. A great example of sexy going awry and becoming scary.


Laura Branigan - Self Control
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8. JEOPARDY by Greg Kihn Band (1983)

This video terrified me when I was a kid, but later I realized it was intended to be funny. Highlights include the most unrealistic looking monster ever to be captured on videotape since Sigmund and the Seamonsters was cancelled, a screaming purple skull and truly frightening shag mullets on both our hero Greg (the Tim Allen of 80s rock) and the jilted bride he picks up in his sweet ride.


7. TWILIGHT ZONE by Golden Earring (1982)

Though the song is actually more drug-trip-scary than Halloween-scary, the video’s grainy, surreal imagery would have made Rod Serling proud. Complete with drug-induced paranoia, burlesque dominatrix dancing girls and the obligatory creepy little kid, TWILIGHT ZONE is dated but can still send a shiver up my spine.


Golden Earring - Twilight Zone (X)
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6. ROCKIT by Herbie Hancock (1983)

There’s something about this video that’s so bizarre it’s almost macabre. Mannequins are always good for a scare (remember Anne Francis turning back into a mannequin in that episode of The Twilight Zone? Talk about creepy!), and ROCKIT is so chock-full of severed, grotesquely mechanized mannequin parts I honestly don’t think I could watch it alone at night to this day. The most frightening thing about this video, though, might be that fact that Herbie Hancock’s face was only shown for a few seconds to make it more palatable to white America … but that’s another story.


Herbie Hancock, Rockit, 1983
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5. DON'T PAY THE FERRYMAN by Chris DeBurgh (1982)

One of the few pre-THRILLER videos to employ horror film tactics, FERRYMAN was inspired more by the subtle chills of British horror than the guts and gore of American slasher flicks. Chris dons a Christopher Lee vampire cape as fog swirls around lanterns, skeletons and a mysterious figure falsely rumored to be British actor Tom Baker of Doctor Who fame.




4. OWNER OF A LONELY HEART by Yes (1983)

The flashes of spiders and snakes in this one really disturbed me when I was a kid. There just aren’t many “psychological thriller” music videos out there, much less well-executed ones, so OWNER OF A LONELY HEART really stands out as exceptional. Directors Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell’s schizophrenic visuals are synchronized perfectly with the song, making for a seamlessly freaky little film about paranoia.


3. DANCING WITH MYSELF by Billy Idol (1983)

Ah, the fun of electrocuting zombies, catapulting them off the roof of a building and watching them dance! It just never gets old. Horror hero Tobe Hooper directed this video, and I personally like it better than the movie Poltergeist. (Maybe that Spielberg guy cramps Hooper’s style?) Sure, Poltergeist has real skeletons and evil clowns, but DANCING WITH MYSELF has hordes of funky ghouls, laughing funhouse dolls, and most importantly it has Billy Idol, an infinitely more dazzling screen presence than Craig T. Nelson.


Billy Idol - Dancing With Myself
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2. SOMEBODY'S WATCHING ME by Rockwell (1984)

Okay, so it’s a silly one hit wonder, and the video features badly acted cheap tricks like red Kool-Aid “blood” flowing from Rockwell’s shower. It’s still creepy as hell, admit it! Some moments (like an obviously fake pig trotting down the hall) are laughable, but the graveyard vignettes, the gruesome undead heads and the Shining-esque snatch of a grisly bathtub massacre during the lyrics “Maybe showers remind me of Psycho too much” are still shriek-inducing. This one’s perfect for viewing at Halloween parties.


Rockwell - Somebody's Watching Me
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1. WHITE WEDDING by Billy Idol (1982)

Come to think of it, most of Billy Idol’s early videos were on the macabre side, but this one literally gave me nightmares so it takes the cake – the moth-eaten, musty Miss Havisham wedding cake, that is. The scene where Billy grabs his bride and rips the flesh from her finger with a barbed wedding ring is more enduring than the visuals of many horror movies made today, and was actually edited out of some versions because it was considered too violent. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the edited version as a child and my psyche has suffered for it ever since.


Billy Idol - White Wedding Pt 1
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Note: I originally published this article on the website CinCity2000 in 2007.

I CAN'T WAIT by Nu Shooz (1986)

My love, tell me what it’s all about…

With this lyric, Nu Shooz introduced themselves to the world. Though the Portland, Oregon band has been making funk-infused dance music since 1979, “I Can’t Wait” is the song and video that finally brought them worldwide exposure. But… what is it all about? That is the question.

Since the video’s debut in the summer of 1986, it’s been both entertaining and puzzling viewers with its bizarre eye candy graphics. What’s up with the slides and all the tools? Why is a baby shark being extracted from a coffee pot? Is there any special significance to that banana? These questions have plagued MTV, VH1 and YouTube audiences for decades.




In a 1986 MTV interview, Nu Shooz singer Valerie Day dismissed the baffled masses with a simple “either you get it or you don’t,” and she does have a point. Seeking precise meaning in music video imagery can be like searching for logic in a Nyquil dream – not something a rational person would spend too much time on. But for the irrationally curious out there, your lucky day has arrived! Director Jim Blashfield has been cool enough to share some inside information about the I CAN’T WAIT video, exclusively for Images of Heaven readers! Yes, for the first time, some light can be shed on this iconic eighties clip.

The story begins in Portland when John Smith and Valerie Day of Nu Shooz asked their buddy Jim to direct a video for their hot new single. The visionary behind the Talking Heads’ award-winning AND SHE WAS and Michael Jackson’s LEAVE ME ALONE among others, had a kooky concept for the Shooz. “I wanted to improvise it,” he says. “I didn’t want to plan it at all. I wanted the experience of just making it up from what was around when we got to the studio.”

So he loaded his car with biology slides, a coffeemaker, his kitchen table and lamp. At the studio he dug up a canvas backdrop and some phony saguaro cacti, procured a dumpster and some tools, then swiped a dog named Buster’s doghouse from a vacationing friend’s backyard. (One can only assume the eponymous “Buster” didn’t have a sunglasses face, as another pooch was cast in what should have been his role.)




Once the set was fully stocked with the perfect array of paraphernalia and pets, shooting could begin. But what exactly was being shot? Blashfield explains:

Besides being a promo for a band and a song, it is an experiment to see what results when you take a line from the video "tell me what it's all about" and decide that Valerie is a some kind of a scientist with an interest in small appliance repair instead of somebody waiting, lovesick, for a phone call, and let everything follow logically from that.

Logical or not, there is a kind of rhythmic reason to the clip; a left-of-center relevance that reveals itself from the introductory image: a piece of sheet metal upon which various objects are dropped. Wrenches, tools, a mini totem pole, a ripe banana. Could this be a clue that this woman is attempting to apply cold scientific analysis to mysterious realms like the human heart? Or is the banana in this case just a banana?




When the sheet metal is withdrawn we see the dog who’s not called Buster, sporting shades to shield his sensitive canine eyes from the massive voltage emanating from his electro-charged house. Against the wall a dumpster rigged with fishing wire opens and closes in time with the beat. Valerie – demonstrating a “great sense of playfulness as her song was absolutely misinterpreted,” according to Blashfield – sits at her desert desk, examining microscopic slides, asking what it’s all about.




Next she reaches for the drip percolator and seems pleasantly surprised to find a small plastic shark inside, swimming amongst the dregs. “If viewers look closely,” Blashfield says, “they may notice that happiness seems to be represented as a shark found lurking in a coffee pot, a metaphor which is certainly worth considering, if you ask me.”




How could a shark survive inside this coffee pot, you ask? The only logical thing to do is to take it apart and find out. So Valerie pulls out her tools and gets to work. As she dissects, her image bisects and splits apart, following the video’s theme of deconstruction and analysis. Over a blueprint, a magnet spins and Not-Buster makes a cameo appearance, perhaps offering another symbol of science being applied to love. Animal magnetism, or the unexplained force that draws two people together. How does it work?




At this point, Jim Blashfield’s willingness to experiment pays off in an unusual shot of the coffee percolator dividing into its various skeletal parts and spinning in front of Valerie’s head. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t seen many music videos in which a random inanimate object spends 10 or 15 seconds completely obscuring the face of the singer. Let’s pause and appreciate that for a moment, shall we?




As the sections whirl like wheels of the mind, they seem to illustrate one of the song’s repeated lyrics: Tell me what is on your mind. The sunglasses-wearing dog returns (blocking the singer’s face again!) to be hypnotized by a couple of shiny objects, and finally Valerie throws her hands up and decides to do it; to open Pandora’s Box.




In the end, her tinkering and probing delivers concrete results. She is showered in all knowledge known to humankind, taking the form of constantly morphing shapes – moons, rockets, butterflies and squiggles – courtesy of animator Roger Kukes. She withdraws a set of false teeth from the box and lets the teeth take a stab at lip-synching a line or two before the X motif (first seen in the opening shot of the sheet metal) returns to close the piece.




After some nifty post-production tricks and editing, I CAN’T WAIT was ready for its MTV premiere. “When the record company saw the video,” says Jim Blashfield, “they called it ‘unusual’ or perhaps ‘quite unusual’ or maybe ‘very unusual,’” but the MTV-ers and the band loved it. John Smith of Nu Shooz says:

No one captured our aesthetic like Jim. Years later I said to him, "Your style and ours meshed perfectly." To which Blashfield replied "I don't know if they meshed so much as they were congruent."… It was a pleasure and a privilege to work with him, and one of the high points of our career.

Spin magazine also had a positive reaction to I CAN’T WAIT in their August 1986 issue:

The video is very art-directed, and it’s nice. It’s kind of kitschy … except it’s restrained and minimal. It’s one of the genre of videos directed by people who wanted to be graphic designers or interior designers, not film directors. They’re into super graphics. They would rather be designing alarm clocks.

The director, who’s been making films and videos for decades, would probably disagree with that last statement. But the clip is definitely heavy on stylish “super graphics,” the likes of which have been tragically absent from music videos for many years.




And that’s what it’s all about! A grand experiment in the uniting of pop music and images that constantly picks apart and analyzes objects, lyrics, ideas, yet ultimately defies literal interpretation. “That was our intention,” says Blashfield. “To do stuff that bent the expected trajectory or looked deeper or cast light and attention on subjects, images and ways of seeing things that were often overlooked.”

Nearly 25 years after it was made, I hereby pronounce I CAN’T WAIT a successful experiment. I for one will never look at a coffee pot the same way again.