Videodrone #24: Sexx Laws

Videodrone is a weekly(ish) feature looking at music videos from the last half century. 

Sexx Laws (1999)

There was a lot going on in 1999. We were on the cusp of the new millennium and there was plenty of hype around the Y2K bug, which had everyone convinced all computer systems would go haywire once the clocks hit midnight on New Year's Eve. Needless to say, nothing happened.

Musically, it was an interesting year. The emergence of Napster on college campuses introduced the world to downloading and MP3s, which would lead to a seismic shift in the music industry. 

Alternative rock was still a thing, but it was nu metal and hip hop that got more attention from music fans: Limp Bizkit, Korn, Eminem, Dr. Dre and Kid Rock were leading the charge. In the middle of all that, the mercurial Beck was in the midst of a terrific run of albums. The previous year saw the release of the subdued but excellent Mutations, but Beck went in a completely different direction with 1999's Midnite Vultures. This time around, he leaned into funk and dance music with strong results. While it didn't reach the heights of Odelay, Midnite Vultures was a lot of fun, highlighted by lead single "Sexx Laws."

The song is an uptempo, horn-driven funk romp about gender roles, which the out-there video pokes fun at. Directed by Beck, it begins with a men's group called the Vision Warrior Men's Circle. The group's members include a young Jack Black, author Neil Strauss and Beck's bandleader Justin Meldal-Johnsen. After a group hug, a bunch of football players in day-glo uniforms crash through the walls and mayhem ensues, including Black getting smashed over the head with a bunch of drywall. 

Cut to Beck and his band playing the song, albeit with fake instruments (Meldal-Johnsen's playing a broom), alongside a zebra mannequin playing a banjo. Told you it was out there. Kitchen appliances come to life, much to the dismay of the men's group members, with a refrigerator humping an oven, and then a shot of Kenny G (played by Meldal-Johnsen) playing the sax in the background of the mayhem.  

There were a few different versions of the video, including an 18-minute version with extended scenes of the men's group (see a 13-minute version below). Beck also filmed a 6-minute video of "Kenny G" playing a smooth jazz version of the song; a session sax player handled the Kenny G part while Beck's band played the rest.

Midnite Vultures wasn't a smash like Mellow Gold and Odelay, but it still was certified gold. Beck followed it up in 2002 with the acoustic and melancholy Sea Change, another excellent album. That Beck likes to keep people on their toes. I've been less enamored with his output the last 15 years or so, but Beck's '90s and '00s work is undeniably strong.

Videodrone #21: Pepper

Videodrone is a weekly(ish) feature looking at music videos from the last half century. 

Pepper (1996)

In 1986, the Butthole Surfers were the last band anyone would have expected to score a top 40 hit. They had just released their second album, Rembrandt Pussyhorse, on Touch and Go and the few mainstream publications that wrote about them referred to the band as the "BH Surfers." Led by frontman Gibby Haynes and guitarist Paul Leary, the San Antonio band's live shows were outrageous and anarchic, with generous helpings of fire, nudity and unpredictability. They made fans of young musicians like Kurt Cobain and Kim Thayil.

The Surfers released albums and toured regularly through the late '80s and into the '90s until they surprised everyone and signed with Capitol Records in 1991. They also signed on to the first Lollapalooza tour with the likes of Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails and Siouxsie and the Banshees, which introduced the Surfers to a whole new audience of impressionable alt-rock loving 20somethings. 

Gibby guested on Ministry's 1991 single "Jesus Built My Hotrod" and then Capitol teamed them up with producer John Paul Jones (yes, THAT John Paul Jones) for the recording of their 1993 album Independent Worm Saloon, which found the Surfers working in some conventional rock stylings into their weirdness. The first single, "Who Was in My Room Last Night?" got airplay on MTV and rock radio and even got a boost from MTV's new show "Beavis and Butt-head." As grunge and alt-culture caught fire, the Surfers were riding the wave as elder statesmen.

Fast forward to 1996. Grunge was on the wane, but alternative rock was still hanging around, led by the non-sequitur lyricism of Beck. In April, the Surfers released "Pepper," the first single from their forthcoming album Electriclarryland. The song clearly owed a debt to Beck's "Loser" in its spoken word delivery and tape loops, but the band also cited trip hop acts like Massive Attack and Tricky as influences. I wrote it off as derivative (lyrically, it was reminiscent of "People Who Died" by the Jim Carroll Band), but the song took off. It was played constantly on alt-rock radio and MTV and ended up going to #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and #26 on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay Chart. 

The video was directed by Gavin Bowden, who also directed several Red Hot Chili Pepper vids, as well as clips by Lit, Live, Dishwalla, Matchbox Twenty, Rollins Band and Buster Poindexter. It featured black-and-white footage of the band getting arrested after kidnapping a character played by Erik Estrada, while also featuring the band in color playing on a '60s variety show. Even at the band's most commercial, the video was appropriately weird.

As it turned out, the Surfers' biggest hit was also a curse: Their fans hated them for selling out and it became impossible to follow up. They spent two years working on their next album, After the Astronaut, but the label wouldn't release it (coincidentally, the band is releasing After the Astronaut this week, 25 years after their last album). As a result, the Surfers split with Capitol, all while in the midst of a lawsuit against Touch and Go for more royalties on their early albums. 

In 2001, the group signed with Disney and released Weird Revolution, an album that received a 0.4 rating from Pitchfork. The lead single from the album was "The Shame of Life," which featured Gibby rapping over another trip-hop beat and a chorus written by none other than Kid Rock. Strange days indeed. On the plus side, the Surfers were one of the bands featured in Michael Azerrad's seminal 2001 book Our Band Could Be Your Life.

Since then, the Surfers released a couple of compilations and reunited to tour a few times, but they've been on hiatus since 2016. They've remained in the zeitgeist, releasing a documentary and coffee table and placing the song "Human Cannonball" in the last season of Stranger Things.

The history of the Butthole Surfers remains proudly weird, but the weirdest thing they ever did was to release a hit song.

Day After Day #314: It's Gonna Be a Long Night

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Day After Day #264: Uncontrollable Urge

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Uncontrollable Urge (1978)

When Devo first burst onto the scene in the early '70s, they must have really blown some minds. They've always been unrepentantly weird in the best way possible, which at that time was pretty rare. Hell, even by the end of the '70s, people didn't know what to make of them.

The band got its start at Kent State University in Ohio, when keyboardist Mark Mothersbaugh joined forces with Gerald Casale and Bob Lewis. Casale and Lewis were art students who had introduced the concept of "de-evolution," or the regression of mankind. The first version of Devo played at the 1973 Kent State performing arts festival, with Casale, Lewis, Mothersbaugh, Gerald's brother Bob Casale and friends Rod Reisman on drums and Fred Weber on vocals. That was the only performance with that lineup; a year later, the group featured the Casale brothers, Lewis, and brothers Mark and Jim Mothersbaugh. 

They played around the Akron area and put together a 9-minute short film called The Truth About De-Evolution, which won a prize at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in 1976. David Bowie became aware of the film and helped Devo get a contract with Warner Music Group. The following year, Neil Young asked the band to participate in his movie Human Highway; it wasn't released until 1982, but featured the band as "nuclear garbagemen."

Devo released their first single, "Mongoloid," in March 1977, with "Jocko Homo" as the B-side. They followed that up with a robotic cover of the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." Originally, Bowie had planned to produce the band's debut album, but the job ended up going to Brian Eno because Bowie was working on a movie (although he did help Eno with some of the production). The band had already debuted all the songs in concert and didn't want to deviate from their demos, despite Eno's suggestions. 

The songs were written by Mark (vocals, keyboards, guitar) and Bob Mothersbaugh (lead guitar, vocals) and Gerald Casale (vocals, bass, keyboards) between 1974 and 1977; those three were joined by Bob Casale (rhythm guitar, keyboards, vocals) and Alan Myers (drums) on the album. Called Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, the album was released in August 1978.

The band was written off by many critics as a novelty act, largely thanks to their yellow suits, herky-jerky rhythms and decidedly unserious demeanor. But Devo was a major influence on many bands to follow, whether they were punk, new wave or art rock. 

The opening track, "Uncontrollable Urge," just reaches out and grabs the listener, a high-octane song about sexual frustration that has Mark Mothersbaugh getting right in your face.

"Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!/Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!/Got an urge, got a surge and it's out of control/Got an urge I wanna purge 'cause I'm losing control/Uncontrollable urge, I wanna tell you all about it/Got an uncontrollable urge that makes me scream and shout it."

The other band members chime in: "He's got an uncontrollable urge (I've got an uncontrollable urge)/He's got an uncontrollable urge (I've got an uncontrollable urge)."

When the band would play the song live, they choreographed their movements to pivot in place, jump during the synth part and then get into a tight formation at the end. 

"It's got style, it's got class/So strong, I can't let it pass/I gotta tell you all about it/Make me scream and shout it/I got an uncontrollable urge, I wanna tell you all about it/An uncontrollable urge, make me scream and shout it."

The album, which featured a painting of golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez on it (who at that age bore a slight resemblance to Tom Brady), got to #78 on the Billboard 200. Devo was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live in 1978, playing "Satisfaction" and "Jocko Homo" and getting a whole lot of exposure. They released Duty Now for the Future in 1979, but their mainstream breakthrough came in 1980 with the album Freedom of Choice, which had their best-known song, "Whip It." The video, which featured the band wearing their red "energy dome" hats (which resembled flower pots), became a hit and the song hit the top 40. 

They released a few more albums before 1984's Shout, a synth-pop album that fared poorly critically and commercially. The album is dominated by the Fairlight synth and it ultimately led Warner Bros. to drop the band. Myers left the band and Mark Mothersbaugh began composing music for the Pee-Wee's Playhouse TV show. Devo reformed in 1987 with a new drummer and released two more albums before splitting up in 1991.

Mothersbaugh began composing music for TV and films and Gerald Casale began directing music videos for bands including Rush, Soundgarden and Foo Fighters. Devo reunited in 1996 at the Sundance Film Festival and on part of the Lollapalooza tour. The band has played occasional tours since, releasing a new album in 2010. Bob Casale died of heart failure in 2014 at the age of 61; Myers died the year before.

Devo toured this past May, with a lineup feature Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh, Gerald Casale, Josh Freese on drums and Josh Hager on guitar and keyboards, and earlier this year, a documentary on the band was released.

Day After Day #223: Waitin' for a Superman

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Waitin' for a Superman (1999)

When you ask people about their favorite albums by a particular artist, they often say the early ones. There's that raw, fresh sound when a band's just starting out that may get smoothed over or lost as the band gets older, bigger, more commercial. But sometimes artists find another level or a different sound later in their career that changes their entire trajectory.

That's what happened with the Flaming Lips. The band was formed in Oklahoma City in 1983 by Wayne Coyne (guitar), his brother Mark (lead vocals), Michael Ivins (bass) and Dave Kotska (drums). They released one EP before Mark left the band and Wayne took over as vocalist. The band's first album, 1986's Hear It Is, was psychedelic noise rock with touches of country and punk. They were weird, but nowhere near what they would do in the future. 

On their fourth album, 1990's In a Priest Driven Ambulance, the band really caught its stride, ripping through hot guitar-drenched rippers like "Unconsciously Screamin'," "Shine On Sweet Jesus," "Rainin' Babies" and "God Walks Among Us Now." A concept album about religion, it's relentlessly trippy and awesome. The band signed with Warner Bros. and released Hit to Death in the Future Head in 1992. But it wasn't until their sixth album, 1993's Transmissions from the Satellite Heart, that the Lips got any attention, thanks to "She Don't Use Jelly" after it was featured on Beavis and Butt-Head. The song hit #55 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was a top 30 hit in Australia. It even got them on TV, playing the Peach Pit on Beverly Hills 90210.

The Lips were unable to sustain the momentum on their next album, Clouds Taste Metallic, which was critically lauded but didn't sell as well as its predecessor. They responded by releasing Zaireeka, a four-CD album that meant to be listened to by playing all four CDs in four separate players simultaneously. 

But things would change in 1999 with The Soft Bulletin, which incorporated catchier songs, more synths and symphonic touches, and booming drums. It still has its psychedelic moments, but everything was just more...majestic. And critics and fans alike loved it, with many comparisons to the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album. Many proclaimed it the best album of 1999, and some called it the best album of the '90s.

The band had been going through a lot in the leadup to The Soft Bulletin. Drozd was battling a serious heroin addiction and almost lost his arm to an abscessed hypodermic puncture. Ivins nearly died in a car accident. And Coyne's father died after a long battle with cancer, leaving the frontman depressed. At this point, the band was a trio because lead guitarist Ronald Jones quit the band, leaving Coyne, Ivins and drummer Steven Drozd, who also began playing guitar, bass and keyboards. Eventually, Kliph Scurlock joined to take over on drums while Drozd played other instruments.

"Waitin' for a Superman" (sometimes with the subtitle "Is It Gettin' Heavy??") finds Coyne in a life-affirming mood, wondering if there isn't a Superman to ease our burdens, maybe we need to rely on each other.

"I asked you a question/I didn't need you to reply/Is it gettin' heavy?/But then I realized/Is it gettin' heavy?/Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be/Is it overwhelming to use a crane to crush a fly?/It's a good time for Superman/To lift the sun into the sky."

The song's vulnerability takes the band to places it hasn't been before. Nobody's spreading Vaseline on toast here. 

"Tell everybody/Waitin' for Superman/That they should try to hold on best they can/He hasn't dropped them/Forgot them or anything/It's just too heavy for Superman to lift."

With this song and the rest of the album ("Race for the Prize" and "Feeling Yourself Disintegrate" are just two more examples), the Lips had become downright inspirational, which was something nobody would have believed a decade earlier when they were writing songs like "Chrome Plated Suicide" and "Hari-Krishna Stomp Wagon (Fuck Led Zeppelin)."

The band's 2002 follow-up Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was similarly affecting, with songs like "Do You Realize??" and "Fight Test" especially hitting home. That year, the Lips opened for and were the backing band for Beck on his Sea Change tour. But the Lips didn't just keep making those kinds of albums and going for the NPR crowd. They embraced the weird like they always have, collaborating with everyone from Lightning Bolt to Neon Indian to Henry Rollins to Miley Cyrus, recording a 24-hour song, playing eight live concerts in 24 hours and appearing on Yo Gabba Gabba.

I haven't really kept up with their last several studio albums, but that's OK. There's so much good stuff in their catalog, especially The Soft Bulletin, that it doesn't really matter. 

Stuck In Thee Garage #424: May 13, 2022

The term "weird" is pretty relative these days. What was once considered weird is now fairly normal. Whatever the case, I played songs about weirdness in hour 2 of Stuck In Thee Garage this week and it was weirdly wonderful. Crank it up, but make sure you don't invite the cable guy. That guy's really weird.

This playlist comes with the premium package:

Hour 1

Artist - Song/Album

Pink Mountaintops - Nervous Breakdown/Peacock Pools

Near Beer - Yelling at a Dog/Single

Pet Fox - Checked Out/A Face in Your Life

Tijuana Panthers - False Equivalent/Halfway to Eighty

Night Shop - Let Me Let It Go/Forever Night

Spiritualized - The Mainline Song/Everything Was Beautiful

50 Foot Wave - Fly Down South/Black Pearl

Wet Leg - Supermarket/Wet Leg

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Bubblegum Infinity/Night Gnomes

Bodega - C.I.R.P./Broken Equipement

Folly Group - Paying the Price/Human and Kind

Ex-Hyena - Fractured/Single

Adulkt Life - Flipper/Book of Curses

Fontaines D.C. - Skinty Fia/Skinty Fia

The Flashing Lights - Half the Time/Where the Change Is

Hour 2: Weird

Oingo Boingo - Weird Science/Dead Man's Party

The Prefab Messiahs - Weirdoz Everywhere/Keep Your Stupid Dreams Alive

Sebadoh - Weird/The Sebadoh

Guided By Voices - Angelic Weirdness/Warp and Woof

Pixies - Is She Weird/Bossanova

Sick Sad World - Being Weird/Fear & Lies

Jeff Rosenstock - I Did Something Weird Last Night/WORRY.

Art Brut - Weird Science/Art Brut Vs. Satan

Radiohead - Weird Fishes/Arpeggi /In Rainbows

Juliana Hatfield - It's So Weird/Weird

Thin Lips - Nothing Weird/Divorce Year

Cloud Nothings - A Weird Interaction/The Black Hole Understands

Velvet Crush - Weird Summer/Teenage Symphonies to God

Teenage Fanclub - Weird Houses/Thirteen

Superchunk - My Gap Feels Weird/Majesty Shredding

Idiot Genes - Weird Being/BFFs

Dandelion - Weird-Out/Dyslexicon

Jeff Rosenstock - You, In Weird Cities/We Cool?