Please enjoy jwz mixtape 2ØØ.
Two hundred!
By the numbers: that's 1,625 audio tracks on the first 75 mixtapes, and then 2,732 videos on the next 125 mixtapes, for a total running time of just over 12 days. That averages out to pretty close to my goal of 90 minutes each, at an average of one every six weeks.
I wanted to do something to commemorate the bicentennial (bicentapial?) so here's a double-length mixtape (a pair of C90s) comprising The Greatest Music Videos Of All Time.
Ok, it's not really that, because there are two fundamental problems with that concept:
- First: How is a mixtape of The Greatest Music Videos Of All Time not merely Duran Duran's "The Wild Boys" playing on infinite repeat?
Because really, that's it, you can stop there, that's the one.
There's a rule about recording a cover song: "Never remind the audience that they could be listening to a better band than yours." So let's say you sit down to make a music video. How do you even do that, knowing that The Wild Boys exists, out there, in the world? How do you top that?
- But Second: I am paralysed by choice. My first draft of this mixtape was seven hours long, and it still felt woefully incomplete.
Though I will eagerly argue that Russell Mulcahy both invented the music video and closed the book on the genre, if you were to make that claim, I'd be quick to tell you how wrong you were and point out that we are absolutely living in the golden age of the music video right now. The accessibility of the tools of production and distribution was supposed to transform the music industry into this cornucopia of new voices, and it so, so did not -- the corporations locked that shit down tight. But for music videos... it kinda did... These days a band with $10k can put together a video that is every bit as high quality and insane as something that in the 80s or 90s would have taken $10M and a crew of 80, and that's not just some tech-cheerleader cliché, small bands are actually doing that and it's amazing.
So here are some music videos. Are they great? Absolutely, and I'll fight anyone who says different. Greatest Of All Time? Maybe, maybe, maybe.
I love these videos for all kinds of reasons, but I tried to avoid falling into the trap of including a B- video because it's an A+ song. (As it happens, I also think these are all great songs, so perhaps I wasn't as objective on that as I could have been).
I didn't put these tracks in order of any kind of rank, because I thought that making a listenable mix was a better way to go.
Enjoy your next three hours:
Came here to bitch about the absence of iamamiwhoami. Pleased to be disappointed.
Track 30? Or was it not working at some point? It's playing for me right now.
Apparently a company called "SME" and their toady called "Youtube" have decided that none of you are allowed to watch the second video on the list.
Does the S stand for Sony perchance?
Unfortunately tracks 21 and 22 have suffered a similar fate (Lamb - B Line, and Herbie Hancock - Rockit.) I'm watching track 23 now so I fear that others will be blocked before I can get through the rest.
FFS. I uploaded a copy of B-Line because even the band's channel has only a remix version of that, which is disastrous because the mix screws up the sync between the original song and the animation that went with it. It was alive yesterday. I also tried uploading Dirt but that got zapped right away. I thought that it didn't complain about Rockit for me yesterday, but maybe I missed it.
Remember! It's vitally important that you not be able to watch a thirty-five year old video. The artist's needs are clearly being serviced by preventing you from seeing it. I mean, just imagine what could happen.
Many many thanks for all your work on these mixtapes - I've dipped through them over the years and it's introduced me to new bands and music and (shock) I've gone off and bought a few albums that I otherwise would never have bought. Thank you.
How have I never seen the Wild Boys video before?
Have you been in jail for 30 years?
Worse, Australia. Which is why Mulcahy left.
You will ride eternal, shiny and chrome!
Did your parents not let you watch Countdown or any of the other music video shows from the mid 1980s? Mine did, and I saw it a bunch of times.
Man, even the mixes with older stuff on them ... about half of it I'm like "I'm as old as jwz, how come I haven't heard of this?" Blocking out time on my calendar this evening...
For my personal list I would throw a dart at the entire videography of Devo and put that one on the list, with special weight toward Beautiful World and Freedom of Choice.
Yeah, those were on the short list for sure...
in related news, perl (5.28) on my system is griping in youtubedown:
Unescaped left brace in regex is deprecated here (and will be fatal in Perl 5.32), passed through in regex; marked by <-- HERE in m/ \b \"? R9 \"? : \s*
function \s* \( [^(){}]*? \) \s*
( { <-- HERE [^{}]+ } )
/ at /home/rj/bin/youtubedown line 2298 (#1)
(code block modified with respect to large amount of leading spaces)
Currently just a warning, at least.
Yeah, you gotta escape curly braces outside of a character class now. I think that's general.
No KLF?
You must be new here...
Not really. JWZ didn't comment on the trilogy videos back then, but I guess you're right that in re-reading that post one can conclude that he's probably not a big fan of them either.
Amusingly that post, when I looked just now, had 23 comments.
Come on, though I love them to death, all of their videos are objectively terrible.
So your thesis is that the Internet did not, in fact, kill the video star?
I don't know why, but I think JWZ might have a thing for women wearing that Fifth Element boob-tape thing.
Who doesn't?
Holy shot. That Orbital video.
Tilda Swinton!
ok, done. Now I need the 7 hour version....