I proposed the notion of song covers as palimpsest earlier on this blog. This version and video of ‘I will survive’ by Cake forms a wonderful palimpsest on the famous Gloria Gaynor song from 1978 which became a number one hit in 1979. It went on to became an anthem in Disco Culture of the …
Weapon of Choice is a short 3 minute video clip of a Fatboy Slim track directed by Spike Jonze. I wrote this review back in 2002 for my defunct Walken Works site when the internet was still fun and starting to emerge from its wild and woolly experimental frontiers. This video, which of course predates …
This is not strictly speaking a music video, but a scene from a film set to Bob Dylan’s song ‘Ballad of Thin Man’. It appears in Todd Hayne’s highly creative 2007 biopic I’m not there about Bob Dylan. Six different actors play six different characters, representing Dylan at different stages of his life and career. …
Applying a Marxist framework, this could be described as a story of the alienation of the worker in an industrial and urbanised consumer society. This wonderfully directed video/short film features a very strong central performance, striking characterisation of the car factory robots and seamless special effects. The driving industrial music perfectly sets the tone of …
I remember my introduction to New Order when I was living in Paris in the early 1980s. The FM radio band had just been deregulated and anybody at all could set up a radio station. I had two favourites: Radio Nova which played a lot of non mainstream music – including Australian music and La …
It is hard to appreciate now how innovative Kraftwerk were in their early days (and indeed in their later days!) and the sheer effort and technical expertise it took to produce this music. You can see the concentrated effort of the musicians here as they perform this great version of their classic track ‘Autobahn’. It’s …
What immediately struck me about this video is that, counter to so many other music videos, the women are not hyper sexualised. Judging from the comments on YouTube however, this artist hasn’t maintained this stance, which a number of the commenters have found deeply disappointing. I haven’t investigated further, preferring to maintain my illusions, restricting …
I’ve decided to add a new category to this blog – music videos. Music videos can be extremely rich art forms with so much packed into a short time frame. The Avalanches are an Australian electronic group based in Melbourne. This particular video deservedly won the video of the year award at the MTV Europe …
Refracted Input 