Americana, Bees, Chris Cornell

While noodling around the internet (trying to work out whether I had accidentally plagurized the bee baby from the header of my page in a t shirt design)I rediscovered Blind Melon. My Dad had the album and I clearly remember him likening me to the similarly aged Bee Girl. This was unintentionally hurtful, as although he thought she was hilarious and enchantingly cute, she was also quite obviously as similarly rotund and ungainly to his own little progeny.

Anyway, the video is below, but further than a little weight related nostalgic moment, it made me pine for early 90's americana in general. It was around that time that I first discovered music, and MTV, thanks to visiting my Dad's work and raiding his CD's (new format sent him a little bonkers, hence all the popular hits of the day) and I remember thinking that music videos were possibly the coolest things ever.



Things were simpler back then, people smiled, there were no stylists (it would seem), the colours were brighter and it was fine to dance around like complete idiots, as aptly demonstrated by REM:



Barring the fact that such videos mean there are photos of me in existence where I am wearing John Lennon sunglasses and a backwards flatcap, I think it's a shame that things inevitably progressed as they have. These days (and I am aware that I sound about fifty right now) music videos are unbiquitous and for the most part, identikit. Most involve dead eyed models in thongs gyrating around in some conveluted choreography or acting like pieces of meat over a disco beat. No wonder little girls are growing up fast and getting complexes about their appearance! Even the Bee Girl, my own little eight year old doppleganger, finds happiness at the end of 4 minutes and 50 seconds, in a wonderful garden where people accept her for who she is. How many happy fat girls do you see in music videos these days?

Anyway, I couldn't finish this post without embedding the video that kind of sums up my whole MTV worship era. Moody dudes on a hillside, the most advanced camera trickery of the day, wind machines and warped-yet-slightly cliche imagery to stimulate impressionable young minds. Utterly creepy and fantastic.



Even though this vid (along with the dancing chicken in the Peter Gabriel video) totally scared the shit out of me out at the time, I'd let my daughter watch them over Pussycat Dolls any day of the week.