I got ridiculously excited today about the fact that I am seeing Pavement play for the first time on September 9th. I was happily swimming in memories of college and listening to CDs and the “Shady Lane” video. The kaleidoscope image of the oranges always stuck in my head, though now I’m more taken by the driverless Mercedes.
I could wax nostalgic about the nineties for several blog pages. Finding out what was cool (to me) was organic in the days before web ubiquity - though I thank the music gods for preserving all I am about to write about on YouTube. Building my young persona involved "120 Minutes" on MTV, trips to the Urban Outfitters in Harvard Square (before Urban was in malls = BIG DEAL), stacks of Spin Magazine in my bedroom closet, and recording my favorite videos on VHS tapes while my parents slept.
I carried a cut out picture of music video director Spike Jonze’s face in my wallet until very recently, underneath my driver's license. I guess it had started to seem silly, but I used to shiver with nervousness on the infrequent occasions when he would call or sit in the producer’s office across from me in Los Angeles (I briefly worked for the company that represented him).
Spike to me is the epitome of what was beautiful about music videos in the 1990’s. His work was irreverent and colorful (
The Beastie Boys' “Sabotage”). If you didn’t see the band play (like in
Weezer’s “Undone: The Sweater Song”), you at least got to watch them do something really awesome or funny. If there was choreography, it was tongue in cheek (Bjork’s “It’s Oh So Quiet”) and never boring.
Spike was no Dave Meyers (of "Work It" fame). His videos didn’t seem outlandishly expensive, but they were always memorable, and they always made me wish I was in them. This stuff is as fresh in my mind as the first day I saw it, and I daresay Spike influenced a lot of other directors, not just future Account Managers like me. Case in point: Anyone remember the Torrance Community Dance Group and the Fatboy Slim “Praise You” video? Um… pre-YouTube viral video anyone?
Propaganda/Satellite Films, where I worked in 2001 as a lowly receptionist, was exactly the door I wanted my foot in. By 1990, they produced almost a third of all music videos made in the U.S., and many of the directors they represented (including Spike) went on to be prominent film directors (like David Fincher). Unfortunately, it was a sign of the times and the changing world of music promotion (read: way less music videos on MTV, an influx of "reality") when the company shut its doors on November 8, 2001, less than two months after September 11 and less than a year into my stint there. Some investors almost bought us, but purchased the Minnesota Twins instead.
I went on to a movie Propaganda had been producing, “Auto Focus”, but things were never the same. I finally was paid one third of the three weeks’ hourly wage I was owed at the company's closing years later, in 2007.
Flipping channels a couple weeks ago I discovered the Fuse Network and watched every single Lady Gaga video. I’m glad to know a place to see music videos other than YouTube and that morning show on VH-1 (it will make you want to go back to bed except for that new Hanson video), but I’d go back to "120 Minutes" circa 1996 any day. What I loved the most about Spike Jonze’s work back then, besides actually seeing it on TV, was that it was so joyful.
Katie Jewett