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Desert Island Videos: Where You Gonna Hide?

1) "New Frontier"

4 votes

2) "The Walls Came Down"

2 votes

3) "Thin Line Between Love and Hate"

1 votes

4) "TV Dinners"

0 votes

Edgy DC Aug 04 2011 11:17 PM

Our wildly popular Desert Island Videos Series continues as we flash back on fallout shelter themed videos. In the days before such universal financial anxiety our culture was gripped by nuclear anxiety, and that crept into many music videos, and our future in fallout shelters --- or sets that resembled them --- was a theme that crept into many a music video. Sometimes it wasn't explicit, but a slowly rotating ventilator fan, leaking concrete walls, and exposed light bulbs got the idea across. The theme was even getting into videos for ostensibly apolitical love songs, or songs about bad food. These videos were all over... and I came up with... four. What do you want from me? Near misses not quite qualifying included videos about nuclear brinkmanship, such as "Two Tribes" and "Land of Confusion" (though fake concert footage in the latter appears to be in a sealed room and two different shots show air locks closing) and videos about post-apocalyptic wanderings, such as "You Got Lucky," "Synchronicity II," and "We Don't Need Another Hero." (Future categories, these.) So, what could be more depressing when marooned on a desert island than watching a fallout-shelter-themed video? Choosing the wrong one. Choose well, my child. 1) "New Frontier" [youtube:9b1iu032]vVy0ZVQcl7E[/youtube:9b1iu032] 2) "The Walls Came Down" [youtube:9b1iu032]_kX8lqXAONg[/youtube:9b1iu032] 3) "Thin Line Between Love and Hate" [youtube:9b1iu032]4pCCdclkdLY[/youtube:9b1iu032] 4) "TV Dinners" [youtube:9b1iu032]T1nMC6kLOYA[/youtube:9b1iu032]

dgwphotography Aug 05 2011 07:17 AM Re: Desert Island Videos: Where You Gonna Hide

Gotta go with New Frontier, if only for the Ambush mention - I had a girlfriend in high school who wore Ambush... drove me wild...

LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr Aug 05 2011 08:01 AM Re: Desert Island Videos: Where You Gonna Hide? Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Aug 05 2011 08:16 AM

It's a toss-up between the Call and the Beards. If you're going to make an early-80s video about fallout shelters, it might as well be a really, really literal setting/thematic choice. Fagen's director is just kinda tossing imagery up at the cold, underground wall, and the Pretenders just seem to be getting mileage out of a really inexpensive set. I'll go Call.

MFS62 Aug 05 2011 08:13 AM Re: Desert Island Videos: Where You Gonna Hide? Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Aug 05 2011 08:16 AM

No wonder the guy in the ZZ Top video is living in the shelter. He brought about the apocalypse all by himself - he used a METAL COATED TV dinner in a microwave. That probably generated enough radio signals to attract that monster from a distant star. So I voted for the Pretenders. Cheesy set or not, it had Ms Hynde, and that's enough for me. She could share my fallout shelter any time. Later

John Cougar Lunchbucket Aug 05 2011 08:14 AM Re: Desert Island Videos: Where You Gonna Hide?

I voted for The Call because I love the song even though I think of it as a submarine video not a fallout shelter video. "New Fontiers" is terrific too