Tag Archives: video clip of the week

Video Clip of The Week: Pretty Vicious, “These Four Walls”


If you look back over the Video Clip of The Week entries that have graced this space so far in 2019, you could almost make a case for arguing that The Rock is making some kind of a low-focus comeback. I’m not one to get my hopes up or anything, but let’s assume that this is officially the case with the band featured in this weeks’ clip: Welsh grunge-revivalists (and —  I’m just guessing here —  Sex Pistols fans), Pretty Vicious. The tune is “These Four Walls,” and I’m just going to lay all of my cards on the table right now and say that this song is arguably one of the most contagious anthems of youthful rebellion since the original band called Alice Cooper announced that, “Schools Out Forever, Bitches” — or something like that.

There are those who will claim that knowing how to actually sing and play your instruments is overrated, and not a requirement for making good music, but those people are idiots. Pretty Vicious are not ashamed to have chops up the ass, starting with singer Brad Griffiths’ robust snarl that recalls Billy Joe Armstrong as channeled through 999’s Nick Cash — old school! Is it likely that Griffiths even knows who Nick Cash is? Hell no, but the you’re feelin’ it, who gives a shit? Wait for the bridge, where guitarist Tom McCarthy pulls out Slash-worthy leads that are just insane. Driving the engine is drummer Elliot Jones, whose adrenalized, machine gun cadence is so fucking punchy and precise, it will knock you right on your ass. And then there’s “I Am A Fucking Rock Star” bassist Jarvis Morgan (he’s the adorable, pouty blond seen in the photo below), who reminds me fondly of my immortal teenage punk rock crush, which, considering that individual went on to become one of most legendary figures in American punk rock history, can only be seen as a good thing. Because I know how to call them.

Visually, “These Four Walls” is a fast paced, performance-heavy clip, effectively capturing the kinetic live energy of Pretty Vicious on stage, while also peppering the action with documentary-style footage of the band cavorting in NYC’s Times Square. Rock action, urban sleaze, decadence, youth — OMG what a great band!

With appearances at huge UK-based summer rock festivals (Reading and Leeds) already under their not-quite-21-year-old belts, Pretty Vicious are certainly poised to give Greta Van Fleet a run for the money! “These Four Walls” will be available on the band’s  highly anticipated debut album due out on Big Machine/John Varvatos Records later this year. Enjoy!

Pretty Vicious Band

Video Clip of The Week: Cyclone Static, “Company Man”

In this barren musical wasteland of conveyor-belt acts that is all but completely devoid of anything even resembling Rock ‘n’ Roll, I’ve become so uninterested in what the pop charts have to offer that I never even considered the wildly nostalgic potential pull of a band that is willing to revisit the grunge rock era. And then I heard this week’s video clip, which is “Company Man” from New Jersey power-rock trio, Cyclone Static. And this was a reminder to me to never, ever underestimate the pure joy that comes from music that does not sound like it came from a can. Cyclone Static are not magical Wizards. They are not from Outer Space. They are simply three guys who love music, and it shows. Continue reading Video Clip of The Week: Cyclone Static, “Company Man”

Video Clip of The Week: Swervedriver, “Spiked Flower”

‘Transcendent’ is not a world that I find myself using very often these days when talking about modern music, if I talk about it at all. I looked at the Billboard charts a couple months ago for the first time in probably a decade — just being serious — and when I realized that every band or artist in the top 20 or so positions on that chart was either someone I’ve never heard of, or someone I am familiar enough with to have a strong distaste for their songs, I knew l’d made the right decision to abandon rock journalism and start writing about art and food. Because I would rather listen to The Beatles or Led Zeppelin for one hundred million billion years than any of the boring, shitty, derivative, eardrum excoriating garbage that ‘the kids’ are downloading for 15 minutes. Fuck the kids.
Continue reading Video Clip of The Week: Swervedriver, “Spiked Flower”

Video Clip of The Week: Dandy Warhols, “Be Alright”

Happy New Year, Bitches — and welcome to the first Video Clip of the Week for 2019! It’s going to be a great year for some-extra cool songs and clips, I promise. It’s good to be back, though I admit that I am still a little woozy from the Holidaze. For the first three or four days after I returned from a fabulous Christmas vacation in Southern California, I felt like I was completely hungover with jet lag. And during that necessary reintegration into the New York City atmosphere, I had an unusually high number of vivid, hallucinatory dreams that seemed to segue loosely from one to another and another, which left me foggy and disoriented upon wakening, but nevertheless kept me wildly entertained. Dreaming is free.

And it is this desirable feeling of existing in a dream-like state that sealed the deal for me when choosing this week’s clip, which is called “Be Alright” from the Dandy Warhols — a band that managed to cling tenaciously to their major label record deal longer than I think anyone imagined possible. Kudos! Starring actress Jessica Paré, who played Megan Draper on Mad Men, and featuring cameos by all band members plus an assorted mix of their extended entourage, “Be Alright”  opens on a scene of Paré seated alone in a dimly-lit restaurant and symbolically squeezing the last drop of wine from the bottle before before she saunters off to the bar for more champagne, and then proceeds to journey from room to room, encountering  a formal dinner party, concert, photo shoot, and a recording session. Or something like that. Imagine if David Lynch directed an alt-rock version of Alice in Wonderland.

It turns out that the clip was shot entirely in one location, which is a a ten thousand square foot building purchased by the Dandy Warhols back in 2002 in what was then industrial NW Portland. The Odditorium, as it is now known, is the band’s headquarters, recording studio, and hang out for them and all their friends and fellow artists. The video was written and conceived by the award winning creative mind of Kevin Moyer, who explains, “I’ve been there many times and it is such a cool and ethereal place, full of psychedelia and gothic touches and auras. It just makes your head spin trying to take all of it in as you walk through the unique rock n roll space. What better way [to capture the essence of this music] than to use a head spinning media format to take the viewer on a magical journey through the Dandy Warhols‘ own space and sound, with the new single ‘Be Alright’ making things exactly that along the way.” Well said!

“Be Alright” can be found on the band’s new album, Why You So Crazy, due out on January 25th, 2019 on Dine Alone Records. Preorder the album via their Pledge Music campaign, and receive extra goodies, at This Link! Enjoy!

Dandy Warhols

Video Clip of The Week: Elton John, “Step Into Christmas”

Back in the ’70s and ’80s, when Rock & Roll was still chart-topping genre rather than something that people over age 40 get nostalgic about, popular bands doing Christmas-themed songs was a thing that I enjoyed. While many of my holiday favorites fall into the pop-ballad category — the gloriously maudlin “Merry Christmas, Darling” by The Carpenters, or Emerson Lake and Palmer’s appropriately stoic “I Believe in Father Christmas” spring instantly to mind — there are a few modern standards that truly rock out. Which brings us to this week’s Video Clip, Elton John’s “Step Into Christmas” — a song that John recorded with his original band in 1973! You probably weren’t even born yet. Continue reading Video Clip of The Week: Elton John, “Step Into Christmas”