Covid Island Discs
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Week 44 Video Playlist
This week all the videos are worth watching. I think there are at least 4 which are visually evocative:
- Road to nowhere, Talking Heads
- Mad hatter, Melanie Martinez
- Be Good Johnny, Men at Work
- One of us, Joan Osborne
Out of these four, the “Be Good Johnny” video really captures in the rather negative pressure that was put on my generation of Australian males to be good at sport. I really like the caricature of the older Australian male asking the boy “are you going play cricket this year Johnny? Nah, Nah, Nah… So tell me, what kind of boy are you Johnny?”
Melanie Martinez song is of course really out there in terms of visual imagery fitting the LSD-type altered reality of the Mad Hatter.
The video for “One of us” goes really well with the lyrical content of this song. The video switches back and forth from Joan Osborne singing to images of humanity living their lives in the strange reality in which we all find ourselves. The images have been purposely red colour-shifted so the whole thing has a more observer-like quality as one watches the various scenes unfolding in the video.
Yet this week my vote goes for Talking Head’s video “Road to nowhere” as the imagery in this video consistently matches the theme of the song reflecting on the apparent meaninglessness of life’s progression. I particularly like the sequence from 1 minute to 1 minute 21 seconds capturing a couple going through their whole life’s events and ending in a dancing kiss — what a cool way to resolve life’s apparently meaningless paradox!
If you hover your mouse over the top right of this video window, you will see a button. Clicking on this icon will bring up the full play list of videos and you can scroll down to select whichever one you to play.