After this week’s ep of re:Creators somebody (I forget who and where) spoke of the protagonists getting ready for the “final battle”. What with the oddly veering way my mind often works, that made me think of Europe’s 1986 single – The Final Countdown.
So, on a whim, off I went to YouTube to see what if any AMV’s there might be set to that tune. And lo and behold – there were. Hundreds of them… and predictably virtually all of them stuck to the “Final Battle” trope. Out of curiosity I kept paging through and found this little gem – the creator has reimagined Girls Dead Monster (from the anime Angel Beats) as a 80’s hair band in a typical 80’s concert video. MTV is thirty-six years old as of today, and barely shows music anymore… but at the time (only five years old and at the peak of its cultural relevance) it was positively flooded with this type of band and video, and the AMV was instantly familiar. (Man, really showing my age here!)
Anyhow, I couldn’t resist sharing it.
For the curious and for reference, the original 1986 video can be seen here.
Apprentice Mages Lounge. 
Heh, that’s amazing, how well that fits, complete with the slow-motion walking intro and the random moon/cloud shots…
(Btw, that song is a New Year’s favourite around here, so it never left the radio completely.)
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He did a dang good job didn’t he?
It shows up every now-and-again on retro and oldies stations, but that’s about it. Certainly nothing like the heavy rotation it was in back in the day. But then I don’t listen to radio much other than when I’m in my car. Nowadays it’s streaming, either from my hard drive or from the ‘net.
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Nice! I like that, really well done. It’s pretty cool when AMV editors make a video that feels like it could be a real music video – that’s surprisingly uncommon.
My older brother was in college in the late 80’s and was a hair metal fanatic back then, and he got me into Europe when they were popular (along with several other similar bands). I don’t think he ever actually listened to them much beyond their MTV hits though, and when they came up in a conversation we were having a few years ago, he actually seemed embarrassed about ever liking them. I, on the other hand, picked up both the Final Countdown album, which was actually their third album, and the two they made before it that no one paid attention to, and on those first two albums I found a legitimately heavy and surprisingly talented metal band. With Final Countdown they traded in their guitar chops and double bass drums for keyboard licks and pop hooks, and it definitely helped them find the mainstream success they needed, but while I haven’t listened to my Final Countdown CD in probably at least 10 years, I will pull out those first two CDs and give them a spin every once in a while. Especially their second album, which is still a personal favorite.
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Good AMV’s are uncommon period, let alone ones as well done as this. I shared it because he really did go the extra mile to nail the style.
I don’t think I’ve listened to an individual album all the way through in years… I ripped my CD’s to disk about eight or ten years ago and built playlists. If I listen to any artist’s playlist on a regular basis, it’s usually either Peter Gabriel or the Rankin Family. Peter Gabriel/Melt is probably my all time favorite album.
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Good choice! My favorite Peter Gabriel album is Car, I played that one to death back in the day. I saw a fantastic video someone made for “Moribund the Burgermeister” once – it wasn’t an AMV, though, the guy did his own original animation for it! Unfortunately I can’t find it on YouTube anymore – probably a copyright claim victim.
Speaking of Melt, though, have you ever checked to see if there are any good AMVs that use “Games Without Frontiers”? That seems like a song that would lend itself really well to the AMV format.
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Edit: Looks like it’s back again! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf0jlpw0OcQ
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Frankly, I’ve never cared much for Car or Scratch… IMO Melt is the first album where all the pieces come together and he finds his own voice and style. Solsbury Hill excepted… I’ve always found it odd that a song which sounds so much like his post Melt work is on his first solo album. Disclaimer needed: I discovered him with Melt, and was thus looking backwards at Car and Scratch.
Heh, a few years back my wife gave me the Secret World concert DVD ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_World_Live_(film) ) for Christmas… Just put it in the player, it’ll be my soundtrack for rest of the day. And dammit, now Steam is playing and I can’t turn it up nearly as loud as I want because the SOB that lives downstairs will complain.
I only found one AMV for Games, and it was about Hetalia (and not very well done at all). Which really doesn’t surprise me, as Games is a very situation specific political song.
That was an interesting video indeed.
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When I started listening to current Pop/Rock, the new Peter Gabriel record was So, which featured “Sledgehammer” and “Big Time” both of which I hated (and still don’t like). “Red Rain” was better, but didn’t change my opinion of him much. I moderately liked “Don’t Give Up” (with Kate Bush), though.
The next I heard of Peter Gabriel was his work with late 60ies early 70ies Genesis, and I was blown away. I think my favourite record is Nursery Crymes. When Gabriel left, Genesis took a hit (and when Steve Hackett left, I basically lost all interest in Genesis). I then heard Solsbury Hill on radio one day, and I loved it. It wasn’t such a stretch from the last Genesis Album with him (The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway), so I wasn’t really surprised.
At some point I realised that “Games Without Frontiers” was a Gabriel song. Now that came as a surprise. (The only other song I know from Melt is “Biko”, which is fairly straightforward Gabriel style, IMO.)
I once went to a Gabriel concert on a whim, because it was close. I didn’t even know any songs from the new record (must have been “UP”? I don’t really remember). I always had it in my head that Gabriel was mostly a studio artist, because his records tend to be very meticulously arranged. Was I ever wrong. Gabriel is actually an excellent performer, and his stage performance was every bit as conceptualised as his music. A great concert.
So, bascially, when it comes to Gabriel, I’m more familiar with his work with Genesis than with his solo projects, which is more hit and miss with me, but there are lots of songs I don’t know, and the probablility is high that there are a lot of them I like.
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@Dawnstorm
So was a good album… Don’t Give Up is a powerful song, though I prefer the version with Paula Cole. Though Red Rain comes close, Don’t Give Up is my favorite from that album.
Up I didn’t care as much for. A friend loaned my their CD once, and that was enough for me.
Honestly, I only really know the MTV friendly Phil Collins version of Genesis and I can take or leave them. I’ve never listened to the Peter Gabriel years at all.
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Old Genesis is 70ies art rock, and it shares with it the sprawling songs with narratives and sometimes dramatic structure, also sprawling “sound carpets”. It’s a little folksy, especially in the beginning, and there are some tracks that show that influence pretty obviously. Their first record (still without both Collins or Hackett) sounds a little like Procul Harum (if you their songs apart from “Whiter Shade of Pale”, which is a bit of an outlier). They find their own style with the next record, Trespass. They’re final album with Gabriel is a double LP concept album that works taken all together but has few standout tracks. As I said, my favourite of their records up to that one is Nursery Crymes and my favourite track from there is:
Seven Stones
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@Dawnstorm. I came at Gabriel almost the same way you did. My Dad and my oldest brother (not the hair metal fan) were both massive fans of 70’s Genesis, and that carried over to his solo career too. So was also my first exposure to solo Gabriel. When I first listened to that album I liked all the radio hits, but my favorite song as I’ve gotten older is actually “Mercy Street,” which IMO is one of the most atmospherically beautiful songs he’s ever written. Rolling Stone did a poll of readers’ top 10 favorite Gabriel songs a couple of years ago (results are at http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/readers-poll-the-10-best-peter-gabriel-songs-20151104), and that one actually made the list, which I was happy about – I always thought it was just me who liked it. And yeah, Nursery Cryme is a great album, probably the one I’ve listened to the most out of their early catalog.
@DerekL. I also like “Don’t Give Up” a lot, even if it’s not my absolute favorite (see above). Funny thing is whenever I see any song from that album get trashed by reviewers, it’s usually that one, and I don’t know why. Too bad about “Games,” but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
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I was (am) the older brother, so I was the trailblazer… :) Only my sister ever followed me into my long diversion into more alternative music in the 80’s though. Though she lived in a college town, my brothers didn’t, and in that era in the South that made a huge difference. I was living near Seattle, and in the pre-corporate-domination era that made a difference too.
@Wing: That’s an interesting list… Nice to see it’s not dominated by his MTV era songs, as all too often lists of artists that were active across the 80’s are. OTOH, Gabriel is a mega star, so that changes something too.
@Dawn: I never got into art/prog, though that is a very cool song.
The 70’s, despite it’s reputation as the “Decade of Disco” was actually a very busy time musically, wasn’t it?
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@WingKing: I’ve actually never heard the album itself, so this is my first exposter to “Mercy Street”. This is such a beautiful song!
@DerekL: I think they call the 70ies the Decade of Disco, mostly because that one’s firmly in the Decade. Most of the other significant developments started earlier or ended later. I’d say my favourite music period would have been 1967 – 1974, give or take a year or two. That’s the rise of glam rock, the heyday of glam and psychodelic. Some good prog rock, too. It also coincides with the rise of the concept album. People credit Sgt. Pepper, but to my mind albums like the Kinks Village Green Preservation Society (Village Green) or The Pretty Things’ SF Sorrow (Death) were more successful with picking a concept and running with it. (Pet topic, could go on forever.)
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(Re-parenting because it’s becoming hard to follow, and because we’re shifting tracks a little bit…)
@Dawn… That makes sense, though Disco only dominated for a (relatively) brief period. For me, my favorite era would probably be 1978/’79 or so through 1985/’86 or so. Basically, from the start of disco’s fall from grace to the rise of corporate music as MTV began to consciously use it’s influence. There’s a ton of good and creative music in there…
Of course, that’s also my late teens to my early-mid 20’s… which may or may not have anything to do with it.
And believe it or not, this discussion of eras and genres is relevant to anime – you’ll see that with tomorrow’s weekly post.
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Oh dear, my late teens/early twens were the late 80ies to early 90ies, when the music scene was recovering from Strock, Aitkin and Waterman via Techno. That might explain why my music taste goes back to around the time I was born, heh.
I was really impressed with that AMV, though, the way they managed to capture the feel of 80ies music video is really amazing. I actually had a similar feeling with a video game opening once.
The Opening of the video game Atelier Escha & Logy reminded me a lot of the time period I mentioned above (67-74). They updated it obviously with more minimalist instrumentiation and a more openly nostalgic time-tourism look, and also with anime aestheticism (like part-of-body close-ups while walking), but I was totally surprised since that sort of opening is not what I would have expected from the Atelier franchise.
Looking forward to your post.
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Meanwhile, my teens coincided with the grunge years in the early 90’s, a strand of rock that I only came to appreciate with the benefit of time and distance. Because I played music myself (7 years of piano training), I preferred bands with a certain level of musical virtuousity, which is why I tended to gravitate to prog rock and certain hard rock/metal bands. If a band couldn’t write their own songs and play their own instruments, I wasn’t interested in them back then. My favorite era was probably about 1973-1982, with the golden age of prog rock and arena rock, up through the earliest years of new wave.
On the topic of animated musical performances, that Atelier opening (which is pretty cool, BTW!) reminded me that one of my favorite anime OPs from the last few years was the OP for The Rolling Girls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk36FnjQ2U0), which featured a cover version of a Japanese punk song from the 80s being performed by the main characters. Too bad the show itself was such a train wreck, but I never get tired of that opening.
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Rolling Girls was my favourite anime of 2015 and I have the Dvds (for once they ported something I actually liked). And, yes, that opening is wonderful.
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Wow… I really am the old man around here! :)
@Dawn Well, the music someone loves isn’t always from their teens/twenties, I had a friend in high school who was super heavy into Big Band. (He was also heavy into alternative and introduced me to both Devo and the Dead Kennedys.)
@Wing Yeah, the OP for Rolling Girls was so good… And the concept for the show was so good, but it quickly went astray. One day I should make a post about the anime I didn’t mean to watch, but ended up doing so because the OP always left me in such a good mood.
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