TITN videos
 

Were these filmed before or after LB's decision to leave? They seem pretty damned cheerful, even acting silly with eachother, in the Seven Wonders video. In Big Love & Little Lies they did not look so happy, but I don't know if that's because everyone was really ready to kill eachother or if they were trying to act really serious in the vids.

Anyone know? :shrug:

Before he quit.

Yes, Big Love, 7 Wonders & Little Lies were done before he quit (or was fired), but Everywhere may have been done after he was gone.

^I figured Everywhere was later, considering none of the band members are in it. I tend not to even count that as a video, it's useless.

that's the worst video ever

I agree. You can barely see Mick, John & Chris. They're in silouette.

Forget the music videos. What's with the inserted close ups of Stevie during the Tango concert video? That video has hardly any decent live concert footage to speak of. Why all the close ups of Stevie barking into the camera instead of shots of her belting it out to the audience? Why no shots of her singing to one or both of the Lindsey twins? :laugh:

:shrug:

I agree that that whole thing was most unfortunate. It wasn't the world's liveliest tour to begin with, but to intercut so much slow-motion & stop-motion, cheap & banal soundstage footage, & insistently self-conscious camera work (swooping, panning, gliding, zooming in, zooming out) into an already staid performance (at that time, the band was "mature" in the worst way) was to render it all the more boring & tiresome. The minds of the filmmakers were filled with pompously elaborate ideas but an inability to execute them with any real creativity or taste. The total effect is sodden & kitschy. Think about all your friends & fellow fans: who among them has ever expressed any excitement or genuine love for this video? It's an impure commodity: it has absolutely nothing for anyone. It's the epitome of shlock art.

I think Stevie's equally stupid closeup work on her Red Rocks video the year before is what gave her the idea to work the same shtick into the Fleetwood Mac San Francisco film.

Art? You're too kind. :D



You're not alone. :wavey:

I think the close ups were idea of the director and producer and they are sooooo 80's :laugh: Having said that, I do not mind them as much as others - but to each their own.

I must say I LOVE Seven Wonders from this video and I think Everywhere is done in a pretty cool manner.

Other than that, I think they all sound not that great - but and again, to each their own.

I don't understand. I thought the whole first part of the set was lively- Isn't it Midnight, Rhiannon, Oh Well, Seven Wonders......

True, though there are reasons TO own it. For me, THE biggest reason to own this video is Rick Vito's amazing take on "I Loved Another Woman." "Isn't It Midnight" is also pretty good. I just wish they would have included "Rattlesnake Shake," "Brown Eyes," and "Go Your Own Way."

I quite like the 'Tango' video. But then, I am a dork.

It's filmed exactly the way concert videos, both shortform and longform, were filmed in 1987.
With the advent of MTV, it was no longer good enough to release a concert video with half-length shots and no "effects."

Ah well, to each their own, as they say.

(For the record, I could have done without the slo-mo backstage footage.)

I really can't stand it, Stew. I think it's one of the worst things the band has ever put out.
I wish I could accept that as an excuse for this blemish on the band's output. I guess people will just watch it & get through it because they like seeing Stevie or hearing all the nice hits. They used to say that well over half the the work done in all the professions was garbage. One of the kicks about Fleetwood Mac was that they used to land way out ahead of the pack; you didn't expect Fleetwood Mac to put out the same crap that the majority of bands put out because they had so often proved themselves capable of so much more.
That slam-bang, disorienting style of editing infected everything: movies, music videos, commercials, even radio (in aural terms). But there was still marvelous work being done in the '80s: Phil Joanou's "Rattle & Hum" in 1989, the live material in Springsteen's video anthology, Michael Apted's "Bring on the Night" in 1985, Petty & Dylan in Gillian Armstrong's "Hard to Handle" in '86, Laurie Anderson's "Home of the Brave" (one of Lindsey's influences), Peter Gabriel's "PoV," Ry Cooder's "Let's Have a Ball" -- & don't laugh, but Madonna's "Ciao Italia" -- & going back a few years before the "Tango" concert are the David Mallet film of Bowie's Serious Moonlight tour & of course the legendary "Stop Making Sense" by Jonathan Demme. All of these films, at the very least, show a respect for the performers, for the songs & for the film audience in a way that the tacky "Tango" in San Francisco doesn't get anywhere near. The sound is better in most of these films, too. You get a real feel for the performers' craft & personalities because the director lets them build a performance the way an actor on stage builds a performance: with natural tempos & energy that arcs in recognizable patterns instead of camera work just carelessly & randomly jumping between the same four or five "techniques" in equivalently timed cuts throughout the entire 90 minutes, until you're disoriented & disconnected from whatever's happening onstage. Watch "The Dance" & then put this "Tango" concert in the VHS -- watch them back to back. That should clarify just what we mean by "good" & bad." In "Tango," the camera even purposely destroys the psychic space between stage & crowd -- it's all just for no good reason. The tricks aren't rotten just because they're being used; it's because they're used for no expressive purpose. You with your powerful identification with emotion & genuineness in art, Johnny, I'm surprised that you respond at all to this noisy claptrap.

I think it represents the real nadir of the band's concert footage, & a definite low point even among the rest of the stuff we saw in the '80s.