January 23: Art of Noise ~ Close (To the Edit): Versions 1 and 2

Released on May 1, 1984, this wild performance art piece directed by Zbigniew Rybczyński sums up the surreal aspects of music video. From the Wikipedia entry for the song, there’s this:

“I thought it was a fun video,” Anne Dudley said, “but some people thought it was unnecessarily violent. It was banned in New Zealand as encouraging violence towards children. Nothing could have been further from our minds.” The video later won the MTV Video Music Awards for Most Experimental Video and the Best Editing in 1985.

I love the song and the artistry of the video, so it made the cut early on. It’s one of the videos I used to wait for on MTV, back when it was still about music and not reality junk.

I didn’t realize until I started creating my Music Video playlist that there was a second version of this video, but there was. And here it is. (Actually, there are three, but I like these two the best.)

No, it doesn’t make any more sense than the first version, but that’s okay, because ART.

October 28: Zbigniew Zbig Rybczynski,The Orchestra, Funeral march

There’s a story behind this clip.

At some point (and by this I mean *years ago*) I caught a brief clip on the Classic Arts Showcase, If you’ve never encountered it in channel cruising on Cable, you might not have a frame of reference, but for me, often dealing with insomnia, being able to tune in for random clips of ballet, classical music, ancient theatrical films – think Shakespeare – and more, it’s awesome.

One night, I caught the majority of this piece, which (it turns out) was part of a larger whole. And then it took me forever to find out who made the film so I could watch it again, because a random chance encounter on CAS rarely produces a second viewing of the same clip.

I knew of the director (Zbigniew Rybczyński) from short films like Tango and music videos for The Alan Parsons Project, Pet Shop Boys, Art of Noise and more, but had never seen this clip before.

Enter YouTube and IMDB.

October’s list started with this clip. I’ve had it on the list for months. Glad it’s still here for you to watch. Halloween in 3…