For most people, Bad Company was a meat-and-potatoes rock band from the ’70s that made Camaro music for Camaro people–most notably the hoary AOR chestnut “Feel Like Makin’ Love.” The song sums up everything there is to know about Bad Company’s music: As basic as vanilla ice cream, dumber than a Jeff Foxworthy joke, and repititious enough to worm its way into memory so deeply that most of the human race could probably hum a few bars.

What most people don’t realize is that after a brief breakup in the early ’80s, two of the guys from the original lineup went out, got themselves a new lead singer, and sold a big pile of records. They did this the same way nearly every other successful veteran act did at the time–by discarding artistic credibility (which admittedly was never much of a concern for Bad Company) and pandering to listeners of Top 40 radio for whom “rock & roll” meant the aural Velveeta of bands like Bon Jovi.

The high point for Bad Company 2.0 was 1990’s “If You Needed Someone,” a song so monumentally stupid it makes “The Macarena” look like the Velvet Underground. But in comparison to the rest of the band’s catalogue, it’s a brilliant masterpiece–witness today’s entry, “Shake It Up,” from 1988’s Dangerous Age.

For a lot of bands trying to disguise their age during this period, the solution was to make a video featuring a lot of good-looking high school kids rocking out to the band’s shitty music. These videos tended to get around the age gap by either A) almost completely removing any visual evidence of the band, or B) conjuring up some situation in which said kids would have been caught dead hanging out with said band.

“Shake It Up” takes the latter course. The “story” begins with the nerd you see pictured above, holed up in what we can probably assume to be his parents’ basement, doing stuff with various potions. He also happens to have a functioning seismograph, which comes in handy later on.

Meanwhile, it’s the night of the Big School Dance, and the kids are rockin’ out!

There’s punch and everything!

Oh, and you’ll never guess who’s playing the dance. Yep, it’s Bad Company.

This is actually the type of gig Bad Company should have been getting in 1988, instead of fouling the airwaves and selling millions of records, but that’s neither here nor there. CAPTAIN VIDEO!s favorite part of this shot is the string of American flags hung over the stage. By this British band.

Oh, and speaking of the band. CAPTAIN VIDEO! freely admits that his knowledge of Bad Company is fairly limited, but it still came as quite a shock to see that the band’s lead singer in the ’80s was apparently none other than Nick Nolte:

Who knew he could sing? Color me impressed.

Anyway, back at the lab, Nerd makes a startling discovery: Not only is Bad Company’s music terrible, it causes earthquakes!

Like any civic-minded geek, he rushes to the gym, hoping to prevent the band from doing any further damage:

But he may already be too late! Just look at how freely the chaperone is rocking out!

And out in the parking lot, there’s all sorts of hanky-panky going on…

If this video had been filmed in the ’70s, it would have given us irrefutable visual evidence that rock & roll causes teen sex (and earthquakes). But this version of Bad Company’s music had nothing to do with rock.

Meanwhile, this is not what the girls at my high school looked like in 1988. And…oh God…are they hoping for a roll in the hay with crusty old Nick Nolte?

Nick seems to think so. And he’s apparently got room for two back at the Holiday Inn:

Unfortunately for Nick, the force of the band’s suckage has finally created a vortex powerful enough to bring the building tumbling down:

End of dance, end of concert, end of crummy video. And in just a few years, the remaining original members of Bad Company would realize that making terrible new music with Nick Nolte was actually even worse than patching things up with their original lead singer and playing the nostalgia circuit. The band made piles of cash, and the fans got what they’d been asking for all along–happy endings for everyone!

There were a lot of things CAPTAIN VIDEO! loved about the ’80s, if you hadn’t guessed already. To put together a list of all of them would take forever. But one of CAPTAIN VIDEO!’s very favorite things about the 1980s was the overabundance of interchangeably faceless “rock” bands that clogged the charts. Most of them had one-word names, like “Loverboy” or “Styx”; they tended to hail from Midwestern towns nobody had ever heard of (except for the members of Loverboy, who came from Canada, which is essentially a Midwestern town blown up to continent size); and their looks were as anonymous as their music–most of their fans wouldn’t have been able to pick a single member out of a lineup.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Survivor.

Now, within this subgenre of faceless corporate “rock,” Survivor actually managed to carve out a few distinctions for itself. They were on Scotti Bros. Records, to begin with, meaning that for most of their career, the only other artist that mattered on their label was “Weird Al” Yankovic. They also had big hits with not one, but two themes from Rocky sequels, featuring two different lead singers.

Oh yeah, the singers. Survivor were the first of their ilk to replace a singer with another who sounded exactly like him. The most hardcore Survivor fans (that they must exist troubles CAPTAIN VIDEO! deeply, but exist they must nonetheless) will no doubt dispute this, but really, Dave Bickler and Jimi Jamison might as well be the same person. “Eye of the Tiger”? That’s Bickler. “I Can’t Hold Back”? Jamison. Scary, huh?

“I Can’t Hold Back” was released in 1984, an era in which it was really popular for videos to feature a lot of shots of the band “just hanging out” and being “regular guys.” So here we have Survivor killing an afternoon in the neighborhood music/book store:

Yes, folks, these were rock stars. It was a simpler, more innocent time, was it not?

Anyway, of course the lead singer is “just hanging out” and being a “regular guy” on his own. He’s sort of a troubled loner, I guess. I mean, it isn’t that he’s appreciably more attractive than the rest of these lumps. He does, however, know where to stand in a bookstore.

And…what’s this? She’s into rock & roll!

Jimi sucks in his cheeks and waits for the pheremones to do their job…

Not that she minds. What, you think she put on these heels, jeans, sweater-with-shoulder-pads, and two bottles of Aqua Net for herself? No sirree. She wants it.

She wants it bad!

Meanwhile, the other dorks in the band are doing their best to act supportive:

(CAPTAIN VIDEO! especially likes the guy with the Milhouse glasses and limp wave. You can almost hear him saying “Hey lady!” a la Jerry Lewis. And the fat one looks confused and a little angry.)

But Jimi’s girl isn’t distracted. In fact, she’s so captivated by his sulky-cheeked mojo that she finds herself overcome by a blinding flash of light…

A flash of light that turns her into a “rock” vixen!

It also transports her to–wouldn’t you know it–a terrible Survivor concert. Attendance must be high tonight: she has to walk through at least four rows of people before she can dance like a madwoman directly in front of the stage. Jimi and the guys “rock” accordingly:

(In the 1980s, the more zippers you had on your pants, the bigger a rock star you were. These pants clearly signify Survivor’s place in the 1984 rock pantheon, just below the guys who recorded “Pac-Man Fever.”)

Next thing you know, everyone’s on a train, and everyone’s checking out Jimi’s girl:

But Jimi don’t care–no, he’s calm, cool, and collected, complete with ridiculous outfit from the Mickey Thomas collection!

Silly as the tucked-in tie look is, however, it pales in comparison to the hobo chic being sported by Fatso the Drummer:

Not to mention the poor, dumb bass player, who was somehow convinced that dressing up like a nun didn’t stop being funny after Benny Hill:

And hey–what’s a young Lars Ulrich doing here?

While all this “rock” “wackiness” is going on, Jimi’s stalking his girl toward the back of the train. Ladies, be honest: Riding public transit at night, you know you wouldn’t be able to resist a man with this look on his face:

Of course, it isn’t long before they’re totally making out.

It’s too good to last, though–just as suddenly as we found ourselves at the concert and on the train, we’re back in the bookstore. Perhaps sensing that a restraining order or expensive alimony payments loom in Jimi’s future, the band grabs him and drags him away:

What immediately follows is a scene that anyone who lived in the 1980s watched 10,000 times before, in 10,000 different videos–the guys pull their friend down the street, he continually looks over his shoulder at the girl, he eventually breaks away, etc. He takes off running after her, but she’s gone to the train station (wouldn’t you know it?) and, even though she only had a lead of maybe a few seconds, his tubby ass shows up too late to make the train.

The final shot sums up not only this stupid, disjointed video, but the rest of Survivor’s career:

Greetings, Videots!

Today’s entry takes us back to the magical land of the 1980s Soundtrack Video, where the girls are always pretty, the underdog always wins in the end, and life is nothing but a series of Very Dramatic Moments played out in time with Heart-Pounding Music! This is a type of video that went out of fashion circa 1991–CAPTAIN VIDEO! thinks the official last entry in the genre may have been “Perfect World,” by Alias, from the Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead soundtrack–and that is a terrible shame. Today’s soundtrack videos are for songs by artists like Avril Lavigne, and they are decidedly light on Heartwarming Montages, Sweeping Melodies, and the blinding sheen of synthetic gloss.

Know who understood how to make a great soundtrack video? Peter Cetera.

Cetera was the bass player for Chicago from the late ’60s until 1985, when he used the enormous success of Chicago 17 as an excuse to quit the band and pursue a solo career. Longtime Chicago fans had been complaining for years about Cetera’s overwhelming(ly sappy) presence on Chicago albums–but in his defense, most of the other band members were too coked out to bother showing up for albums 13-17. If it hadn’t been for Cetera’s work ethic, business sense, and unique ability to churn out a hundred variations of the same damn love song, Chicago probably would have broken up 25 years ago.

(CAPTAIN VIDEO! understands that this is not something for which many people would exactly like to thank Peter Cetera, and does not completely disagree with this sentiment.)

Anyway, in the fall of 1986, Cetera released his first post-Chicago solo album, the stupidly titled Solitude/Solitaire, and he did not hedge his bets: in spite of his constant whining about being pigeonholed as a simpering balladeer, he delivered a record chock full of moon-eyed love songs. These included a Top 40 one-two knockout combination–his duet with Amy Grant, “The Next Time I Fall,” and “The Glory of Love,” a.k.a. “The Love Theme from Karate Kid Part II.” Imagine the drug-fueled orgies that must have taken place in Warner Bros. Records’ accounting department when they heard the news! Between the millions of scrawny, hopeful nerds anticipating the sequel to Karate Kid, and the annoying ubiquity of Cetera’s voice, he likely could have recorded literally anything and still gone to Number One. Like Kenny Loggins and Caddyshack, or Kenny Loggins and Footloose, or Kenny Loggins and Top Gun*, it was a marriage made in marketing heaven.

Was he a matinee idol, or what? Who could resist this face? He was, after all, the man who would fight for your honor. He’d be the hero you’re dreaming of.

No? Not convinced? Well, what about some hot karate action?

Hiyaaaaa! That’ll get asses in the seats! Who says Karate Kid is for chicks? We’ll ma–

Pan out! Pan out! And fire the director! What the fuck is happening to his face? His jaw is shifting off to the side! Did he make up a sixth vowel or something? Action shot! For God’s sake, action shot!

Yeah! Nothing says “date night” like a teenage girl with her knife to her throat. This guy is, like, three feet taller than Ralph Macchio–it’ll make the movie’s Big Ending three times as dramatic! Wait ’til you see the Secret Trick Karate Move the boys in Script cooked up!

Cut back to Cetera–what’s he up to?

Holy shit! Are those jazz hands? Who choreographed this thing? What is he doing? Does he know the camera’s on?

And while we’re at it, why is he wearing a cable-knit turtleneck? Cut away! Cut away!

Goddamn it, I said cut away, not zoom in! New company policy: never fucking zoom in on Peter Cetera–do you understand me? He looks like someone surprised him while he was in the middle of a stroke! On the toilet!

Shit!

*Or Kenny Loggins and Over The Top.

Today we’ll be looking at one of CAPTAIN VIDEO!’s favorite bands, Jefferson Starship—or Starship, or Jefferson Airplane, or whatever the hell they’re calling themselves these days. The Starship belongs to an elite group in the music world, one consisting of musicians who began their careers with bright promise and seemingly unimpeachable credibility—only to frantically piss it all away as career twilight approached. In Starship’s case, this was accomplished by joining forces with Mickey Thomas, the vocally talented but musically inane Elvin Bishop Band singer. It may seem unfair to pin all of the Starship’s many sins on one person, but in this case, it’s warranted. Within a decade, Thomas’ enervating influence changed the band from a respected (if commercially foundering) relic of the Summer of Love into a vapid, soulless crap factory whose albums were reviled by thinking people everywhere.

The low point, of course, is 1986’s towering masterpiece of pop stupidity, “We Built This City.” CAPTAIN VIDEO! has no interest in dissecting that particular video. We all saw it a million times when it was popular, and these days, those snarky chumps at VH1 won’t stop making it part of whatever list show they’re scheduling the everloving fuck out of. Today, we’ll be taking a look at a lesser-known entry in the Starship ouevre: “Find Your Way Back,” from 1981’s Modern Times. (Side note: while Modern Times is indeed one of the least creative album titles of the 1980s, the Starship shattered the stupidity barrier with 1984’s Nuclear Furniture. Sometimes it’s best not to get too fancy.) You know the song—all forced drama and phony emotion, dragged along by the feeble pulse of Aynsley Dunbar’s airless drums; lots of awful squawking from Mickey Thomas; keyboards and guitars that sound like neither should. Oh, wait, that describes pretty much every Starship song since 1978, doesn’t it? Maybe some stills from the video will jog your memory:

Glowing instruments!

Hurry up and suck!

The video’s storyline seems to center around some kind of leather-clad alien woman who has had her heart broken by the band (even Grace Slick? Hmm) and carries a glowing white orb with her wherever she goes. These parts of “Find Your Way Back” are no better or worse, really, than any of the other videos from the period that had their budgets converted into convenient white powder form and snorted before a single frame was filmed. It’s low-budget pretending to be high-concept! Hello, alien woman!

Alien woman doesn’t do much and says even less. The only reason we know she’s got a beef with Jefferson Starship is that she tears up a picture of the band and throws it in the air:

And, I mean, most of the Jefferson Airplane’s old fans were probably doing that in 1981. Or at least tearing Mickey Thomas out of the band photo. And speaking of Mickey Thomas, Jesus Christ, would you look at this:

CAPTAIN VIDEO! can’t believe his eyes! What was the director thinking? (There’s no point in asking what Mickey Thomas was thinking.) It seems altogether fair to say that at no point in the history of music video—and this includes the various cameo appearances of Ron Jeremy—has any man ever looked more like he has just wandered off the set of a porno flick. It’s difficult to select the worst part of Thomas’ ensemble, but CAPTAIN VIDEO! is going to go with the striped tie, still tucked into his shirt from that last-minute trip to the bathroom to score a little blow. Mickey Thomas looks like such a tool, he even out-tools the other members of the band. Craig Chaquico, you look like Derek Smalls:

The only thing that would be funnier is if Chaquico were playing a—oh, never mind, he is:

And the only thing funnier than that is Mickey Thomas.

But wait! There’s more! Thomas turns during Paul Kantner’s mercifully brief guitar solo, pumps his fist as if to signify that he is about to rock, and grabs a tambourine. Grace Slick, who has thus far avoided being in the same shot with Mickey, must have been too coked out to notice what was happening. Otherwise, CAPTAIN VIDEO! is certain she would have swung her mike stand around and clubbed Mickey Thomas in his stupid head with it. Then she would have made him eat that tambourine. And then, mercifully, she would have broken up the band once and for all. But no:

At the end of the video, the alien woman—instead of attacking the band with enormous laser cannons—uses her alien magic to put their picture back together. This is a classic example of power gone to waste. If she can reassemble a piece of paper that has been torn to bits, it would seem reasonable for the viewer to surmise that she could have done something that might have made an actual difference in the world, like, say, atomizing Mickey Thomas. But no. The picture is restored and the band is safe to go on testing the boundaries of lame for another ten years. Curse you, alien woman!

Today we’ll be looking at one of CAPTAIN VIDEO!’s favorite bands, Jefferson Starship–or Starship, or Jefferson Airplane, or whatever the hell they’re calling themselves these days. The Starship belongs to an elite group in the music world, one consisting of musicians who began their careers with bright promise and seemingly unimpeachable credibility–only to frantically piss it all away as career twilight approached. In Starship’s case, this was accomplished by joining forces with Mickey Thomas, the vocally talented but musically inane Elvin Bishop Band singer. It may seem unfair to pin all of the Starship’s many sins on one person, but in this case, it’s warranted. Within a decade, Thomas’ enervating influence changed the band from a respected (if commercially foundering) relic of the Summer of Love into a vapid, soulless crap factory whose albums were reviled by thinking people everywhere.

The low point, of course, is 1986’s towering masterpiece of pop stupidity, “We Built This City.” CAPTAIN VIDEO! has no interest in dissecting that particular video. We all saw it a million times when it was popular, and these days, those snarky chumps at VH1 won’t stop making it part of whatever list show they’re scheduling the everloving fuck out of. Today, we’ll be taking a look at a lesser-known entry in the Starship ouevre: “Find Your Way Back,” from 1981’s Modern Times. (Side note: while Modern Times is indeed one of the least creative album titles of the 1980s, the Starship shattered the stupidity barrier with 1984’s Nuclear Furniture. Sometimes it’s best not to get too fancy.) You know the song–all forced drama and phony emotion, dragged along by the feeble pulse of Aynsley Dunbar’s airless drums; lots of awful squawking from Mickey Thomas; keyboards and guitars that sound like neither should. Oh, wait, that describes pretty much every Starship song since 1978, doesn’t it? Maybe some stills from the video will jog your memory:

Glowing instruments!

Hurry up and suck!

The video’s storyline seems to center around some kind of leather-clad alien woman who has had her heart broken by the band (even Grace Slick? Hmm) and carries a glowing white orb with her wherever she goes. These parts of “Find Your Way Back” are no better or worse, really, than any of the other videos from the period that had their budgets converted into convenient white powder form and snorted before a single frame was filmed. It’s low-budget pretending to be high-concept! Hello, alien woman!

Alien woman doesn’t do much and says even less. The only reason we know she’s got a beef with Jefferson Starship is that she tears up a picture of the band and throws it in the air:

And, I mean, most of the Jefferson Airplane’s old fans were probably doing that in 1981. Or at least tearing Mickey Thomas out of the band photo. And speaking of Mickey Thomas, Jesus Christ, would you look at this:

CAPTAIN VIDEO! can’t believe his eyes! What was the director thinking? (There’s no point in asking what Mickey Thomas was thinking.) It seems altogether fair to say that at no point in the history of music video–and this includes the various cameo appearances of Ron Jeremy–has any man ever looked more like he has just wandered off the set of a porno flick. It’s difficult to select the worst part of Thomas’ ensemble, but CAPTAIN VIDEO! is going to go with the striped tie, still tucked into his shirt from that last-minute trip to the bathroom to score a little blow. Mickey Thomas looks like such a tool, he even out-tools the other members of the band. Craig Chaquico, you look like Derek Smalls:

The only thing that would be funnier is if Chaquico were playing a–oh, never mind, he is:

And the only thing funnier than that is Mickey Thomas.

But wait! There’s more! Thomas turns during Paul Kantner’s mercifully brief guitar solo, pumps his fist as if to signify that he is about to rock, and grabs a tambourine. Grace Slick, who has thus far avoided being in the same shot with Mickey, must have been too coked out to notice what was happening. Otherwise, CAPTAIN VIDEO! is certain she would have swung her mike stand around and clubbed Mickey Thomas in his stupid head with it. Then she would have made him eat that tambourine. And then, mercifully, she would have broken up the band once and for all. But no:

At the end of the video, the alien woman–instead of attacking the band with enormous laser cannons–uses her alien magic to put their picture back together. This is a classic example of power gone to waste. If she can reassemble a piece of paper that has been torn to bits, it would seem reasonable for the viewer to surmise that she could have done something that might have made an actual difference in the world, like, say, atomizing Mickey Thomas. But no. The picture is restored and the band is safe to go on testing the boundaries of lame for another ten years. Curse you, alien woman!

CAPTAIN VIDEO! remembered “Owner of a Lonely Heart” as being sort of disturbing and a little avant-garde–in other words, like a lot of videos from the period. I think I must not have been paying attention. Because honestly, this is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever watched start to finish. CAPTAIN VIDEO! feels confident in telling you that literal pounds of cocaine must have been involved in the making of “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” Also probably more than one art-school freshman. But mostly just cocaine.

Things start off plainly enough, with your standard, garden-variety performance footage:

Jon Anderson closes his eyes and dreams about faeries

Requisite “serious rocking” look from whoever was the band’s drummer at the time

Trevor Rabin, bored out of his mind

But then things get strange. The music stops and Jon Anderson looks into the camera, eyes a-buggin’, and we hear him thinking: “Wait–maybe there’s another universe…” Cut to a shot of Anderson standing in a field:

Out of nowhere, he turns into a bird!

The rest of the band gamely follows suit–one guy turns into a snake, one into an iguana or something, and one into a cat (which–I am not kidding–makes an adorable “meow” before scampering offscreen). It’s like the opening credits of a really, really stupid show. I think it would be called Dork Manimal and the Zootards:

Out of nowhere, we are introduced to Sour-Faced Corporate Drone with Bad Haircut (SFCDBH for short). We don’t know his name, where he’s going, or why in the hell he’s black and white. Artistic license? A statement about capitalism and industrial society? An accident? We don’t know. Neither, I guarantee you, do the members of Yes.

Out of nowhere, two guys in trenchcoats swoop in and haul SFCDBH off to something that looks like a courtroom. Along the way, SFCDBH has a series of troubling visions:

A lot of howling and stumbling ensues, but the trenchcoats aren’t buying it. SFCDBH has a date with the law.

Eventually, the trenchcoats manage to drag poor SFCDBH to a judge (CAPTAIN VIDEO! is guessing here–and, again, cursing everyone who voted for this), who sees the sad shape SFCDBH is in and dismisses him with a nod. But the fun’s just begun. As the trenchcoats are dragging him back out of the building, the poor bastard has more nightmare flashes:

What the fuck? A spider and a scorpion? Where did they come from? Maybe they’re former members of Yes. God knows enough people have been a part of this shitty band.

I think the worms represent Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

Anyway, through the magic of what passes for narrative in this sloppy turd, SFCDBH ends up in a factory. And in color. I know, I know–it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. Well, maybe the band is trying to tell us that we aren’t really living unless we join the proletariat and help overthrow our greedy capitalist overlo…no, fuck that. CAPTAIN VIDEO! refuses to accept that any of this has a shred of real meaning.

And besides, that wouldn’t explain why SFCDBH is instantly attacked by one of his fellow workers, and forced to escape to the roof.

SFCDBH reaches the roof, and the viewer is at once hopeful–like what passes for its protagonist, this video has run out of places to go. But no! The band materializes out of nowhere and begins advancing on him! He does what any of us would do if trapped on a roof with Yes–he runs screaming to the edge and throws himself the fuck off:

We finally have something to cheer for. But, as with the music of Yes, as soon as you think it’s finally over, they whip out another shitty solo–SFCDBH can’t even die right. He turns into a bird and flies away:

So where does he go? Off to verdant hill and dale? Back around and over the roof, where he can poop on Yes? No. He goes right back where he was. Only now he’s in color.

Maybe there is a meaning here: Yes sucks and so do their videos.