Quiet Riot: The Wild and the Young

In the 80s hard rock world, people telling you how to rock or even worse maneuvering to obstruct your access to rock were the worst people in the world. This message was delivered over and over again. In the world of the future imagined in Quiet Riot's "The Wild and the Young" video, the first single from the band's third * album QR III, this is taken to the logical extreme: a totalitarian regime centered entirely around the idea of depriving the population of rock and brutally oppressing any who defy this decree.

* Technically, they had a few albums before what is commonly known as their first, but there's no need to get into all that.

Here we see people's axes being confiscated and thrown in the wood guitar chipper.

Oh no! That metal mask is the Quiet Riot mascot! Has he joined the state-sponsored War on Rock?

Never fear:

Frankie (Banali, the drummer) is here. Our man on the inside.

Despite being introduced seconds before as a prisoner being unloaded from one of the armored buses, Frankie is somehow able to pose as one of the guards (above) and lead his band-mates (Kevin Dubrow, Carlos Cavazo, and Chuck Wright) down a sewer and a conveyer belt to an underground storehouse of captured instruments. He gets behind the drums, everyone settles into their rock band roles, and they start rocking out. 

The sun never sets! For souls on the run! The wild and the young...

 

They are watched on the video monitors by very angry women in military uniforms.

Their anthem inspires their fellow rock prisoners to revolt, and fascist thugs soon surround our heroes and train their guns on them.

But wait!

It was just a dream. Or WAS IT?

Wink Martindale reports that Congress has just passed a law requiring all albums to have their lyrics printed on the back cover so parents can know what it is their kids are buying. IS THIS HOW IT STARTS?

This was a common anxiety at this time in hard rock history. Around the same time, Grim Reaper wrote the classic "Rock You To Hell" which asked America "Is this the beginning of the future? No books, no sound, no rock and roll? Don't let other people run your liii-iii-AI-YI-YI-IIIIFE!!" See also:

Chicago's 1986 re-imagining of their classic "25 or 6 to 4."

Or Whitesnake's "Still of the Night," which saw David Coverdale detained at the end by The Rock Police's sister agency. Or Corey Hart's:

One of the odder entries in this sub-genre of 80s Orwellian-themed videos.

Back to "The Wild and the Young." After Kevin wakes up and Wink's pronouncement from the tv, the camera pans to the bus driver:

Oh no! Carrie White Burns in Hell!

The tour bus is driven into a warehouse where, presumably, the anti-rock concentration camp of Kevin Dubrow's nightmare has become a reality.

I'm going to assume you already have this one bookmarked or on a playlist or are probably listening to it right now. What? You don't? You aren't? Here's a link to the video.

Rockers go in, but they don't come out.

At least with their pants.

These last two screencaps really made me chuckle. Presumably they couldn't find many extras who were willing to have their heads shaved. Don't touch the hair, bro. There is a scene where a longhair is strapped to a chair while two shirtless mustached dudes gleefully shorn his locks, but the scene is so poorly lit that screencapping it doesn't really convey it too well:

Likewise, this shot of a gas-masked thug about to beat a rocker in shackles amidst a swirl of escaping steam.

I have no idea who directed this video. I'm charmed by this, actually; it's nice to find out there are some mysteries a Google search cannot instantly solve. It also allows for me to assume this was directed by David Fincher. Or maybe even David Lynch, a prequel (or a sequel) to the bizarre 60 second entry he contributed to the Lumiere film.

It was meant to revive Quiet Riot's fortunes, which had ebbed in the three years since they achieved massive success with Metal Health. But the video (and their makeover from skinny street urchins to poofed-out Edwardian-garbed rock insurrectionists) failed to excite MTV viewers and despite repeated phone calls from your humble narrator to the folks at DIAL-MTV, came and went. QR III was a commercial disappointment, and Kevin Dubrow was fired shortly thereafter.

Attempts to keep the band afloat with a different singer were similarly unsuccessful.

Chuck Klostermann wrote the book, literally, on this sort of thing, but he gives scant space to Quiet Riot. Understandably, I guess, but I never got the memo. I went on listening to Quiet Riot throughout the 80s, blissfully unaware of their woes, insulated in my bubble of Circus, Blast, and Hit Parader magazines.

Their stay at the top of the McPyramid of Absolute Rock lasted only from when I first heard "Bang Your Head" to  when I first heard Pyromania.

I remember being surprised that no one else on the bus had memorized all the words to Condition Critical, their follow-up to Metal Health, over Christmas break.

It's easy to look back on both the video and the song as a rather calculated and formulaic appeal to adolescent allowance money, but "The Wild and the Young" remained an anthem of my teenage years for far longer than it should have. (It and Bon Jovi's "To The Fire," which was right after it on an old mix tape I had and thus comes to mind whenever I think of it.) And the video, obviously, made quite an incursion into my developing brain. 

The allusions to the PMRC throughout the video are a little dated, making it seem like the two ladies in military uniforms are simply generic fuddy-duddies. But they were pointed references to Tipper Gore and the other "Washington Wives," whose campaign to put parental warnings on albums which featured gratuitous allusions to sex (i.e. 98% of "cock rock") and/or violence or drugs (the other 1.5%, with .5% reserved for Iron Maiden's ownership of the "Historical Fiction and Songs about Movies" category) made them Public Enemy Number One for the heavy metal faithful. Motley Crue brazenly changed the lyrics in their cover of "Anarchy in the UK" to include a reference to them ("Is this the PMRC?!" they chant incredulously at song's end) and artists as diverse as Cyndi Lauper, Jello Biafra, Rage Against the Machine, and Frank Zappa all released anti-PRMC material.

The "Parental Advisory" sticker ended up helping any artist or band to whose album it was affixed, and as the 90s turned into the 21st century, this forgotten and shameful chapter in American history was put to rest with the Advent of Britney. While we seem to have been spared the Sex and Rock and Roll Police on every corner, we ironically have less freedom in 2013 than we did in 1986, despite rock and roll's increasingly reductive orgy of sex and death going mainstream. What was shocking for W.A.S.P. to say back then is simply expected of our young pop princesses now.

Still from Nicky Minaj's "Stupid Hoe." Can you imagine Blackie Lawless (i.e. the dude from W.A.S.P. who wrote more than a few of the songs the PMRC was so up in arms about) as a judge on American Idol? The idea is preposterous for a few different reasons, but it would have been unthinkable in the 80s.

Quiet Riot still tours and more power to them. Any fun had at their or this video's expense is certainly at my own, as well; in the 80s, I was as eager to answer the call for the jihad against those who would tell us how to rock as any in my marketing demographic.

Times are changing

nothing stays the same

for this Jukebox Generation...

Kevin Dubrow, 1955-2007, RIP.

Captain's Blog supplemental: Some Parting Thoughts

Well well well, the end of another blogging project. Parting is bittersweet, my friends.

I guess the meadow beyond the King's Highway was full of stars.

It's imperfect, of course, and incomplete, even more of course. I'm sure I'll add to it somewhere down the line. 

I'm happy enough with setting this as the finish line, though (not counting the DS9 blogs, still to come.) I was unsatisfied with the overviews I'd read or heard, particularly for TOS, whose psychosexual catacombs are criminally unmapped, and set out to create an alterative road map to the Trekverse. But it ended up being a Billy Pilgrim-esque defragmentation of that portion of my mental hard drive related to Star Trek: that house on the hill with many windows and pocket dimensions in the back of the closets.

Forget that house on the hill metaphor: if Trek is the Great Pyramid of Giza, this was akin to Caliph Al-Mamoun-esque tunneling through its walls and stumbling upon the chamber that leads to the heart of the mystery. But the mystery remains unsolved, and the pyramid remains the pyramid. (And hardly anyone remembers Al-Mamoun.) 

I'm often puzzled by (and sometimes irritated with, to be honest) the insistence that people get into Star Trek for its rosy depiction of a future that works for everybody. That's part of it, sure, and it's certainly a nice part. (And important, as fiction and myth are collective dreaming which leads to individual action and yadda yadda.) But so much is made of this that I sometimes feel like its subversive theatricality is undervalued. When it comes to the "family" aspect of Trek, I have to agree with Patrick Stewart, who said of the original draft of Insurrection, "I think that is sentimental and uninteresting and eventually leads to space heroes sitting round a campfire singing 'Row Row Row Your Boat.'" 

Truth. I don't feel it's uninteresting altogether, mind you, just the over-emphasis.

The Genes, Bennett, Berman, and Abrams Eras represent such different periods in my own life and interaction with the Trekverse, as I'm sure they do for you. How could one feel-good broad stroke cover all of it? For anyone, really? And yet, it is such a common refrain out there and in all the books. (Shatner's Get A Life is practically gushing with this kind of sentiment, and it's not an ironic reflection on the title.) 

I don't mean to knock the admirable accessibility and general good nature of Trek; I'm just way more interested in the crazy implications of its intersection with my own life and development, its abundance of interpretations, and its relatively deft handling of complex themes in a pop art environment.

It'll be interesting to read future overviews of Trek by people with no personal memories of growing up with it. A series such as this one, comprised of at least 40% personal memories and associations, will be obsolete in 2071. But just as likely not: the franchise could very well still be kicking at that time and producing new material.

K'plagh.

I'll get another post up with links to all points previous for ease of searching sooner or later. 

If I didn't cover your favorite episode(s), my apologies. Take comfort in the statistical improbability of our ever being marooned on the same desert island together; you'll more-than more than likely never have to abide exclusively by my choices. But if that's how it happens, just remember: the bullets are not real.

As sincerely as I can convey this via the computer screen or mobile device, live long and prosper. 

Captain's Blog pt. 97: Catspaw

This is the last of my desert island TOS episodes. Like Trek itself did back in '67, I'll exploit the holiday for occasion - Happy Halloween!

October 27, 1967

Title (1) I actually quite like the title and should rate it higher. Except I'm confused. Here's Eugene Myers from Tor:

“I had never heard the word “catspaw” before (...) McCoy directly refers to the title of the episode when he says You kept Scott and Sulu as catspaws to lure us down here. I looked it up and discovered that the term, which means a person unwittingly used by another as a dupe or tool, originates from a fable called The Monkey and the Cat by Jean de La Fontaine. In it, a monkey tricks a cat into plucking chestnuts from a fire, burning its paw while the monkey eats them all. I wonder how common this term is, or was back then.”

That’s interesting. The Monkey and the Cat? Not the nautical term? Here's that definition, which is what I'd always assumed was the reference:

"A light air of wind perceived at a distance in a calm, sweeping the surface of the sea very lightly, and dying away before it reaches the ship. "

It also refers to a deceptive wave, one that resembles the white underside of a cat's literal paw raking the underside of the sea and gives the false impression of a huge tidal push that never comes.

But let's say the nautical term came into usage as a result of this Monkey and the Cat story. Does it make any sense as a title for the story we get? Not really. It's an odd detail of the story to hang a hat on; it makes more sense for something like "Whom Gods Destroy" or "The Mark of Gideon." But mainly, the problem is that the story doesn't make much sense, either.

Script and Theme (5 / 4) It's my last chance to bitch about the Tor and AV Club re-watches, and bitch I shall, but first, there's pretty much wide consensus on what is wrong with this episode. First, here's Mr. Myers:

“The whole episode is a mess of conflicting information, which perhaps ties in with Sylvia’s own confused impulses:

"Though it only flirts with an idea that is explored more in a later episode, this is a story about an alien seduced by the flesh.

“We never find out what the aliens really want, and I’m not sure the aliens or the writers do either. The most interesting conclusion we can draw is that these creatures are Lovecraftian invaders, with the reference to the “Old Ones” and their true forms resembling tiny Cthulus.”

The Lovecraft reference makes much more sense here than it does in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Right down to the octopus beards.

Of these creatures, Zack Handlen writes (and I very much agree:) "Look, I'm sure most people saw that and laughed. They're these ridiculous contraptions made of what looks like shrimp and blue fur, and you can see the hundreds of strings holding the damn things up. They can't be more than a few inches tall each, and they're goddamn absurd.

"I dig it, though. There's something freakish about those damn things, something that makes them truly alien, in spite (or maybe because) of the tackiness of the design. 'Catspaw' isn't all that strong, but those few times it works, it's like nothing we've seen on the series before.

Both reviewers are correct to point out the various ideas of the episode are under-realized. Bloch does his customary blend of traditional genre with sci-fi, but perhaps he needed to stir a bit more. It's a slight episode, hardly one of the best. I include it mainly for its successful creation of mood, its visuals, and its ending lines:

"All of this, just an illusion."

"No illusion. Jackson is dead."

I love that. I don't think it's too much to say that this unexpected recall of the crewman who dies at the beginning (the one who falls from the transporter and through whom the curse on the ship is uttered, aka the one who is not mentioned again from beginning to end) has a Roy Lichtenstein quality to it. Really, if "Jackson is Dead" was the name of this episode, its reputation would be much improved. It would be lifted into the realm of the Pop Art Surreal.

Visual Design (3)

Good use of dry ice. TOS was often so theatrical. It could easily be recreated as a series of stage plays by some Max Fischer Players-esque company. (And should be.) Though, as was discussed in the entry for them, I guess Star Trek Phase II is that already, somewhat.

“It's odd--Sylvia is strong enough to make a voodoo-type mini-Enterprise, endangering the whole ship at her whim, but all she really wants is to know the mysteries behind a digital watch."

Guest (2.5) Torie Atkinson: “It was interesting to see what appeared to me as an entirely random redshirt commanding the Enterprise (yes his name is LaSalle but how often have we met him?)”

Three times:

"Catspaw"

"The Squire of Gothos"

"This Side of Paradise"

And great crikes, that's not his name. I know that Torie represents the first time Trek viewer side of that Tor re-watch, but come on. I'm more disappointed that no one called this out in the comments. Hey, more power to her/ everyone.

As for Sylvia and Korob.

Korob is played by Theo Marcuse. The subject of an impassioned Outer Limits screed here.

And Sylvia by Antoinette Bower.

Just one of her many other television appearances: Eve Norda from the classic Twilight Zone episode "Probe 7, Over and Out."

Kirk and the Gang (20)

I'm kind of surprised this didn't already exist out there on the interwebs.

Busted.

"We're... burning up..."

 

Memorability (3.5)

 Total Points Awarded: 40

There'll be a wrap-up entry or two (and of course the DS9 blogs, when I get those) but here endeth the five year mission (done in only eight months) for yours truly. Three months of TOS, one on the movies, one on TNG, two for all the others, and one for asides and what-ifs = a sabbatical from all * things Trek until Halloween 2014 at the earliest.

* Well, most.