Welcome to Framed, everyone, where we've gone on vacation and set the company time machine for the 1980s. We're decided to live in the '80s for the next several weeks as a much-needed break from the hectic 21st century, where we usually live. Heck...we may even bop over to the elite Columbia University and look up a young student, "Barry" Obama, just for kicks!
While we're here, we decided to check out the music scene, since the blog itself never sleeps. And it's an exciting time! Probably the biggest thing happening is MTV, a music video cable station that everybody's talkin' 'bout! MTV has spawned a revolution within the music industry by broadcasting great music videos to a receptive public. They're not showing a lot of videos by black artists--we of the future know how that turns out, of course!--but they are breaking new artists and making music videos a "must" for any serious pop musician.
Wonder if they know that their efforts will ultimately lead to Framed, America's fastest-growing blog? Nah, they couldn't know that! Well, God bless 'em, anyway.
This week's Framed features a band that will ultimately end up in VH-1's "100 Greatest One Hit Wonders Of The '80s," although they don't know it yet. They're Wall Of Voodoo, a Los Angeles combo whose "Mexican Radio" is in serious rotation on MTV. The song is an engaging, nasal and whimsical tribute to the megastations south of the border that were once completely unregulated and broadcast all sorts of nonsense into the U.S. And the video--a low budget effort, our practiced eye deduces--is an entertaining send-up of Americans' attitudes towards our southern neighbor.
We hope you enjoy it, and look forward to hearing your comments when we return to 2009. We'll be back next week with another great 1980s video, but, right now, we've gotta tell President Reagan that funding the Contra rebels in Nicaragua is the best idea yet!
1 -- "Did he say 'one-hit wonders?' Hell's bells."
2 -- "But before I keel you, how, pray tell, is meesus bool?"
3 -- Wall Of Voodoo also advertised, unsuccessfully, for a soprano.
4 -- "Si, of course. All the single ladies should have put a ring on it. Por supuesto!"
5 -- "Americano! Hey, you got a sane foreign policy we can have, Americano?"
6 -- "I'll take the one loaded with cheap meth."
7 -- To cook an iguana properly, you must first be insane.
8 -- "I'd like some Mexican heroin. I'd like some Mexican...brow...owhn..heroin."
9 -- "No kidding! I'm calling you from 1906!"
10 -- "Madre de Dios! Speedy Gonzalez...no longer the fastest mouse in all of Mehico?!"
11 -- The Mexican drug cartels are unable to profit from safe and legal substances like milk and liquor. Seen here: liquor.
12 -- "OK, let's try that again, but this time with a tad more racism."