It’s hardly news that, in rock ’n’ roll, an ego as big as all outdoors has never done its owner any harm. Indeed, a degree of extremism has always been part of the nature of the beast. In previous times, often mercifully for us consumers, the worst excesses of egomania were confined to the concert hall and, basically, if you didn’t want to watch Ted Nugent’s special effects crew simulate full scale, global nuclear war right on stage, you could always stay home with a good book. Today, however, thanks to the miracle of cable TV and courtesy of MTV and its rivals, we can have the silly fantasies of rock stars piped straight into our homes, 24 hours a day in living color. Possibly the most depressing thing about protracted watching of MTV is how the bad, the ill-conceived and dopey so totally hold sway. There’s much implicit in rock ’n’ roll that’s far better left to the imagination.

There are a hell of a lot of frighteningly uncharasmatic people who insist on appearing in their own videos. You can blame most of it on a misconception that runs clear through our culture. If you can make it doing one thing you’ll automatically succeed at everything else. It’s why Bob Dylan tried to make it in movies and why Leonard Nimoy cut all those albums. Today it manifests itself in the belief that anyone who can carry a tune, pick a guitar or peck at the keyboard can also act in their own mini-version of Mad Max, Conan or, in the case of the more artsy British synthesizer bands, mid-period Fassbinder. Berlin is a perfect case in point. I was quite prepared to tolerate “Sex (I Am...)” as a piece of lightweight lingerie disco; I might even have been prepared to get along with “No Words” if it weren’t for the idiot Bonnie and Clyde video that went with it. I really can’t imagine what these kids think they have to add. Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway pretty much said it all back in 1967, and I can only assume that Berlin are just indulging a juvenile desire to dress up in costume, ride around in antique cars and hose away with a Thompson submachine gun. I suppose there’s nothing intrinsically bad in such impulses; we all have them from time to time. Most of us don’t, however, expect the rest of the world to be amused by them, and I’d rather Berlin did it on their own time instead of on my TV.