If there’s one commodity that sure seems in mighty short supply these days along the old video trail, it’s a sense of humor. Now I know that when you sit down and try to think about the reasons for this sorry state of affairs, you can actually come up with quite a few. To begin with, there’s the fact that videos are, after all, commercials, and, just as commercials for deodorantsandsoapsuds didn’t start to bo able* to laugh at themselves until the medium of television was able to establish itself as being frere to stay, so, too, music videos had a hard time getting comfortable enough as an overall ent^td iet the proverbial hair down. These things, we all know, cost money—in most cases more tharf|it cost to make the damned record they’re promoting#;dnd record companies want to be able to foresee a return on that investment. Which means thatf the vidmakers must “pitch” the act properly, playing up either the artist’s ego (Stevie Nicks can’t be offscreen for more than two consecutive seconds in any video she makes), or image (Bruce goes to Vietnam, Bruce fixes a car; Bruce operates the crane), or attitude (like all of us, New Order is bored)||l||

The other primary reason is that artists, especially new or upcoming ones, are usually much too “serious” about their “craft” to want to thumb their nose at the mirror. Let’s face it: for every ZZ Top or Bette Midler out there enjoying themselves, there are 11,957 Face To Faces and Autographs for whom striving to be rich and famous (especially rich) is tough, demanding work. Sure, you can sit back and laugh it up when you’re David Lee Roth and on top of the heap, but when you’re Giuffria, and struggling up that long, hard climb, it’s quite another story.