One thing that I’ve noticed lately in regard to the quickly-becoming-not-so-revolutionary-anymore world of rock videos is that a major factor contributing to the medium’s recent tedium (by which I mean that we’ve dropped down from one of out every 20 videos being interesting to a figure closer to one in 40) seems to be the fact that most performers are utterly reluctant to present themselves in any context that could even remotely be construed as unhip. Now certainly the way in which most people choose to answer a question like “what is hip?” speaks the proverbial volumes about where they’re coming from. (Example: In the late ’60s, drugs were considered hip, while drinking was considered totally unhip; Here, as we near the late ’80s, the exact reverse is true.) But it seems to me that all too many of the videos I’ve seen-recently have been reflecting (as in “art” mirroring society) an apparently widespread belief that dull is hip.

Now I’m not at all sure where this whole thing started; I do know that Richard Hell’s vision of the “Blank Generation” back in the punk heydays of the mid70s certainly was not one wholly populated by the Pet Shop Boys, Wang Chungs and Mr. Misters (or is that Misters Misters?) of the world—or the Iron Maidens, Scorpions or Megadeths, either.