Chris Isaak is a god among men | An introduction to 1991

It's summer, 1991. I'm twelve years old and getting ready to start the eighth grade. With the reality of having my mom for teacher the next year looming over my head, I busy myself and hide from my anxiety in two pastimes: playing baseball, and watching MTV. And it's the summer MTV introduces its last great innovation -- an innovation as simple as playing with blocks.

Not only does MTV still play videos in 1991, they really make an effort to reach out to diverse music audiences. Into hip-hop? Watch in the afternoon for Fab Five Freddy, Fat Dr. Dre and Ed Lover's Yo! MTV Raps Today. Evenings feature the Top 10 Countdown, and there is always the frightening Riki Rachmann's Headbanger's Ball on Saturday night.

I'm pushing hard against adolescence in a podunk farm town. Thank God for cable TV! MTV is my conduit to the pop culture world, and the "block" system presents the summer's hits to me in a convenient, portioned format.

Rap Blocks feature D.J. Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince's Summertime, Marky Mark's Good Vibrations, and LL Cool J's Mama Said Knock You Out.

Rock Blocks hit you as hard as they can with Van Halen and Right Now, The Scorpions' Wind of Change, and Damn Yankees' High Enough (awesome sunglasses!). And oh, yeah, there's the new video from the first single off Metallica's new self-titled (or untitled) album. That one's particularly popular.

Pop Blocks introduce me to C & C Music Factory, who pledge they're Gonna Make You Sweat. Pop Blocks also play that Robin Hood video by Bryan Adams a lot and the double-alphabet combo of EMF and The KLF (my favorite video EVER) are part of the Pop Block schema.

Finally, you have Hit Blocks. Hit Blocks sort of combine whatever's popular at the moment, so you might have Amy Grant's Baby, Baby or R.E.M. and Losing My Religion or Boyz II Men's Motownphilly or Mariah Carey's Emotions.

Somehow, Paula Abdul's fancy Keanu Reeves-a-thon Rush, Rush manages to get played in every block.

Tonight I'm watching the Top 10 and there's a premiere tonight. It's a video that doesn't get an introduction from the veejay, but it pretty much speaks for itself. For five minutes my best friend Todd Stults and I stare at the screen. The song is beautiful. The cinematography is beautiful.

The girl is beautiful.

And I am forever changed as a human being. I see the world in a sexual way -- a way I hadn't even considered before. I know it was an important moment because even Adam Curry came on after showing the video, his jaw dragging along the floor, and managed to say,

"That's the hottest video ever made, and I think it'll be the hottest video forever."

Todd and I can't look at each other for several minutes after the video ends. And then we go back to behaving like kids. Except, at least for me, I feel a bit less like a kid.

And tomorrow I'm gonna buy the CD.

Fifteen years. Fifteen freakin' years since sitting on that beat-up sofa in the basement with the springs that stuck you in the back if you leaned the wrong way.. 1991 was a badass year for music -- and video. All the videos linked above are great songs with great videos (most of them the best video that act produced). And what I mentioned is just the beginning. It was a time when the music controlled MTV rather than vice versa. It's very possible Summer 1991 marks the zenith in American pop music -- a curve that began trending downward with the September release of a certain little record called Nevermind. Discussing the music of Summer 1991, however, is for future posts.

Tonight one of my favorite performers sang his signature song on Leno's Tonight Show. I don't watch Leno, but I usually catch his musical act while waiting out the gap between the [adult swim] midnight show (currently Pee-Wee's Playhouse) and Conan. And when he sang, in his perfectly-tailored suit, strumming that enormous Gibson, being a g*d man, the kind I want to be... well, those fifteen years melted away as easily as a scoop of ice cream on a Clearwater sidewalk.

I've never tested it, but I'm pretty sure that the majority of straight men and women alike would find Chris Isaak's video for Wicked Game more sexually titillating than anything Justice Potter Stewart might have "known when he saw it." The black-and-white video puts you into a trance; Herb Ritts' brilliant shooting, the simple, throbbing shuffle bass beat, and the slllllllllllow slide guitar servce as surrogate to the hypnotist's watch. Helena Christensen's complete lack of clothing or facial expression just add to the heat. As one YouTuber notes, even her nail police is perfectly chipped.

Seriously, all y'all be bustin' it up on the dance floor to your booty shake music... you're several degrees of magnitude below this sh*t.

And yet 1991 is years after "Wicked Game" was released. And the Ritts video, the one we can't help but see in a mind's eye projection whenever we hear the heavy delay-reverb of the Gibson guitar and silky Isaak falsetto, isn't the original video.

Heart Shaped World was already almost two years old by the time the Ritts video hit MTV around this time fifteen years ago. Whatever inclined them to take another shot at success as a single baffles me, but even more baffling -- considering the content and nature of the video we all know and love -- is who directed the original video:

David Lynch.

And boy, is it appropriately Lynchian. Go ahead, check it out for yourself.

Freaky, ain't it? Watching a music video that has the music, but visuals that make you want to slit your wrists, compared to usual, which makes you want to...

Quarter to three. Time for bed.