What Are You Listening To? (Vol.6)

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[Jackonfire]

 

[mikehunt]

 

[Jackonfire]

R.I.P. Jonathan Demme



Jonathan Demme Directed One of the Greatest Live Music Videos of All-Time for New Order

Spoiler

.......But the video of his that leaves the most lasting impression was a slightly lesser-seen clip for U.K. new wave paragons New Order: An 11-minute live short of them performing their 1985 single "The Perfect Kiss."

"The Perfect Kiss" was simply the quartet, in a room, playing their song. And despite theverité-ish framing of Demme's video, it actually might have been the band's most arresting visual ever.

Live videos are traditionally geared to glamorize the artists and bands they film, to capture them at the peak of their live powers and generally make them seem like superstars. "The Perfect Kiss" has no such illusions or ambitions. It captures an extremely apprehensive-looking New Order performing in exceedingly workmanlike fashion, without an audience to hype or anything but the camera to impress (beyond a couple blurry figures silently observing from a room over). Singer Bernard Sumner's voice sounds pinched on the verses, and a little flat. Some of the synth riffing feels off. It is, somewhat ironically, a rather imperfect rendition of the epic synth-pop single.

And for the entire video, New Order seem stressed. The video captures just what a difficult, nerve-wracking experience playing live is -- particularly for a band like New Order, performing compositions that are half programmed and half live instrumentation, where there are so many different hooks and rhythmic elements shooting off that bassist Peter Hook has to trade in his four-string for some sticks halfway through to knock out the drum-pad blasts on the song's bridge. Throughout the video, Demme captures the performers in close-up -- both of their facial expressions as they concentrate on the parts they're playing (or prepping for what comes next) and on their fingers as they perform the actual work of producing the music -- creating an uncomfortable intimacy that feels less like witnessing a great band at work than eavesdropping on a co-worker's conversation from another cubicle.

Undoubtedly contributing to the moment's psychic fatigue is the fact that "The Perfect Kiss" was already one of the band's most personally felt anthems, alternately life-affirming ("I know, you know/ We believe in the land of love") and fatalistic ("Now I know the perfect kiss/ Is the kiss of death") and sometimes both simultaneously ("Pretending not to see his gun/ I said, 'Let's go out and have some fun!") It's been interpreted to be about everything from the AIDS epidemic to the suicide of the band's former lead singer Ian Curtis, and while Sumner has never confirmed either, the presence of a poster for Joy Division -- the band's Curtis-era incarnation -- looms like an apparition in the background, casting an extra pall over the proceedings.

Demme's aptitude for unshowy visual flair and visceral understanding of music and the artists who make it probably could have allowed him to become one of the great music video directors, if his feature filmmaking success hadn't captured most of his time and success. But while he only shot a handful of videos in his career, through his Stop Making Sense film and through the "Perfect Kiss" video, he helped expand the art form to capture bands not just as they want to be seen, but as they actually are, with results far more electrifying than the average stadium-rock glam fest.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/c...nathan-demme-new-order-the-perfect-kiss-video

 

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[Rimbaud82]

 

[Rimbaud82]

 

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[jefferz]

 

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[Jackonfire]

 

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[Chad R. Thundercock]

I remember this guy. He was largely ignored in the United States, but was hugely popular in South Africa.

 

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[Sir Galahad]

 

[Graves The Elder]