#92 - So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star

Artist: Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

Album: Pack Up The Plantation: Live!

Video: From YouTube.

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: did not chart

MTV Top 20 Peak: 12

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 3

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' 1985 concert tour was so successful that it led to their first live album, "Pack Up The Plantation: Live!"  (The exclamation point is part of the title.)  The tour and album birthed this video, which I recall being played incessantly on MTV in 1986.

As I've said before, it took me a long time to come around to Tom Petty.  In my view, the weakest period of his career was occurring just as I was starting to come of age as a music fan.  But since he's produced such a strong body of work besides this period, Tom and I are cool.

"So You Want To Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star" was originally a Byrds song in 1967, where it peaked at #29 as a single.  The Petty cover version was not released as a single, making it one of only two videos in the 1986 MTV Top 100 video countdown that did not appear on the Billboard charts.

The video entered the MTV weekly countdown at #18 on January 17, 1986, and held that position the following week.  In its third week, the video vaulted six spots up the chart to #12, and seemed to be poised for a top 10 run.  However, the following week it disappeared from the charts completely, never to return, just as it has disappeared from our collective consciousness.

I suppose we can name five things about this video.

1) It is an unedited live performance video from the "Southern Accents" tour.  No additional scenes or parallel storyline, pretty boring.
2) The concert took place at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, California, on August 7, 1985.  I have been to the Wiltern Theater.
3) Tom Petty's shirt is patterned with planets and moons, and atoms I think.  Saturn is one of the planets.
4) There is a guy with a mullet playing a horn.
5) There is a girl playing a tambourine.  She appears to be a redhead, hard to tell as she appears mostly in silhouette.

That is all.

#93 - Nobody's Fool

Artist: Cinderella

Album: Night Songs

Video: From YouTube.

 

Billboard Hot 100 Peak: 13

MTV Top 20 Peak: 2

MTV Top 20 Weeks: 11

1986 saw heavy metal moving into the mainstream, epitomized by Bon Jovi's wildly successful "Slippery When Wet" album.  The opening band for that tour was a new band called Cinderella, who went on to become one of the iconic hair bands of the era.

Cinderella's breakout hit was "Nobody's Fool", the most successful of their handful of top 40 singles in the late 80's.  People enjoyed the song because it's a stirring, nuanced power ballad, a tale of personal redemption that slowly builds up to an explosive climax.  Or maybe it was because of all the amazing hair.  Either way, it seriously rocks.

The #93 ranking is a gyp, the result of the same timing problem that afflicted “The Way It Is” and “Hip To Be Square”, which unjustly missed the top 100 altogether.  “Nobody’s Fool” debuted on the top 20 weekly countdown in November 1986, and by the time it peaked at #2 it was already 1987.  This circumstance led to the video’s appearance in the 1987 top 100 countdown at #67, making it the rare video to be featured in two consecutive year-end top 100 charts.

Whatever, “Nobody’s Fool” still got hosed.  Consider this: in 1986, only eighteen videos reached #2 or higher on the weekly top 20 show and stayed on the countdown for eleven weeks or more.  All but two finished in the top 40 for the end of the year.  “Silent Running” suffered from a late 1985 debut and a 1986 peak, finishing at #92 in the 1985 top 100 countdown, but at least that video was rewarded by a #27 ranking in 1986's top 100 videos of all-time countdown.  "Nobody's Fool" deserved to be easily 50 or 60 spots higher.

The video is the second of a trilogy from the "Night Songs" album.  Can we find five awesome things about it?  Of course we can.

1) There is a real Cinderella theme, like from the fairy tale.
2) Playing the role of the "evil stepsisters" are two groupies in matching pink polka dot skirts, sunglasses, necklaces, purses, and (eventually) clocks on their heads.
3) The stepsisters are driving a ridiculous Volkswagen bug which is also pink polka dotted.
4) The girl playing the Cinderella role watches the band play, all the while nervously looking at the clock which is fast approaching midnight.  She seemingly transforms into another entity and ultimately encounters lead singer Tom Keifer within a throng of adoring fans.  While Keifer appears to have a faint glimmer of recognition, it is left to our imagination whether or not the glass slipper fits.
5) Hair.  Quite simply, epic hair.