ROCKIN’ ROUND THE FLAG

Is it too late to reschedule the Bicentennial? Now that rock ‘n’ rollers finally are getting into the American spirit en masse, about a decade too late, the MTV channel is starting to look more like something that could be called the USA Network.

This “New Patriotism” takes many forms. There’s Jackson Browne singing that he wished these United States were in the right (“For America”), and then there’s the America-right-or-wrong flavor of novelties like the collaboration between wrestling heavyweight Hulk Hogan and rock lightweight Rick Derringer (“Real American”). Neither vision of the red, white and blue way is very compelling, unfortunately--at least not in the video translation.

There is something uniquely American, though, in the fact that the bottom of this barrel of current video clips is scraped by a bad actor taking on a new career. Ratings are based on a scale of 0-100.

Vid clips picked to click:

Charlie Sexton’s “Impressed.” Director: Jim Shea. In the best song from his uneven debut album, Sexton recites a litany of famous lovers from Antony and Cleopatra to Ken and Barbie, brashly branding it a “long list of losers” that he and his partner need not rate themselves against. It’s a strong, supremely romantic message, with a nice dose of levity courtesy of both Tonio K.’s wry songwriting and director Shea’s stark, somewhat tongue-in-cheek visualization.

While the young heartthrob reads his computer printout in an urgent, sexy baritone, the celebrity couples he names come to life and interact (and history buffs even get to see what happened to the children of Nicholas and Alexandra). The rich black-and-white imagery from Shea--a still photographer directing only his second video--is so gorgeous it’s almost a shame he keeps cross-cutting among so many ideas instead of focusing on just a few. A video with too many good things going on is nothing to knock, though. 84