SEX! SWEEPS! PHILOSOPHY!?

Welcome to the special “sweeps” edition of Sound & Vision, where hot-hot-hot music video clips are stripped to their naked philosophical core and rated on a sexy 0-100 scale! Coming up later in this column (but much later, so don’t touch that dial): George Michael wants your sex! Motley Crue wants Kitten Natividad’s sex! Nancy Wilson wants her Fender’s sex!

VID CLIPS PICKED TO CLICK:

Suzanne Vega’s “Luka.” (Directors: Candace Reckinger, Michael Patterson.) But first, the news. A&M; Records has had a field day of late with unlikely topical hits--first David & David’s “Ain’t So Easy,” sung from the point-of-view of a man who beats his wife, and now Vega’s “Luka,” from the view of a boy who gets beaten by his parents. The story of abuse could have been either sensationalized through dramatization or ignored entirely, but this clip treads a tasteful path down the middle. The boy Luka is seen, but it’s Vega who acts the story out, purely through expressive facial mannerisms. In reinforcing and not ignoring the song’s theme, “Luka” uses a certain amount of literal imagery appropriately correlating to the subject matter at hand, without going so far as to plant indelible visual suggestions so vivid they forever color the way you hear the song. And that’s just what, in most cases, a good music video should do. 78

Concrete Blonde’s “Dance Along the Edge.” (Director: Jane Simpson.) For a song about modern lovers and friends who skirt along the boundaries of commitment without ever making real bonds, what better outfit to adorn singer/songwriter Johnette Napolitano in than the ultimate symbol of commitment--a wedding dress? Napolitano has the most dangerous eyes in rock since Martha Davis at her emotional peak, and the grainy black-and-white footage here makes her look like an edgy silent-film star. The message, meanwhile, is wholly immediate. 75

WORTH A LOOK & A LISTEN:

U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” (Director: Barry Devlin.) The idea of having U2 sing about a spiritual quest while strolling down the sinful streets of Las Vegas is rich with potential irony. That irony stays mostly implicit and unexplored, though, and what turns out to be far more interesting about the clip is the way it portrays the four members as distinct, possibly conflicting, individuals: Bono Hewson, who irreverently revels in his status as a popular leader while meeting and greeting and kissing the masses on the street (with much the same playful arrogance that Paul McCartney showed doing the same thing in his “Press” clip); Adam Clayton, a fellow beer-drinking reveler, but one who seems a bit taken aback by Bono’s antics himself; and the Edge and Larry Mullen Jr., shy types both, with Edge looking especially weary and/or bored with Bono’s starry flamboyance. Not a great video by any stretch, but valuable for the honest light it sheds on the different personas that make up what is right now the world’s most popular rock band. 62

Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams.” (Director: Leslie Libman.) Timelessness . It’s a quality that Roy Orbison can legitimately claim, and something that director David Lynch clearly recognized when he gave the veteran’s oldies a prominent place in last year’s “Blue Velvet,” which magically achieved a timelessness of its own. Lynch has now co-produced (with T Bone Burnett) a new recording of “In Dreams,” as well as “supervising” this video clip for the song, which filters clips from the already dreamlike movie through yet another dreamy visual gauze. It’s an appropriately pleasant yet foreboding invitation to a dreamland where the borders between wishes and nightmares are often hard to distinguish. And, oh yes, Orbison looks and sounds like a dead-ringer for his early ‘60s self. 62

The Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey.” (Director: Gary Gutierrez.) They’re hot, they’re sexy and they’re dead--literally. In their first video, Jerry Garcia & Co. share their screen time with a group of singing and playing skeletal stand-ins, which (for the clip’s first minute or so, anyhow) makes for a mildly diverting conceit. 55

Jody Watley’s “Still a Thrill.” (Director: Brian Grant.) Twenty times the sexual heat of a George Michael video with half the contrived gyrations. 50

Also-rans: Warren Zevon’s “Sentimental Hygiene,” David Bowie’s “Time Will Crawl,” Jon Astley’s “Jane’s Getting Serious,” Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance (With Somebody Who Loves Me).”

SNOOZE TIME:

Wang Chung’s “Hypnotize Me.” (Director: Oley Sasson.) Every Wang Chung video, no matter what the concept (and there is none here), catches the viewer up in the same little modicum of nerve-wracking suspense: Will that little tuft of blond hair that keeps wafting out into the open air over the left side of singer Jack Hues’ face ever actually come completely loose and dive into his eye? A little dab’ll do ya, Jack! 30

Heart’s “Alone.” (Director: Marty Callner.) Marketing savvy at its silliest. “Alone” is presumably an adult-oriented slow ballad, but lest any of that all-important teen-age boy demographic lose interest, the director decided (or was instructed) to shoot a heavy-metal video for the song. Thus we get yet another clip with Nancy Wilson suggestively thrusting her guitar at an invited studio audience. Now that these former feminist heroines have so completely given control of their musical destinies to men and allowed themselves to be gussied up like streetwalkers, it’s not too likely they’ll be making a repeat appearance on the cover of Ms. magazine in the near future. The Wilson sisters used to be women; now they’re just girls (cf. Motley Crue, below). 20

Motley Crue’s “Girls, Girls, Girls.” (Director: Wayne Isham.) U.S. government policy in Central America is depressing. Alzheimer’s disease is depressing. Kafka is depressing. But this , friends, is depressing . Not so much that anyone would indulge in this sort of sorry behavior--you know, wielding switchblades to forcibly take seats from strangers at sleazy strip joints, followed by lots of male tongues hanging out as female skin is exposed and shaken, all the usual stuff that’s commonplace in gang-riddled neighborhoods--but that a record company run presumably by educated adults would want to aggressively market it to millions of children as a live-action cartoon. Threatened violence, voyeurism as the height of manhood, the celebration of rampant promiscuity and un-safe sex--it might all be touchingly archaic if it wasn’t so damn real. As good a reason to give up on the human race as any. 0

George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” (Director: Andy Morahan.) If Motley Crue takes time out while documenting its collective conquests to fondly recall a French menage a trois, Michael is very firm in asserting that “sex is best when it’s one-on-one.” That’s right--this is a message video.

Lest any dubious souls presume that this has anything to do with casual sex, Michael assures us in a spoken introduction shown before the clip on MTV (per the channel’s orders) that that can be “deadly” nowadays. George even goes so far as to scrawl “Explore Monogamy” in lipstick on a woman’s body. But the message that comes across as he blindfolds his one-and-only is more like: “Explore Monogamy If You Have a Beautiful Model for a Girlfriend Who Will Wear Different Wigs So You Can At Least Pretend You’re Sleeping with Half the Western World.” If for Motley Crue the sexual disease epidemic is an inconvenience to be ignored, in Michael’s hands it becomes just another selling hook.

In any case, there is one good thing to be said about this clip: It doesn’t include a single excerpt from “Beverly Hills Cop II.” 0