Face the Video and Dance : Nenah Cherry, Inner City get into the groove

The advent of the video disco has been a mixed blessing at best. For dancers who prefer to gaze toward banks of TV screens rather than into their partners’ eyes through an entire six-minute club mix, the trend may be a technological godsend.

But there’s probably less good video work done in the field of dance music than any other pop genre. On the afternoon cable show “Club MTV” (weekdays at 4)--which has supplanted “American Bandstand” as the teen dance party of choice--only snippets of the actual video clips are shown, as the cameramen concentrate on amazing low-angle studies of the bouncing female physique. It doesn’t take a lecher to prefer the up-to-date gyrations of MTV’s jailbait dancers over the dull videos themselves.

Part of the problem lies with a plethora of uninteresting dance-music artists, of course. There’s a new light on the horizon, though: Nenah Cherry turns in a star-making performance in the wonderful “Buffalo Stance,” which is propelling her fast-rising single--easily one of the year’s best--quickly up the charts.

That’s one of the highlights in this month’s danceable edition of Sound & Vision, where current pop clips are rated on a 0-100 scale. Also featured is another of the year’s best singles, Inner City’s “Good Life” (which, like Cherry’s debut, is available on 12-inch single and on the “Slaves of New York” sound-track album), plus interesting video work from Was (Not Was), Ice-T and Kool Moe Dee. As for dance deadbeats Sam Fox and Milli Vanilli, well, they’re no match for “Club MTV’s” bobbing body parts.

CLIPS PICKED TO CLICK:

Concrete Blonde’s “God Is a Bullet.” (Director: Jane Simpson.) “Muerte no!” reads a piece of graffiti at the close of this urgent diatribe against Los Angeles’ senseless urban bloodshed. “It could have been your mother,” wails singer Johnette Napolitano in this hard-rocking, pleading lament, but the point is forcefully made that this gunplay is a disease of the young, though the old occasionally get in the way. The “Peter Gunn”-like bass theme gives way to a sirenlike guitar riff, and unsensationalized shots of L.A.’s bullet-riddled barrios give way to Napolitano delivering a sad message in sign language, along with a few printed words on screen that act as a sort of video message in a bottle to the rest of the world from an outpost in L.A.: “Daughter . . . Shot . . . Killed . . . Sorry . . . Americans . . . One World . . . AFRAID.” You said it, Johnette. 77

Was (Not Was)’s “Anything Can Happen.” (Director: Nigel Dick.) “She wasn’t that great / But it was getting kind of late.” What romantics these fellows are! Much is askew, as usual, in this seemingly pretty tale of happenstance love--first, with a sullen, plain-Jane computer whiz, and later with a Marilyn Monroe look-alike who blows the singer a kiss from a passing sports car. A screwy tribute to random chance from rock’s most melodic Dadaists. 72

Nenah Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance.” (Director: John Maybury). “No money-man can win my love / It’s sweetness that I’m dreaming of,” sings Cherry, turning down a “gigolo” who may or may not be a garden-variety pimp. Nothing new there, but the pleasure of this tale is in the telling, and Britain’s ripe-and-ready Cherry is an irresistible storyteller, rapping the verses with cocky defiance and singing the choruses with equally unruly loveliness. The fluorescent special effects surrounding her performance are unremarkable but sufficient; it’s a decent video for an essential record. 71

Inner City’s “Good Life.” (Director: Andrew Doucette.) No record this year will have a better groove (or mixture of grooves, really) than this one from Inner City, a Detroit band bringing to the commercial forefront the “techno-house sound”--colder and more outrightly electronic on its surface, but with a typically booming bass underneath. The lyrics yearn plaintively for something better, which may seem a bit ironic when set against film clips from the much-derided “Slaves of New York,” which isn’t exactly about Manhattan’s most down-and-out denizens. But the irony may not be unintentional. 67

WORTH A LOOK & A LISTEN:

Christmas’ “Stupid Kids.” (Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris.) Everyone’s favorite alternative rockers from Las Vegas apparently couldn’t afford to do this clip the way they wanted--so instead they sing into the camera while a long printed crawl rolls over the picture, explaining the Great Lost Concept (on an “8th grade reading level,” no less). Highlights include: “Christmas are playing Madison Square Garden. . . . The ceiling of the auditorium unfolds like peeling paint and God’s hand descends placing a 30-foot-tall bust of Voltaire formed by thousands of trained slugs on the stage . . . “ You get the picture. 62

Ice-T’s “High Rollers” (Director: Mitch Sinoway; Kool Moe Dee’s “Road to the Riches” (director: Fab 5 Freddy). In the age of the amoral “reality” of N.W.A, some rappers are still coming out with an anti-drug line, though going out of their way not to “preach.” Ice-T’s video is the more vivid of these two cautionary tales, picturing the singer lounging in poolside luxury thanks to the illegal trade before rivals break in and gun him down in bed. Kool Moe Dee. starts his clip warning an adoring little boy not to follow in his “gangster” footsteps--footsteps which, we soon see, have bought the character a well-furnished office with a “Scarface” poster behind the desk. Do these videos glorify or sensationalize as much as they scare kids off? The debate goes on. 48

GAMMA RAY ROT:

Samantha Fox’s “I Wanna Have Some Fun” and “I Only Wanna Be With You.” (Directord: Scott Kalvert, Brian Grant, respectively.) Can’t sing, can’t act, isn’t what you’d call drop-dead gorgeous, and--on the basis of these clips--certainly can’t dance one-tenth as well as the kids on “Club MTV.” A true pop star for the late ‘80s. 10

Milli Vanilli’s “Girl You Know It’s True.” With their hilariously hapless Terence Trent D’Arby wanna-be posing, these two almost make Sam Fox look like an artist. 7