Soul Asylum Really Gets Moving

Rock videos . . . Public service announcements.

These two go together like glue and water. Astaire and Costello. Ice-T and Heston. Samuel Goldwyn and message movies.

The new Soul Asylum clip, though, is an exception that works: a video that effectively conveys the performance essence of a song and perhaps does a tiny good for humankind. Currently airing in “buzz bin” rotation on MTV, “Runaway Train” addresses the subject of missing children--be they runaways or kidnap victims--in a manner that’s so unabashedly in-your-face, complete with a tag line 800 number, it should by most rights come off as preachily didactic. Instead it ends up positively chilling.

Meanwhile, there’s a distinct chill closer to the bottom of this month’s Sound & Vision lineup, in which recent music videos are reviewed and rated on a 0-100 scale. The refrigerated cave-dweller in question: self-proclaimed “cyberpunk” Billy Idol, who’s cold in the city, cold in the city tonight.

The Crest

Soul Asylum, “Runaway Train.” Soul Asylum isn’t a band heretofore renowned for its sensitive ballads. But this is a pretty one, about how the fight-or-flight instinct materializes in failing relationships.

Extrapolating on the band’s title image, director Tony Kaye has taken the “runaway” motif and literalized it, which usually spells trouble in rock videos, but spellbinds in this instance. This one’s about missing children, visualized mostly in the form of kids who flee from abuse at home to suffer even worse abuse adrift in the big, bad world--drugs, rape, prostitution and worse. Dramatizations of teen flight are interrupted by still photos of real missing kids, their names and the years they disappeared.

Kaye is used to getting results, having come to Hollywood recently from a background as one of England’s top TV-commercial directors. This very differently intended video too has already gotten a response: Several of the absent kids whose photos flash on-screen have contacted their families within the last few weeks to at least relay that they’re alive and OK. But “Runaway Train” isn’t just the MTV equivalent of the side of a milk carton: It’s creepy and moving independent of any public-service aspirations. 85

The Jest

Billy Idol, “Shock to the System.” Idol hired Brett Leonard, the director of “The Lawnmower Man,” for the first clip for his new album. . . . And speaking of trims, who drove the lawnmower across the top of Billy’s head? Ah, well, that multi-spiky ‘do is supposed to be a futuristic cut. It seems that Idol has latched with a vengeance onto the once-trendy, now-waning “cyberpunk” sci-fi movement, in even less timely fashion than Madonna caught onto the vogueing fad. How endearingly desperate.

Director Leonard isn’t going to win any trophies for originality, either. He seems to be banking--probably correctly--on the supposition that very few viewers out there in MTV-land have seen the bizarre Japanese cult movie “Tetsuo” or its sequel.

In these artsy, grotesque and quintessentially cyber-you-know-what “Tetsuo” flicks, mild-mannered men get assaulted, somehow absorb scrap metal through their skin and are turned by their raging ids into half-mechanical monsters. Exactly the same thing happens here when Idol is beat up by some future cops. The only novel riff is that a camera lens our abused rocker sucks in ends up poking out of his right eye--a tribute to the Rodney G. King/George Holliday legacy, probably.

The animation of Idol sprouting mechanical tentacles is undercut by quick edits, meaning even the special effects aren’t half as elaborate or fun as their Japanese antecedents’. Watch out, fellas: Tetsuo is jetting over the Pacific Rim even now, and wouldn’t he love to whup some Anglo rebel leather butt. 37

Best of the Rest

Blues Traveler, “Conquer Me.” Have you ever fallen jealously, madly in love with someone you just happened to pass on the street? No? Well, even withstanding that, you’ll probably still find a twinge of recognition in the modest, everyday scenario director David Hogan has concocted for this sweet little pop-blues tune.

The concept is exceptionally simple: A young businessman spots a beautiful girl hanging on the arm of a grungy rocker guy across the street and indulges in romantic fantasy and nostalgia for his childhood as they pass in the crosswalk. It’s to Hogan’s credit that he stretches this scenario over the harmonica-laden ballad’s five minutes and still keeps us interested in what emotions pass across the actors’ faces. 75

Janet Jackson, “That’s the Way Love Goes.” Jackson’s new smash album, “janet.,” tries awfully hard to be sensual and in doing so mostly ends up sounding sensationally forced. There’s no doubt an equal amount of careful calculation behind this video too, and yet it succeeds at seeming offhandedly sexy in a very shrewd way that much of Jackson’s album fails to manage.

The clip--directed by her boyfriend Rene Elizondo--avoids putting the star in an unduly saucy situation or trying to show off her body, as some of her previous videos did, and instead has her in the kind of scenario where she’s traditionally fared best: interacting with a large group of people. But this is no hokey rhythm nation of extras, just a crew of friends hanging out at a casual loft party in which the star is premiering her new song for her buds. In this context, she gets to lip-sync the otherwise ridiculous opening lines (“Like a moth to the flame burned by the fire / My love is blind, can’t you see my desire?”) and--in laughing bashfully while she reads them--tacitly acknowledge how hokey they are.

There’s a lot of sexy dancing going on at the party too, so Janet gets to look as sensual as she wants to be and appear as part of a community (a wise move for any Jackson). It’s a brilliant strategy, and a nice little clip. 70

4 Non-Blondes, “What’s Up.” This is a terrific month for teeth in videos. For starters, there’s the first Tears for Fears video in years, which itself ought to be enough to set most dentists’ hearts aflutter. But in addition, there’s the emergence of newcomer Linda Perry--who looks and sounds a lot like Concrete Blonde’s soulful Johnette Napolitano, but is easily distinguished by her dreadlocks and (especially) her pearly whites. Hard to tell yet whether Perry’s a real talent or just a talented ringer, but whatta setta choppers! 50

Coverdale/Page, “Take Me for a Little While.” They just don’t make ‘em like this anymore. This pricey or this pompous, that is. David Coverdale kicks back in a space-age mansion and sings some of the most grandly elementary, unwittingly self-parodic rock lyrics ever randomly assembled--while, in the meantime, there’s a whole lot of morphin’ goin’ on: The candle flame Coverdale is glaring at suddenly turns into a nearly naked babe. Lest our hero take advantage, said gal turns back into a fire-spitting iguana.

These conceptually laughable special effects all look swell, and the high-budget, camp high jinks might all be good for a harmless hoot ‘n’ a holler, if not for the sad fact that it fosters further self-embarrassment on the part of Jimmy Page, who slinks through the background here like the humiliated former champ that he is. 28