Music Video
The Stranglers: Five Minutes. Non-album single, 1978.
Joe Strummer: Fantastic: Unbelievable.
The Clash: All The Young Punks (Alternate Version): 1978.
Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds: Riverman: 2015: Noel's greatest solo track. The guitar solo is astounding; who played it? I thought it was Noel, playing in an entirely new register. But, no, it was Paul Weller.
X: Delta 88: 1979-ish. If this punk masterpiece doesn't make you want to go to Cannery Row, stay at Bates Motel, and get drunk as hell, then nothing will, I can tell.
Joe Strummer: Burning Lights. 1990. This speaks for itself.
Amy Winehouse: 1983-2011. Back to Black.
Nico: I'm Not Sayin'. 1965. This video was reconstructed out of recently found footage. The result is spectacular, unprecedented, and almost unworldly. Imagine if every Velvet Underground-related track had filmed footage of this quality.
Kasabian: Days Are Forgotten: 2011. Is Kasabian the final great band of the rock era? Here, the vote is an easy yes.
Rancid: Devil In Disguise: 2023. I have been a solid Rancid fan from the mid-nineties straight through today circa 2024. All through my Distortions-era days, not a single friend of mine (with the exception of Bryan Murphy) ever liked Rancid. And I never understood why. For another Rancid favorite, click here and/or/even here.
The Brian Jonestown Massacre: The Future Is Your Past. 2022. Directed by Jean De Oliveira and Matilda Reid.
The Black Angels: Currency: 2017.
Wolf Alice: The Last Man On Earth. 2021. From the stellar album Blue Weekend.
Suicide: Frankie Teardrop: A Film by Douglas Hart. 2022. Directed by original Jesus and Mary Chain bassist Douglas Hart. I consider this to be a masterpiece, surely, one of the top five rock videos ever made, more likely than not, number one.
Kasabian: Reason Is Treason: 2004. Directed by Scott Lyon. Strangely, they made the video for the alternative mix (the "Jacknife Lee mix," as it's called). The album version of the track is actually better; to hear that, click here.
The Verve: Live in London 1993: Four songs: Star Sail, Slide Away, Virtual World, Blue. This performance, for me, is iconic, possibly for the simple reason that I saw them exactly one month after this October 1993 London show; their performance, absolutely on fire, looked exactly like this, but it was at the Variety Arts Center, downtown LA. The nineties was a horrific time for music; and in my view, the emergence of British indie like The Verve and Suede marked the beginning of an era.