Rate Your Music score: 2.95 out of 5!
Almost nobody remembers this song, but they remember the video. But mostly they only recall the first verse, where lead singer Richard Page's disembodied head floats through an alley like it's on a conveyor belt.
I think music videos were past their peak of influence by 1987, so I guess it's surprising that people remember the video at all. Videos shouldn't have been losing influence, but much of this loss was MTV's doing. The channel started to slowly but surely replace its old format of music video clips with shows that had nothing to do with videos or music. I don't even have the faintest idea what MTV airs now.
But let's talk about something that happened when I was in 7th grade - about 18 months before this record was a hit. That was when Mr. Mister was concluding a string of #1 hits.
This story is about an 8th grade girl at school. She was absolutely obsessed with Mr. Mister. She was weird. I know the preceding two sentences are redundant, but anyway, any male student was subject to ribbing by their friends about how they should take her out on a date. Apparently, Mr. Mister was coming to town for a concert. So people joked about taking her to the Mr. Mister show.
There were a few problems with that. For one, nobody in our class was old enough to drive, so how would they get to the concert? For another, how could kids who were only 12 or 13 afford Mr. Mister tickets? My allowance each week was only a dime or something like that, and I often didn't get one at all, because I had to pay for things the school falsely accused me of ruining.
Back then, you had more responsibilities at a younger age, but you also had more privileges. However, they didn't give driver's licenses to 12-year-olds.
I admit that I did destroy something once in high school and had to pay for it. There was some counselor or social worker type at my school who kept deliberately goading me to get angry. I kept my cool as long as I could. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore, so I picked up some toy that had some name like Binary Beads and just snapped it right in two. There was one other time when they kept goading another student all day, and finally, he lost his shit. He did something really horrible like knock a book onto the floor. They wrestled him to the ground, and I never saw him again.
I shouldn't have had to pay for the Binary Beads, because everyone has their breaking point if they're being egged on. Angrily damaging books and toys was sort of like John McEnroe smashing tennis rackets. Breaking inanimate objects wasn't nearly as bad as if we had actually injured people.
But by then, it was the '90s, so most of the time, we were being talked down to like a baby.
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