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So today is Labor Day and on this second most American of holidays (after ‘Bring your Gun to Work Day’) what better band to focus on for a MAPS than the one that loves America the most - U2. Sorry, chest thumping country artists, your love for America pales in comparison to that of Bono, Adam, Larry and the guy that refuses to admit he is bald.

‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ was shot in 1987 at the corner of Seventh and Main in downtown Los Angeles by director Meiert Avis. Mr. Avis has been shooting videos since the very, very early days and on VideoStatic you can see he is still booking jobs today. I look at the depth on that credit list and I wonder why he doesn’t get as much credit as some other video pioneers. Maybe he should use more camera tricks.

The video for U2 takes place is the very commonly shot downtown section of LA. It is not far from the Tower Theater and at the edge of the seriously skeevy skid row area. Perhaps this location full of homeless folks was a purposeful tie in to the ‘no name’ aspect of the streets. More likely, it was one of the few places that would let a rock band play on the roof for a few hundred bucks.

Check out the map and click onto streetview - the place on the corner is still a liquor store, but the name has changed. Watch the video of 'Where the Streets Have No Name' here.

The beginning of the ‘Streets’ clip has lots of lead in before the song starts – something other videos would try to copy without much success. The live LA radio warning about traffic and the quality of the neighborhood (so maybe not that much has changed in LA) and the threats from the LAPD that the production was going to get shut down was all very effective.

It seems to me, re-watching the video, that the band got more than one run-through of the track, but the finished video makes it seem like po-po was closing the set down AS they were shooting. The video is a classic and it gets referenced all the time for new jobs – even twenty years later.

For more U2-ish fun, check out the feature documentary ‘It Might Get Loud’ starring the Edge, Jack White and Jimmy Page. The music is amazing and it is great to see Mr. Jimmy looking so lively and rocking at 65.

Labels: MAPS, music video, on the set, u2, videostatic

Good news, DJ Khaled is still alive, and nowhere near the white Bentley roaming LA in a slow speed pursuit. But, the Miami based DJ/producer might have been depressed because the best-ever Khaled music video got made – and he wasn’t even in it.

On Saturday Night Live, the Lonely Island guys did a digital short for a song of their new album, Incredibad. The song “I’m on a Boat” is just about the best Khaled song ever with shouty ultra-obvious raps and Auto-tuned choruses from T-Pain. Yes, T-Pain.

It speaks to the state of the music industry when Khaled, Gil Green and all the other Miami-philes can’t muster a budget this big for a ‘real’ music video, but these comedy guys can. Damn, Sandberg even got a helicopter shot.

It will really be something if Incredibad punks the new U2 album opening week.

Watch the "I'm on a Boat" video here.

Labels: controversy, music video, u2, video link, viral video

The business side of the music industry has been getting heavy coverage the past few days. From Britney’s video adventures with the vertical brass cylinder, to Radiohead’s groundbreaking (groundbreaking, I say!) new strategy and Madonna’s new school all-in-one deal with Live Nation. There has been plenty of hype, but …

The Britney thing? Next.

Radiohead and Madonna are intriguing because these are about new ways of music getting distributed and money being made off the music, tours and celebrity fragrances. The self produced digital-only record is definitely the direction of DIY music careers and I also think that (at least on some level) Madonna and Live Nation (LN) represent the way that “labels” will look in the future.

I have no idea how these experiments are going to work and remember that no one else does either. No matter how many orders Radiohead got the first day or how sure someone is that Madonna took LN to the cleaners – these are massive, complicated deals that cannot be classified as successes or failures for years to come. What they are, for now, is a new direction – and that is exciting.

I am always one to be skeptical of hype, a side effect of being in the hype business. Both Radiohead and LN employed the power of the press release to perfection these last weeks. They got massive coverage for their new ventures, with very little outlay for newspaper or TV ads. Free press is great and there has been lots of it over the past few weeks.

That being said, we all need to take a chill pill. Remember the iPhone launch? That was madness. Surely the world was about to end. My favorite story from then was the Mayor of Philly getting caught camping out on line (what, no assistant?!?) to get a glorious world-changing cellular thing-a-ma-jig. Well, time has passed and many people have an iPhone, more don’t – the world continues to spin. The cell phone marketplace is different, but no one in that industry thinks it is all sorted out yet. That is where we are with the “game changing” Radiohead and Madonna deals, it is still very early.

These new ideas are intriguing but you know who they work for? Established megastars. Say again – established acts with massive pre-existing fame.

The Madonna deal is all about concerts and other merchandise – so that kind of thing could work great for Dave Matthews or the Eagles – not so much for Talib Kweli or Kelly Clarkson. The Radiohead model of self releasing (heh, heh – self releasing) on-line might work for Linkin Park, but probably not for a new act.

These strategies are a refreshing change from the tired label group-think, but they are (at least so far) strange new directions that don’t really apply to most of the music industry. Selling your own record on your website happens all the time already (though the “name your own price” part is kinda new) and by and large no one cares.

All kinds of acts you have never heard of are already doing things very similar to what Radiohead is trying with this. Thousands of bands sell their music for nearly nothing on-line 24/7 – so why is it a big story now? Not because the strategy is so new, but because a very, very famous band is doing it. This is actually not a story about a “bold new direction” for the record industry, it is a story about a beloved band and their music that everyone is eager to hear.

The Madonna signing with LN is similar – not all that new. The deal that 19 Management strikes with the American Idol finalists is similar (I believe) regarding the sharing of various income streams, though the dollar values are much, much lower for Ruben Studdard and Fantasia than they are for Madonna.

Radiohead and Madonna are doing something new-ish – but what happens with their experiments is largely meaningless for the real future of the record industry. Maybe if Madonna cleans up then John Mellencamp and Mary J Blige may want/get similar arrangements – but what happens when all the famous musicians are gone?

U2 and Usher could find audiences releasing their own “digital only” recordings – but even if it works perfectly, what does that mean to a new band no one has heard of?

Everyone that can truly benefit from these deals (at least in a way I can imagine in the present day marketplace) is already super-ultra-mega-famous. Only the most established and renowned artists need apply.

Telling a new band or a newbie singer that self-releasing and all-in-one manage-labels are the future – is like telling a poor family struggling on food stamps that they need to make money – by purchasing an apartment building. Buying a nice six-unit building IS a good investment – but you need to already have a big bundle of cash to even make it into that game. Your friend’s band who plays down at the corner bar/roller-rink/basement is probably struggling to afford a twelver of beer. The idea of owning rental properties as a “solution” is pure fantasy land for them.

These “new strategies” are great things to try, especially if you are already wealthy from the old strategies of the traditional record label. Without the backing of Capitol, can Radiohead get every major newspaper to write about their website? People are eager to hear Radiohead’s new music because Thom Yorke is very talented AND because their “old” label invested lots and lots of money to make that talent into fame. Capitol got rich too, far richer that the band ever did off Yorke’s songs – but ask Radiohead if they want to start again at zero without major label support.

Like people that remember V-J Day, the artists that were made super-stars by the old label powers will die out and slip into unimportance. Can these new business models make stars, or just profit off and enrich existing ones?

What happens when all the famous musicians are gone?

Labels: Britney Spears, celebrity, death, insider, label, Madonna, music video, Radiohead, u2

I guess this is just continuing the Zoolander theme established in a hilariously truthful post over on Shots Ring Out. You should check it out, both for the Mugatu image and for the “so crazy it can’t be real” reality of it all. Anyway, read on, once you come back …

In the recent Los Angeles edition of City Beat (our second-tier free medical marijuana and massage parlor ad paper) there was an article about the unintended consequences of the revitalization (or “fascist gentrification” for the antville types) of downtown Los Angeles. For years, downtown LA has been creepily empty after the sun goes down – but the city and developers have been trying to turn the old, decaying downtown around and it looks like they have finally made some changes. Too bad that looks to be bad for production.

As downtown L.A. becomes the city’s newest upscale community, motion picture and television companies are learning the hard way that they are no longer lords of the empty streets. Now, smells wafting from catering trucks and the roar of generators from the 2,235 permitted productions in 2006 alone are barely tolerated and there always seems to be new rules to follow. To date, the city has imposed 150 rules on downtown production, 15 percent more than in other area of the city. – City Beat

It would certainly cramp everyone’s style if shooting in downtown LA became like New York with no audible playback rules and seven block walks to the grip trucks. But at the same time, I would not want a production crew running playback of a Pretty Ricky song until 6am outside my cave.

Downtown is home to such famous music video shooting locations as the rooftop from “Where the Streets Have No Name”, the back of the sign on top of the Orpheum Theater and the Alexandria Hotel where David Fincher used to live. The grungier the place, the more likely it has been in a music video, and that got me thinking …

Why are so many videos (and other stuff) shot in crappy, abandoned, run-down places? I understand (at least some of) the social implications of the underclass or the youth taking over the structures abandoned by the powerful of society. I understand that it is cheaper to shoot in an empty building than it is to rent out the top floor at the new CAA headquarters.

I was recently going to a video location on the edge of downtown near the LA River and taking a kid who had never been to a video set before. I was telling the boy about how grungy the place would be and he asked why. The kid assumed that videos would be set someplace cool and glossy – aren’t musicians rich after all?

The kid had good questions and I stammered to answer them. The one thing I settled on was that abandoned buildings are cool. That’s it, dirty=cool. It’s all I got.

Derelicte!!!

Labels: antville, insider, music video, on the set, prod co, u2

Euros love the desert. Especially those Commonwealth types from England, Ireland and Welsh-land. The love them some videos in the desert, probably because their local “warm vacation spot” is Brighton.

Every Continental director (and most of the artists) I have worked with has really, really wanted to shoot in the desert outside of LA. They all feel that the song in question (no matter what it is) just sounds like the wide open spaces of the America Southwest. My guess, is that the desert is something they don’t have back home, so when they come here – they think it is a great inspiration to drag the camera crew out to the Mojave, or if you are on a tighter budget, Vasquez Rocks.

It is a cliché in LA-based production circles that if the crew is driving out to the desert in the pre-dawn hours – someone important on the job must have an accent. That is not to say that American artists are immune to the charms of the desert, but it seems to have a special draw to those from across the pond.

I started on a list, but ran out of inspiration. Maybe commenters can add in their suggestions for Euros in the desert videos. The Spice Girls were super-heroines in the desert, Radiohead was quirky, the Lighthouse Family was imminently forgettable and so on. The music actually does point to clips from Sting and the Clash being shot in the desert. U2 used an artificial desert, so that only kind of counts, but they did have that whole album called Joshua Tree. Alanis is Canadian, so she kind of counts. I know I must forgetting a ton of the, Surely Westlife and Robbie Williams have shot videos in the desert.

Of course the flip-side of this is the goofy stuff that US directors and artists always wanna shoot in Europe. Jay-Z had his recent “Hey look at me, I’m in Monaco. No really. Monaco. Check me out” moment for his unretirement. If you were in Paris, where should you shoot your video? Why right in front of the Eiffel Tower, just like Mariah and Usher.

What seems “new and exciting” to the person making the trans-Atlantic flight is guaranteed to make the locals roll their eyes and say “We have to get ANOTHER permit for there.”

Labels: celebrity, jay-z, mariah carey, music video, on the set, robbiew williams, sting, u2, usher, video link, westlife