Go back if you will...


... to a place in time known simply as 1983 and feast on this video delicacy. I was having a e-mail discussion with my cousin Laura yesterday about leg warmers, bad eighties fashions that still haunt us and ventured back via YouTube to the era when MTV actually played videos that some of us watched over and over and again on Night Tracks and still over again on MTV. I'm not alone, right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxOlKvvLXP8

Note that Michael Sembello's "Maniac" features everything needed to for a successful early '80s music video:

* sparks
* hanging naked lightbulbs
* gratuitous butt shots
* break dancing
* strobe light action
* shadowy figures on stark white backgrounds
* people running for no apparent reason
* dry ice
* a body double with unconvincing wig
* footage that is repeated
* a torn sweatshirt top
* exercise of some sort


Trivia (from imbd.com):

* The song Maniac was written by Sembello and Dennis Matkosky for the 1980 horror film of the same title, but it was cut. Its lyrics about a killer were rewritten so that it could be used in for Flashdance. The song's use in Flashdance earned it an Academy Award nomination, but it was disqualified when it emerged that the song had not been written specifically for the film.

* Jennifer Beals was only 19 when Flashdance was released.

* Jennifer Beals' trend setting collarless sweater came about by accident. The sweater, which Beals brought from home, had shrunk in the wash and she had to cut the collar off in order to get it over her head.

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