When this television quiz show called to ask where I wuz at
I said "I'm underneath My dresser --An' they're poundin' on my door"
The audience went wild 'N the emcee said "Would you like to try for more?"
While many American artists were disdainful of the idea of making film clips to promote their songs, there were some who were ahead of the curve. One of these was Bronx native Tony Powers (born Henry Stanley Purvis), who had an impressive resume as a songwriter--some of his work was performed by Darlene Love, The Earls, Spanky and Our Gang and Kiss--before deciding in his 40‘s that writing solely for commercial purposes wasn’t for him.
In 1981, Powers came up with the idea for what he called ‘MusicFilms,’ and produced three videos set to his own music. The first of these was ‘Don’t Nobody Move (This Is A Heist), a comedic, somewhat nonsensical patter-song done by Powers in and around a Times Square that no longer exists and featuring a number of Powers’ actor friends. Yes, that’s John Goodman’s butt Powers is speaking into, and that’s Treat Williams being ambushed in the shower. The video ended up winning a couple of awards at film festivals and was shown repeatedly on HBO and USA’s Night Flight before MTV got off the ground.
Unlike the other videos I’ve presented here, I didn’t see this until years later. It was one of the bare handful of videos that New Jersey based UHF upstart U68 had when it began operation in 1985 under the stewardship of Steve Leeds. For the first couple of weeks, Power’s three videos were on heavy rotation along with those from obscure bands like Gowan and The Nails (who I will get to soon) in three hour chunks until Leeds got the rights to more current, popular stuff. I was fascinated by this guy who looked like Leonard Cohen and talked like a cartoon gangster about a surreal version of the New York of The Time. A few months later I was able to track down the EP containing the three ’MusicFilm’ tracks at a second hand record store on St. Marks Street. Even without the primitive visuals, it was a weird listen....
But not as weird as the ‘Video Album’ I found on the shelves of a video store on Broadway in Times Square that was closing down. Apparently, Sony had done a number of these things in the years after MTV hit it big. You may be familiar with the biggest hit of these Video Albums--‘Mickey,’ performed by long-time choreographer Toni Basil, actually was a video only until its popularity on MTV prompted Sony to produce it as an actual audio album. Unfortunately, while people embraced music video they didn’t embrace the idea of paying the pretty penny Sony was asking for 23 minutes of songs (I recall the retail price in the 80‘s being something in the realm of twenty-five dollars)...so the concept of the ‘Video Album’ was short lived. I picked up this copy for about five dollars and held onto it for years.
The EP got sold off during one of my bouts of poverty, and the Video Album was lost in one of my moves some years ago. But this song, and the accompanying visuals, are kind of burned into the back of my head. Powers re-recorded the song in 2007, but the tempo is speeded up a bit and it doesn’t do it for me quite as much as this peculiar, primitive artifact does.
The video below is Powers’ approved version, and was posted by him.
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