Digging Your Scene

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself muddling through another day.  I was feeling despondent and overwhelmed – so pretty normal.  Somehow I made my way home from work, and began the process of paying bills, and preparing my stuff for this year’s taxes.  Fun stuff, right?  I sat down in front of my laptop, when suddenly “Digging Your Scene” by The Blow Monkeys popped into my head.  I mean with force, as if it were actually blaring from speakers nearby.  I had no choice, but to pull up the video on YouTube.

“Digging Your Scene” was a top 15 hit in the US way back in 1986.  I was a freshman in high school.  As far as I know, they did not crack the pop charts again.  I never went out and bought the record, but I liked the song ok.  I would get the opening refrain stuck in my head a lot back then – exaggerating the vocal and haunting my friends with it at school.  I have no idea why it forced its way into my thoughts on this recent dreary weekday, but I can truly say that I was not ready for the music video. 

I had likely seen moments of it, when it was new.  However, my small town did not have MTV yet, and I spent much of my time, like now, huddled near a stereo, with headphones, listening to music.  I think I ran across the beginning of the video over at Bill’s house.  The God TV (it was named the God TV, because it was always on whether anyone was there or not, and often recording endless hours of material onto VHS) had recorded a few hours of the previous weekend’s episode of Night Tracks on WTBS.  I think we (the Campbell family and I) all thought the singer was extra creepy, made a bunch of jokes, and went on with our day.

Yes, the singer in this video looks especially creepy, but what I just now discovered is that the video is actually kinda funny.  It appears that the singer is parodying a mythic lounge-singing diva of epic proportions.  He works the audience, magically changes outfits every few moments, makes a mockery of guitar solos, and walks away to cheers and applause, a fistful of cash, and an overcoat draped over his shoulders like a cape.  It’s brilliant!

Immediately, my mind began racing.  I have always had a certain fondness for music videos – especially from the 80s, because so many of them are so damn strange.  As I have touched on here before (first paragraph of Downtown), there was often a dystopian landscape where videos were taking place in some kind of post-apocalyptic world with raging skies, blowing dust, and possibly revolutionary factions of horseback warriors carrying flags with cool logos led by our musician heroes.  Don’t forget the oppressive societies that our heroes had to face, where music and dancing were all illegal and could only be found in hidden basements of faceless grey stone buildings under constant threat of violent discovery.  I had an instant rambling essay forming in my head.  One that would touch on all kinds of bizarre 80 video-isms that I find fun and fascinating.

Once I began to collect video references I wanted to address and notes of things, I wanted to essentially make fun of, I had “Digging Your Scene” playing on repeat to get myself into the right mindset.  Unfortunately for my silly essay, each time the breezy, jazzy pop song with a killer bassline flowed into my brain, something began to happen to me.  I began to actually listen to the lyrics.  The words to this song are actually quite powerful.  Instead of being some kind of light-hearted expression of love, it is an indictment about the societal backlash toward people who have AIDS (“It’ll get you in the end / it’s God’s revenge”).  It comes from a place of fear, when being true to oneself could also mean a death sentence (“Everyday I walk alone / and pray that God won’t see me…Tell me why is it I’m digging your scene / I know I’ll die baby”).  

Shit.  Things just got real.