Music videos within music videos--a stylistic device upon which you'd have thought early- to mid- 80's video directors would have pounced on an epidemic scale. Not by a long shot. Here was a chance for the cream of New Wave and power pop to gratuitously plug another favorite singer's or band's videos and, in essence, invent music vid product placement. An idea that would surely have been tossed out right off the bat by innocent, vulnerable and completely unimpressionable eleven year-olds, right? Obviously, it wasn't the winning formula...except for one band. One musical entity would ever concoct it, use it and pioneer it: Dire Straits.
About two minutes into "Money for Nothing" another video suddenly appears. Some pretty boy wearing a badass red muscle shirt and hair vaguely reminiscent of Magne Furuholmen/Bono circa "11 O'Clock Tick Tock"/Brenda Fricker whirls around to face the camera in a great stop motion effect that makes him seem bionic. Another minute thirteen seconds later there's a black and white video of a woman in her late twenties, early thirties in alluring black lace stockings and white panties (that more or less double as toilet paper) glaring seductively and taking her frustration out on a kiosk. This band, its song and accompanying clip--The Ian Pearson Band's "Sally"--are completely fake. Ian Pearson isn't even a musician; he's the animator of "Money for Nothing" and close friend of the Knopflers.
The other, however, is totally real, and this is where it gets kinda scary. The first video is from a band called First Floor--the real English translation of their real Hungarian moniker, Elso Emelet. The English song title is "Baby, Baby", although I'd bank on the literal Hungarian title being somewhat more nuanced (Anyone happen to know to what "Allj vagy lovok" translates in English?).
Anyhow, through intense YouTube snooping I've discovered something extraordinary: these Eastern European pop studs are actually incorrect gangsta ballbusters. Absolute white outsider bou-ghetto instigators.
Think Oingo Boingo when they were still the Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo and Bill Nelson collaborating on an album and singing all the lyrics in Hungarian. Word of caution: Their videos are as tedious as watching seaweed float. But, oh, to the glorious heavens above (baby, baby), the music is breathtaking.
So, I did some scouting. I'm pretty certain the title "Állj, vagy lövök" would translate to something more like "Stop or I'll Shoot." Pretty certain... but I should say that before I found the correct accents, I was close to thinking it meant "Allie, You Are Horses."
Posted by: Ambrose Keks | March 29, 2008 at 03:38 PM
Cheers, Ambrose. Some literal translations to English from a foreign tongue are so hilarious and not even because of the misaligned syntax. I love they that have absolutely zero to do with what the English title or lyrics suggest the song is about.
Posted by: Jonathan Steinke | April 04, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Hi! Yes, it means "Stop or i'll shoot" (i am hungarian).
And actually it has sense. He sings about a 'battle' that he 'wins', but it's the battle of love. So...
Some rough translation of the refrain could be:
Stop stop stop or i'll shoot
I have won the battle
With the hug hug hug operation
Posted by: Beci | January 02, 2009 at 03:09 AM
Does anyone have the video used in Dire Straits' "Money For Nothing" video and where was that shoot?
Posted by: Mikko | January 31, 2012 at 11:53 PM