Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Fly, on your way, like an Eagle



You may have already seen this doing the rounds of the internet but I'm sure you won't mind seeing it again. Three thoughts struck me while watching it:

First, Flight of Icarus is a damn good pop song. That's right: pop song. It rattles along impressively and the chorus is full of hooks. The ABBA lads wouldn't have kicked it out of bed, that's what I'm saying.

Secondly, it's refreshing to see kids actually enjoying themselves in a music video. Let's face it, whenever you see children in a music video, the odds are that they're there, swaying along self-consciously,  to prop up some drippy ballad about world peace, the environment or - worst of all - Christmas. They seem to be having a lot more fun here, throwing metal shapes and playing air guitar (and check out the cardboard guitar on the left of the front row - it's 1979 all over again).

The last point that occurred to me was that, back when this came out in 1983, if a primary school child turned up wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt they would most likely have earned a trip to the Headmaster's office pretty sharply. Now look. You can't say that nothing's changed for the better in the last 20 years.

6 comments:

  1. Do you think Bruce could find seats for them all on the 757? Well it's either them or a full blown orchestra (and Metallica have already done that).

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  2. I was just thinking, how cool would it have been if Eddie staggered on at the end. They could have asked the janitor to do it, I'm sure most jannies would be perfectly capable of playing a disheveled, lumbering freak with cadaverous skin and scarecrow hair.

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  3. Is it a 757? Bloody Hell. Not exactly Ryanair then.

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  4. Blimey! When I was a kid all we had was a hippy music teacher who played us Sgt Pepper and Jean-Michel Jarre... which actually goes some way to explain my weird music tastes today...

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  5. We had a music teacher who played us "the Times They Are a Changin'" as that was as far as it got. Thing is, it would have been 1983 or so, which makes it 20 years after Dylan recorded it. It felt as if it came from out of a history book. It was in mono! And the LP cover was black & white! A 20 year old piece of music for today's youth would be Smells Like Teen Spirit.

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  6. My art teacher tried to get me listening to Wings, reckoned it would save me from the darkness of heavy rock and my obsession with writing gothic script on all of my paintings. It would apppear he may have failed on both counts. Great video by the way

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