It goes like this
You Media students – and almost everyone else under-45 –
like music videos; you’ve grown up with them. You love watching them
and you love making them for your practical projects. Natasha Hewitt
and Sean Kaye-Smith find The Detroit Cobras’ ‘Cha Cha Twist’ a
particularly rich – and fun – text.
Who and what are ‘The Detroit Cobras’?
The Detroit Cobras – championed in the U.K. in recent years like so
much vibrant new music by the late lamented Radio One D.J. John Peel –
are part of Detroit’s recent music renaissance, perhaps most
significantly publicised and epitomised by the success of Jack and Meg
White: namely The White Stripes. Whilst nothing will ever eclipse the
wonderful legacy of Mo(tor)town, Detroit is now once again something of a
‘happening’ place.
Interestingly The Detroit Cobras are essentially a ‘covers’ band
(i.e. they do other artists’ material rather than writing their own);
but there are two different types of covers bands.
– Firstly, those who try to reproduce the sound of the original
artists as faithfully as possible, and nowadays many bands doing this
are likely to have taken that extra step of becoming a ‘tribute’ band,
concentrating on one particular band from the past (e.g. The Beatles)
and trying to reproduce their look as well as their music.
– Secondly, there are those covers bands which do material that they
themselves have not written but which they perform in their own very
personal and unique way, so that they are interpreters of the material
(of course this is what Frank Sinatra spent most of his time doing!).
The Detroit Cobras are firmly of the latter variety and,
interestingly, their choice of material reflects their interest in some
of the less well-known names in soul and rhythm and blues history, so it
is likely that most music fans will hear The Cobras’ version first
before trying to track down the original recordings. Their take on Hank
Ballard’s ‘Cha Cha Twist’ is supported by a stylish and entertaining
video which is, in some ways, fairly typical of music videos in general,
but which is also quite an original and quirky text which throws up
several popular cultural issues.
The downsides of music video
There are some convincing arguments against the ubiquitous music
video, some of which are succinctly stated by David Stubbs in Wire
magazine’s recent review of the compilation ‘Warp Vision (The Videos
1989-2004)’. Stubbs suggested that music videos have ‘helped remove the
spectacle of performance from the popular sphere’. It is difficult to
test this thesis, particularly as some music videos do feature the
artists performing, albeit in a rather artificial ‘staged’ setting.
However, if ‘performance’ is interpreted as acting and singing at the
same time then the point gains weight: much of this performing seems
little more than walking, sitting or laying around looking sad while
mouthing the lyrics to the song. But Stubbs is surely right when he goes
on to say that music videos have a certain ‘commodification of music’;
they are essentially elaborate advertisements for songs, which carry the
stamp of powerful corporations and are usually fashioned in the slick
language of expensive promotion.
The high-cost element – most famously employed by some extremely high
budget videos such as Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ – has cranked up
the expense and, inevitably, hit the smaller companies and less high
profile artists hard: competing with the budgets of Britney Spears,
Robbie Williams and U2 puts smaller institutions in approximately the
same position as Norwich City lining up to face Chelsea in the
Premiership – all they can hope for is a ‘Big-Boys’ off-day and a lucky
break.
But perhaps the most condemning criticism of the music video is that
‘it offers banal single interpretations of pieces of music, lazy comfort
food for the eyes rather than stimulus to both the ears and the
imagination.’
Whilst the end of the above quotation could arguably apply to much
televised or film entertainment, the music video, without even the
demands of dialogue or sophisticated narrative, seems a particularly
easy target. When Henri Cartier-Bresson called television ‘chewing gum
for the eyes’ was he prescient of Reality T.V. and the current wealth of
music channels? Discuss!
With its two-dance name check (for younger readers there are dances
of the 50s and 60s called the Cha Cha and the Twist) the song title
suggests the video will feature a lot of movement. However, it opens
quietly, unusually before the music starts, with the first part of a
framing device; the camera moves down from the upper storeys of what
appears to be a large department store at night to the ground floor
window. This window scene is backlit in a vivid red light and broken by
black silhouettes of the band, standing motionless like shop dummies. We
are aware of the wet, shining pavement in front of the window as a
figure walks left to right to place a coin through a slot in the wall on
the right of the window. So the themes of consumerism and commerce are
established early on with the store, the ‘goods’ the band represent and
the coin slot, which, when fed, inevitably animates the band and the
music starts. Coin slots are one of the greatest popular culture
locations for creative consumerism. Think of jukeboxes, fairground and
arcade games, drink machines, museum exhibitions etc. The consumer makes
a choice, or makes something happen.
The Detroit Cobras come to life with the music and although the red
background remains – and the black silhouettes do make further
appearances – the musicians are now in colour. From this point on (not
including the framing device) there are three main locations or
viewpoints:
1. The band in silhouette (mainly brief, relatively static, shots).
2. The band in colour from inside the window.
3. Shots from the street with views of the pavement and the assortment
of figures who congregate there, with the band performing in the window
in the background. There is considerable variation in camera angle and
movement in these shots.
It is night and we are in the street and into it comes a rich
assortment of dancers – the nightlife. Some of these dancers are serious
as their dress and movement clearly suggests; others have a more
pantomime – or carnival – feel, such as a tiny-skirted and hooded Red
Riding Hood (played, incidentally, by Meg White) with a lumbering
bear-like wolf, which fails to trouble her at all or even to wipe the
smile from her face. Sometimes the pavement is thronging like an outdoor
disco; at other times there is a single figure to follow, such as a
roller-skater who eventually does the splits. This melting pot of
figures, costumes and movement and cultural themes could suggest a
number of themes; how the street, noticeably devoid of authority figures
(not a cop in sight) is a safe arena for a multitude of characters.
Bakhtin’s carnival
This is a good moment to introduce the work of Bakhtin whose ideas
about ‘carnival’ and popular culture as carnival (perhaps most clearly
rehashed in John Docker’s Postmodernism and Popular Culture) have had
such a growing influence on media theory in recent years.
Bakhtin saw carnival as a ‘world-turned-upside-down’, when barriers
of status, authority, class, law and culture were knocked down and the
loud, iconoclastic energy of the fair took over. The band in this video
are subservient to the audience, animated by them and for them to aid
the audience’s self-expression through dance. There is plenty to explore
here. ‘Cha Cha Twist’ is a very rich and open text which hopefully
provokes very varied and imaginative responses.
The shots of the band which are mixed with these scenes in the street
also raise some interesting issues, really giving us our money’s worth.
Singer Rachel Naggy is the focal point of the band; she provides a
fascinating contrast not only with the current batch of Kylies,
Christinas and Britneys but also with the more ‘adult-orientated’
artists like Dido, Katie Melua and Amy Winehouse.
Ms Naggy is rumoured to be a former ‘exotic dancer’ and yet here she
is modestly dressed – jeans, long-sleeved T-shirt – and does not dance
at all. She sways a little, and raises her arms, but her mission is to
sing, and her powerful rasping voice is much closer to pre-video artists
like Etta James and Dinah Washington than to the artists mentioned
above. Without doing very much, Ms Naggy is a powerful presence and an
oddly compelling performer; yet this video does not promote her in the
way that, say, a Britney Spears promo projects and commodifies its
subject. The Detroit Cobras are a beat group with soul and rhythm and
blues leanings, and very much a guitar band. Behind Ms Naggy three
scruffy guys and the equally dishevelled Mary Resrepo are a fast-cut
melee of hair and guitar iconography. The classic guitar shapes and
shining colours and lacquers are in danger of stealing the show at times
(we have a Fenderbass, an impressive semi-acoustic lead guitar and a
smaller Gibson Les Paul style solid body). The persistence of the
electric guitar in pop and rock music plugs bands like The Cobras into
both rock history – or retro rock – and also contemporary bands like
Busted and Franz Ferdinand. Guitars always look and a sound a bit surf, a
bit punk, a bit metal, a bit Scottie Moore... and so the reservoir of
associations continues to brim up.
At the end we return to the framing device. The band resume their
position as motionless silhouettes, the street empties and the sounds of
the city reassert themselves. A single figure walks back right to left
this time; the carnival is over until the next night, or the next coin
hits the slot.
Andrew Clifton has argued that film can be taught most effectively by
studying ‘bad’ movies rather than ’great’ or classic films, i.e. it can
sometimes be more useful and entertaining to explore why Fire Maidens
from Outer Space is a terrible – but possibly fun – movie than to
discover why Citizen Kane has topped the critics’ choice for the last
forty years. You could use a similar approach with some music
television, despite its large budgets and slick production values. But
there are lots of good music videos – and The Detroit Cobras have given
us one. We hope you’ll have an interesting and entertaining time with
Cha Cha Twist and that it will perhaps inspire some successful, less
clichéd practical work.
Natasha Hewitt and Sean Kaye-Smith.
This article was first published in MediaMagazine 13.
