From Y&T's 1984 album In Rock We Trust comes the great song "Keep on Runnin'" accompanied by an atrocious video.
Y&T has never gotten the credit they deserve for all the fantastic music they have put out over the years. They, unfortunately, never caught on big during the 80's hard rock heyday. Maybe they weren't pretty enough. Maybe they were a little too stripped down. Maybe they were a little too hard. Or not hard enough. Maybe they weren't polished enough. I don't know, but they rocked.
The video for this song, however, should live in infamy forever. You can't blame the band. Their part in this whole production was faux playing the song on a stage. It's the whole storyline, horrid special effects and bad acting surrounding them that make this cringeworthy.
The story is familiar. The nerd asks the popular girl to go to show. She shoots him down and goes off with the popular stud jock. Nerd goes home and pops a Y&T cassette into his walkman (sorry kids, look those up, you know how to use the google machine). The guitars crank and something magical starts to happen.
This is where it starts to go off the rails. The kid starts to turn into the metallic figure on the In Rock We Trust album cover.
That in and of itself might not be too bad. But the result ends up looking like a cross between Iron Man and the Michelin Man.
As would be expected, the popular, hot chick and the stud run into trouble on wherever they are going. Stud boy ends up running off and leaving the hot chick at the mercy of this very unintimidating group of three....hooligans? gang members? I don't know. The MetalMichelin Man, while flying through the air, finds this scene and rescues the hot chick.
Then there's a bit of a twist, and I give someone credit for this because if you know Y&T, they never get the girl in their songs. The hot chick freaks out and leaves MetalMichelin Man confused and shedding a tear (oil drop?).
Whatever passes for special effects are disastrous throughout. But remember guys, this was before CGI, at least nothing beyond infancy. And this was the early days of MTV when bands/labels really didn't know what they were doing. But this is disastrously delicious. Judge for yourself.
I just can't leave it there. Y&T is one of my favorite bands of all time. Dave Meniketti is one of the best lead singer/lead guitar combo guys alive. And they are still doing it live. While original bassist/songwriting partner Phil Kennemore passed away in 2011 from lung cancer Dave and the band continue to melt faces. Here's a shoddy video but with good sound from a show in 2013.
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