Subject: Re: Put a Lid On It video...
Date: Sun, Jun 28, 1998 6:48 PM
From: ClayWalk

I've never really understood the whole MTV refusal to show it.

It seemed as much a political decision as an "artistic" one. If I remember correctly it was supposed to premiere one Sunday night on "120 Minutes" but it never happened.

In the video there is the implication that Katharine is going to burn this house down in reference to the line "I think it's time we torch this place" but, she doesn't. The band doesn't really "trash" the house. They just take a few selected items. It's all goofy Zipperesque fun.

This is very speculative, but I think MTV's refusal to show it possibly stemmed from the fact that the Zippers weren't "successful" at the time in the sense that they weren't in the KROQ rotation or something. They weren't getting the radio airtime & selling the amount of CD's required for them to be a "legitimate" alternative band worthy of MTV's broadcast time.

If the video had followed the "Hell" video, which really launched the band into mainstream awarenessone, it probably would have gotten shown, at least once or twice.

They did remake the video in a completely different storyline, which I actually have never seen, but I think it got shown a few times.

I don't think that the only reason the video didn't get shown was because of the reference to the house getting burned down. Take that Radiohead video where they actually light the car on fire with the person in it or that other video & I can't remember the band, with the person running in slow motion on fire (directed by Spike Jones) or even the Wallflowers enormously overplayed "One Headlight" where he says he'd "like to see it burn."

Anyway, anyway, the video is on the new Perennial Favorties CD-ROM & you will finally get to see it. I'm sure you'll think it's pretty tame.

clay