Comments on: Really, I'm just waiting for The Protomen to do this.

Question: Really, I'm just waiting for The Protomen to do this.

schmod — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:47:49 -0800

Music videos are a dime a dozen. However, it's pretty rare for an entire album to be made into a single video with a coherent narrative. What are some examples of this?

Last night, somebody pointed me to the fantastic video of TV on the Radio's Nine Types of Light, which is an hour-long music video that encompasses every song on the album.

What other albums have been made into a single video with a coherent narrative to tie everything together?

My criteria:

It's gotta be good.

I'm not looking for a series of single videos played back-to-back. There needs to be some sort of narrative or thematic link between tracks.

I'm not looking concert recordings, unless the live performance adds some kind of narrative element that was not present on the album.

No soundtracks, unless the film was genuinely focused on the music. Let's arbitrarily say that the film needs to be at least 80% music.

EPs, and really long single songs are OK.

Collaborations and compilations are also OK.

Normal-length songs with extended videos (ie. Telephone by Lady Gaga, and O Valenia by the Decemberists) are cool, but not really what I'm looking for. We'll save that for another post.

The only other video like this that I can think of is Vincent Moon's rendition of Beirut's The Flying Club Cup. I'm sure I'm missing some others. Enlighten me!

By: jbickers

jbickers — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:51:06 -0800

If you can find it, "Broken" by NIN.

By: The Deej

The Deej — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:51:08 -0800

The film versions of the "rock operas" Jesus Christ, Superstar and Tommy fall into this category.

By: jbickers

jbickers — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:51:57 -0800

(Prolly would have been smarter to link here instead, sorry.)

By: Confess, Fletch

Confess, Fletch — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:52:39 -0800

Pink Floyd: The Wall

By: Dr-Baa

Dr-Baa — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:52:49 -0800

Daft Punk's Discovery (via Interstella 5555).

By: box

box — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:53:12 -0800

DJ Q-Bert's Wave Twisters.

By: hijinx

hijinx — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 07:55:49 -0800

R.E.M.'s Left of Reckoning takes the first side (called the Left Side on the LP) as its subject. Not the whole album, but half!

This definitely leans to the art side versus a narrative, in my opinion, but I'll let you be the judge of that.

By: Confess, Fletch

Confess, Fletch — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:07:37 -0800

A Hard Days Night

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:09:18 -0800

Ditto Interstella 5555, by Daft Punk and Leiji Matsumoto.

By: Chocolate Pickle

Chocolate Pickle — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:15:43 -0800

Quadraphenia was made into a movie.

By: cgc373

cgc373 — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:21:26 -0800

R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" sequence works this way.

By: cabingirl

cabingirl — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:25:16 -0800

The Decemberists made Here Come the Waves - The Hazards of Love Visualized to showcase their Hazards of Love album.

By: supercres

supercres — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:40:17 -0800

I'm not sure how many songs it encompasses (it's on my to-watch list), but Arcade Fire/Spike Jonze's Scenes from the Suburbs would seem to fit.

By: cjemmott

cjemmott — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:57:07 -0800

I like to think of Koyaanisqatsi as an hour and a half long Phillip Glass music video.

By: sexyrobot

sexyrobot — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:58:49 -0800

eurythicmics...savage...almost,anyway

By: codacorolla

codacorolla — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 08:59:51 -0800

Kanye West did something similar to this for "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" (although it wasn't the entire album, it did feature many tracks from it).

Girl Walk is a project that takes the latest Girl Talk album and sets it to interpretive dance.

I'm pretty sure that the Liars have come close, as they released a DVD with their album Drum's not Dead with a lot of video content (although I don't think it matches 1-to-1 with the album).

As an aside, per Wikipedia, "In 1971, avant-garde group The Residents began filming what was supposed to be the first feature length music video "Vileness Fats". Due to time constrains and technical problems, the group abandoned the project in 1976."

By: N-stoff

N-stoff — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:00:10 -0800

The The did this with Infected, good in a mid-80's kind of way.

By: mkultra

mkultra — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:06:48 -0800

Indirectly- Dark Side of the Rainbow

By: The Discredited Ape

The Discredited Ape — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 09:11:17 -0800

Various Artists: (motion) (Warp VHS, 1994)

By: palbo

palbo — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 10:53:31 -0800

Carina Rounds did it for her Slow Motion Addict album. Don't know how you'd go about procuring such film, i could only find a few episodes on her youtube channel...

By: agress

agress — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:13:33 -0800

Sean Lennon did it with his 2006 album Friendly Fire.

By: schmod

schmod — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:20:05 -0800

_{cgc373: "R. Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" sequence works this way."

Sigh.}

By: filthy light thief

filthy light thief — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:35:40 -0800

The 20 minute video Fight for your Right Revisited (found from MetaFilter) isn't the whole of the Beastie Boys new album, but features a number of tracks from Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.

By: kindall

kindall — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:44:01 -0800

Queensryche made a long-form music video for *Operation: Mindcrime* that has *most* of the album on it (a couple songs aren't included).

By: elle.jeezy

elle.jeezy — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 13:20:19 -0800

Prince - Sign o' the Times
Prince - Purple Rain

By: Lovecraft In Brooklyn

Lovecraft In Brooklyn — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 16:51:15 -0800

obligatory Hold Steady example:

Seperation Sunday: The Movie (it's in 5 parts. that's just part 1). the whole album makes one (mostly) coherent narrative, so its perfect for this

By: ovvl

ovvl — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:19:46 -0800

It may not be a coherent narrative, but I think that Blondie's Eat to the Beat was the first album I know of released as an entire video sequence, on Laserdisc.

By: Chocolate Pickle

Chocolate Pickle — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 18:59:19 -0800

This isn't quite what you're talking about but it's similar. In the 1990's there was a series of shows released on VHS and Laserdisc called "The Mind's Eye", consisting of computer animation along with original background music. There were four of them. Thomas Dolby did the music for one, and Jan Hammer did another. (I owned the one Jan Hammer did, and it was really cool.)

Youtube

By: cgc373

cgc373 — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 21:28:16 -0800

Heh. Sorry, schmod. R. Kelly may not meet your first criterion, "gotta be good."

By: Pinback

Pinback — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:05:32 -0800

ovvl: I think Blondie might have just been pipped by ELO's Discovery. The album was released in May in the UK & June in the US; I think the video was released concurrently with US release. That puts it a couple of months before Blondie.

Thematically it's a bit all over the place (unless you count "80's hair and video effects" as a theme ;-), but there's some degree of consistency.

(Trivia: The guy on the album's back cover, holding the big-ass sword, is Brad Garrett.)

By: prinado

prinado — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:58:00 -0800

ABC teamed up with Julien Temple for an hour-long film, "Mantrap,"(1983) that weaves in most of the songs on The Lexicon of Love with a story that pays homage to 50's espionage movies.