Friday Night Videos

"Sentimental Street" is Night Ranger's best song, hands down. Sorry "Sister Christian" fans. That said, the video doesn't really make a lick of sense. The conceit of being crashed/marooned on a desert island with a magic lantern (a nod to the album title "7 Wishes") is taken up in video for "Four in the Morning," but doesn't make much sense there, either. There's a lot of pseudo-nostalgia throughout the video about old girlfriends and the band struggling before finding success, but there's no real context and the vibe is all over the place. There's no narrative through line, but goodness, who needs consistency when the band is sporting hair like that? The video itself may not be peak 80s, but the coiffures are almost there.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... John Cougar Mellencamp.

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Friday Night Videos

Night Ranger was one of the most inconsistent bands of the 80s. One minute they put out a song that was sublime--the distilled essence of what a well-crafted pop/rock song should be--and the next they were wailing away on a shoddy mish-mash of cliches and drivel. I never could quite figure them out. Apart from that, as I've said before, 7 Wishes is easily their best album and contains some of their best songs. Driving home tonight I heard "Goodbye" for the first time in maybe a decade, and was struck by just how good a sentimental song it is. All the pieces fit.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Hula Girls.

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Friday Night Videos

Okay, Night Ranger is one of the infamous '80s hair bands that played a big role in the soundtrack of my teenage years. Their songwriting was wildly uneven, but when Jack Blades & Co. hit a groove, they produced really solid music. "7 Wishes" is arguably their strongest album--it certainly produced the most hits, with "Sentimental Street" (which I consider their best song by far), and "Goodbye" (which I consider their most sentimental, by far) but I've always had a soft spot for "Four in the Morning." Something about this rocker clicks, and conveys more angst and emotion than similar tunes of the era. But the real reason I'm featuring it today is the gonzo nuts video that goes with it. Seriously--some marketing genius decided it'd be brilliant to combine the World War II era bomber crew of the cover art (the plane's name is "7 Wishes" as I recall) with a literal representation of wishes in the form of a magic Aladdin lamp. Then things get really weird with the introduction of futuristic alien space genie babes and and a science fiction rock concert of the future in which all the excess of '80s fashion train wrecks are turned up to 11. And just because they had some budget left over at the end, they threw in a camel. Why? I don't know. Maybe the lamp belongs to him.

It goes without saying they don't make 'em like this anymore.

Previously on Friday Night Videos... Billy Joel.

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