Arthur Fonzerelli with an army of clones, huh?

[Ed]

This cracked me up a few times:

http://www.youtube.com/v/lj-x9ygQEGA&hl=en&fs=1&

[Caz]

Excellent.

[desertwomble]

Fantastic!

But it's not the only pee-take!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIaz6zBz1go

DW

[Ed]

I'm sure at least two of them were in Abba, weren't they?

[JonP]

"It started out as Hogwarts, now it's Lord of the Flies" - fantastic. Thanks for that, Ed.

[rsmccoy]

That was hysterical! 

[Ed]

I'd never realised just how cheesy that video was until now. It was as if the original producers had a load of weird ideas to choose from and couldn't, so they decided to use the whole lot

Worst of all, the original vid bore no relation to what I thought the song was about. It was early days, though, I suppose. Music videos were still in their infancy, weren't they.

[rsmccoy]

Gather round children and I will tell you about a time loooooong ago, when MTV played what we used to call "Music Videos". 

[Rev. Austin]

I saw Midge Ure on telly a few months ago, and he claimed 'Vienna' by his band, Ultravox, was the very first music video ever.  Hmmm.  I think he's only bald because his head got so big it all squeezed off.

[Ed]

I thought the first was supposed to be Jacko's Thriller vid?

[JonP]

Not even "Thriller", although that was at one time selling only slightly less than blank 180's. Somewhere I have on tape a six-hour compilation hosted by John Peel and John Walters (both RIP) that has several much earlier contenders, including a rather lovely video of Julie London doing "Cry me a river". And of course there's "Strawberry Fields Forever".

[PaulH]

Bohemian Rhapsody is often quoted as being the video that ushered in the video age. Queen only made the vid as they were touring and couldn't get on Top of the Pops. As Jon says though, there are a lot of vids from earlier days.

And just to pointlessly link together a few of the other posts:

Total Eclipse of the Heart was directed by Russell Mulcahy who also directed the video for Video Killed the Radio Star by Buggles which was the first video ever played on MTV. Russell Mulcahy went on to direct Highlander... which Queen did the soundtrack for after Mulcahy directed one of their videos.

A mine of useless information I am.