It looks like there's a new trend in music videos for lazy dino-rockers. String together a bunch of old clips so it looks like you -- or other people -- are singing the new song. I'm not complaining, mind you. Both of the recent videos to do this are pretty great. First Bob Dylan's Thunder on the Mountain and now U2's Window in the Skies. Dylan's is the better song by far, but the U2 vid is the more clever and technically proficient. Watch 'em both and see what you think. Has this been done before?
The Dylan video debuted on Slate as part of a contest: "identify the year in which each piece of footage was shot" and win a guitar. I wasn't on top of this quickly enough to realize, but I'm willing to bet almost anything that Slate fucked up. Identifying the year in which the footage appeared is easy enough for Dylanologists, but when it was shot? For instance, take image 7, a still from the video for Cross the Green Mountain, the theme song for the 2003 film Gods and Generals. Did Bob shoot his scenes for the video in 2001, when the film was shot? In 2002, after it wrapped? Or in 2003, just before it was released? I have no idea, and I'll be shocked if Slate does. Stay tuned.
As for the U2 song. I've become more interested in this band over the past year as I've become aware of the strange place they hold in the Christian pop subculture. In some circles they are totally embraced as contemporary christian music. But there are some radio stations, churches, etc. that will play cover versions of U2 songs by artists on CCM labels, but not the original versions of those same songs. Meanwhile, when I bring this up with non-evangelicals, they're often totally stunned, having had no idea that U2 is a Christian band. Or they'll say, "Sure, the band members are Christians, but the music is not Christian rock" (meaning, "It can't be, because it's too good/complex"). Maybe you have to know what you're listening for, since it's true that U2 rarely invokes Jesus by name, but other than that, they're not exactly hiding. Window in the Skies, to take only the latest example, is about as explicity Christian as you can get.
The rule has been disproved
The stone has been moved
The grain is now a groove
All debts are removed
As for whether Bob is still a Christian, well, that's a whole other post.
