As we wind down July Music Video Month we get to yesterday's video. It is Stray Cat Strut by...Oh, it's Strut by the Stray Cats. It's three and a half minutes. Enjoy.
Wow, it's like the fifties or something! Wait, is this what music was like in the fifties? Eh, I'm too lazy to look it up.
This video takes place in an alleyway. There's a cute black cat that appears often and even the lyrics have references to cats. This band is really milking it's name.
The lead singer has really big hair. It curls around the front. The drummer plays on a can. For some reason there's a woman who's probably a prostitute walking around. She meets a guy in a trench coat and they nod before walking off. Such is the life of a cat. At least, it's what a cat sees before it hops down and walks up to another trash can.
The lead singer sings about being broke and in the ditch, just like a cat. He refers to himself as a black and orange cat. That would make him a rare male calico. A woman in some apartment pulls up her window and starts yelling at the band. She's drowned out.
Lead singer will have none of that. He brags about being a ladies' cat, and a female Casanova. Um, what? Oh, feline Casanova. Yeah, that's much better. He doesn't care where he eats or how the world treats him. The hooker reappears and he takes a look at her. Sorry, we heard the first half of your song and we know you can't have her. The woman in the window tries to yell again but is scared off by the black and white kitty. She reappears shortly and starts throwing random junk that the band block with the trash can lid.
After a break the singer goes on about picking fights. Our protagonist is a wild, care free type. The ladies like him, but want to tame him. A couple of women whose virtue I won't question appear and start to walk and snap to the beat. Very retro.
During another break the lady in the apartment sits down to watch tv. She looks a bit like Roseanne at this poin. She flips through several channels and we see some clips from some Tex Avery cartoons. Cool. But she gets real mean and walks outside her apartment to throw a bucket of water at the black cat. She goes away after that.
The refrain (the part about picking a fight) plays one more time. The women walk away and the prostitute shows up one last time.
That was a fun song, and weird that it was played on early MTV (I cheated by looking that up, but I knew that it was from the eighties.) I'm guessing that there was an nostalgia for the fifties (forties? I don't know) and this song became popular.
The awesome part is the Tex Avery cartoon. I don't know which one. The awesome part that doesn't make me sound like a big manchild geek is the part where the cat scared the lady with it's meow. Don't mess with that cat.
2 comments:
You were right the first time. It's Stray Cat Strut by the Stray Cats
Brian Setzer has said that he was born three decades too late. He's stuck in the 50's and he's ok with that.
The kitty cat in this video looks like my dumb cat.
The awesome thing is, as it is in any video where it appears, the rockin' pompadour.
I was around when this video came out (meaning, I was in high school and not gestating or being born like the rest of you dumb kids, and get off my lawn), and I believe that the Stray Cats single-handedly sparked a nostalgia for the 50s and in fact the nostalgia craze for a particular decade that the nation seems to go through every few years. Clothes from the 50s were a small part of the fashion of the early 80s. Black, pink and grey were quite popular, and I even remember seeing some poodle skirts. I was a little kid in the 70s but I don't recall there being nostalgia for a certain decade until the early 80s when 50s nostalgia took off. Then just five years later we all had nostalgia for the 60s.
I loved this song and had this album when it came out. I actually had it on cassette and I remember driving around in my mother's old car, singing along with the Stray Cats at the top of my lungs.
I also enjoyed Brian Setzer's resurgence with the Brian Setzer orchestra in the 90s. "Rumble in Brighton" is on my mp3 player and absolutely one of my most favorite songs to walk to. I can really get moving with that thing.
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