MUSIC VIDEO #2: Rocket Dive · 2:55pm Mar 29th, 2017
It's a nice rare feeling when you revisit music (or books or art) you loved when you were much younger, and instead of being totally embarrassing now, turns out it's still pretty great!
This is probably kinda dumb for a blog series, but I only have one more planned right now. Anyway, let's watch hide (pronounced HEE-deh) and his music video for "Rocket Dive"...
I wonder if they were going for a lower budget imitation of Michael and Janet Jackson's "Scream" music video. I think the cheaper effects make this one a little better, actually.
It's such a high-energy alt-rock style song, but why are half of the visuals so slow? So many scenes of weightless drifting that don't seem to match the tempo. Was the director not paying attention?
On the other hand, hide always did seem to be the aloof loner of X, from what I saw of concert footage. To him, visual-kei's glam wasn't this extraverted performance art to connect with the audience, but his own introverted self-expression. That's my theory, anyway. Even here, he plays it cool while surrounded by his band showing off, making faces and such.
I never thought of looking up the actual lyrics until a few years ago. I assumed they wouldn't be important. It's difficult... There's a lot of clumsy english translations, so it took some digging to find a decent translation here.
It was surprising. So much of the lyrics are about waiting, and missed opportunities, and life standing still. Why is so much of it hypothetical, as if it might happen in the future? He wants to ride the rocket before it rusts away forever. Even if the engine shuts down, he'll be free.
The song's not merely about having a good time blasting off on a rocket. It's full of painful yearning, disguised by that frenzied rock & roll energy. The video's slow dreamy tone almost makes perfect sense now.
I looked up a bunch of famous rock songs about space travel, just to compare lyrics and metaphors.
You've probably heard the space songs by David Bowie and Elton John, both of which are really about loneliness and alienation. Van Halen wants to escape from Earth's environmental problems, while the Kinks are escaping from Earth's political problems. Montrose says goodbye to the earth and old memories.
Sting thinks he's on the moon, but in reality he's stumbling around his house while very drunk. Syd Barrett explores the cosmos within the ultimate drug trip. Deep Purple just wants to have a good time going on tour across the planets. KISS's Rocket Ride (which inspired hide's Rocket Dive in the first place) is blatantly about sex.
Rocket Dive sounds nothing like any of those. They're all about escapism in one way or another, but...... they're still made of physical matter? Even poor Major Tom is still attached to this world, in a certain way.
The closest song that I could associate with it has nothing to do with outer space at all. To me, "Octopus's Garden" is its kindred spirit.
I've plugged Only Solitaire way too many times already, so this might be annoying, but I have to credit him again here because this isn't my original idea. His Abbey Road interpretation opened me up to this.
The band helped Ringo shape the simple little kiddie tune into a sonic masterpiece — the harmonies, Lennon's jangly rhythm in the back, the «synth bubbles», everything combines to really make it sound like a trip through an imaginary underwater paradise — but the lyrics clearly state that "I'd like to be...", and Ringo, perhaps subconsciously, sings it in such a longing manner that it is perfectly clear: the song is about something positively unreachable.
Apparently George Harrison felt similarly, he read the lyrics and thought it wasn't just a kiddie song -- there was something deep and cosmic within. George really loved the song and put a lot of heart into that lead guitar line. There's something optimistic yet uneasy there, surrounded by the happy-go-lucky atmosphere.
Compare it to a very similar Beatles song, Yellow Submarine, which is also a fantasy of living beneath the ocean. I'm sure thousands have tried to find some obscure meaning, but to me it feels so direct and straightforward. It's only a whimsical children's song, told like a fairy tale, nothing more. It's firmly set in the past and present, not some far-off paradise that may or may not ever come.
So we sailed up to the sun / Till we found the sea of green ...... As we live a life of ease / Everyone of us has all we need * versus * We would be warm below the storm / In our little hideaway beneath the waves ...... We would sing and dance around / Because we know we can't be found
They look so similar on a surface level. Ringo's word choices are clumsier than McCartney's, but there's a colossal emotional difference just because of that switch to future tense.
This kinda thing made me re-examine how to approach writing stories about fantasy and escapism. The genre's a lot more diverse than I first thought. Now if I could only figure out how to get the musical expression back into the prose part of my brain.
