MUSIC VIDEO #4: Welcome to Tally Hall · 6:07pm May 12th, 2017
Not much of a storyline here, just a cool unusual effect.
"Welcome to Tally Hall", by Tally Hall
Using a rapid series of still photographs, it creates something that's not quite film, not quite animation. Well, it's just an automatic slide show, nothing fancy. During most of the rap sections, your eye is tricked into seeing a straightforward video recording, only played at low FPS. Your brain uses closure to fill in the blanks. But then they start doing things that are physically impossible in real time. And then back again. Combine it all together! Without any special effects, they've already suspended your disbelief with nothing more than clever editing.
Somehow they found a way to use human beings as artificial puppets, like the clay figures in stop-motion animation. Quite fitting, since the song itself is about the band's stage persona as an animatronic music attraction.
Tally Hall had great music, and some of the most creative music videos I'd ever seen. I'd link them all, because they're all so interesting and distinct, but it doesn't feel right. It's missing the surrounding context.
You see, they didn't just make music videos. They did an internet show.
They'd do comedy skits, jokes, animations, fake-interviews, real-interviews... and the music video segment would be buried somewhere within the episode, without any warning. The lines would be a bit blurred between reality and performance. It's been almost 10 years, and it's still a unique way of interacting with the audience, using the internet. And it's still really funny stuff.
So while a lot of bands create music videos as advertisement, or perhaps as high art, and post it on Youtube for all to see (and share)... for Tally Hall the video was just another piece of their persona.
MTV didn't invent music videos, just the music video sandwich. You can see the music video going all the way back to the early days of combining films with sound. Early cartoons were less focused on a story, and more about the novelty of synchronizing visuals to a popular song. And since TV hadn't been invented yet, the feature film was just part of the complete show. You'd also get a short film, a cartoon, a song & dance number, a news reel... seems almost like an extension of the vaudeville tradition.
Michael Jackson's 14-minute video for Thriller probably made such a huge splash at the time because it wasn't just this "new" music video gimmick, but a self-contained short film. It just happens to turn into a song and dance in the middle. It was more of a true synthesis of TV and music videos, than the rest of MTV's programming.
The 18-minute video for Bad came out 5 years later, but that one feels like excessive self-indulgence to me. The dance by itself is more interesting than the overly-serious storyline bookending it. I'd guess that fewer people are even aware there's a story to it, compared to all those who watched the complete Thriller video.
I mention those because Tally Hall seemed to parody that music video format once. Their video for "Two Wuv" lasts the entire 10-minute episode, complete with unnecessary story. You might almost forget it was a music video in the first place, until it interrupts the narrative at the most hilariously inappropriate moment with the song.
From their music style alone, I've sometimes mentally compared Tally Hall to They Might Be Giants, doing some kind of dadaist pop, but as artists I think it's better to compare them to Weird Al Yankovic. Not because of parody or comedy, though. Weird Al's song parodies were great, but I think his true brilliance was in his music video parodies. Seems like everyone on the internet writes pop song parodies these days, but few can match the level of his parody videos.
Remember his AL TV specials? Or ever been to one of his live concerts, where he connects songs together with crazy videos on the screen, showing jokes and TV cameos and fake celebrity interviews (to give the band the time they need to do their elaborate costume changes, of course). For both Weird Al and Tally Hall, entertainment is more than the music alone. They have to provide a complete physical experience to make you feel like you've been sucked into their surreal comedic worlds.
Just one little bonus before I'm done here. I could've linked any of their wild music videos, but instead I just wanted to share one of their songs. It never got a video.
"Spring and a Storm"
They weren't just ironic joksters. I've never experienced a song about a rainstorm turning into the story of the universe, from its birth until its death. It's awesome and haunting.
From the beginning I wanted to include that last song just for the sake of sharing my favorite. But along the way I realized I had something else to say about it. Except I have to do it later, when I can properly explain it. Just remember it for later!
Wow, I never knew they had a whole internet show! I own a copy of Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum, but knew little about them other than that. Fascinating, I'll have to look further.
My favorite was always Haiku, for being right on that line of dumb but also quite clever, heh.
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Yeah, Haiku is such a nice song. That's a good way of describing it too