Radio With Pictures OUT FUNK!

Rip It Up, 15 December 1983, Page 12

Radio With Pictures OUT FUNK!

Peter Thomson

It's perfectly obvious why all the heavy metal videos get programmed [onto)Radio J t * n , /t—nr.Wmhmv-hhm With Pictures. As near to the weekly horror movie as possible, right? But it's the placement of some of the other J stuff that's got me perplexed. In particular, the fate of all the black music clips.

Why do they almost invariably get first and usually only screening on RTR Video Releasesl Now considering that show's 5.15 pm midweek slot, when most adults are either still working or still commuting, it's obvious that TVNZ regards the programme's audience as school-age. Therefore black music is being categorized as teen-pop. Now leaving aside the unpleasant nay, dangerous

stereotypes that this may imply, there still remain a couple of gross miscalculations involved.

The first is the obvious fallacy that black music attracts a primarily high school audience. Ridiculous. Anyone with two neurons knows that the main teen audience is whiter than white. Ask Duran Duran. A far stronger case in fact, could be made for black music appealing to the 30-plus section of the audience, aging farts (like this writer) who spent their youth hooked into 60s Stax and Motowm and have never quite got over it. Ask RlU's editor for example. The second miscalculation involves the content, both visual and verbal, of the videos themselves. Consider two clips which were screened on Video Releases and to my knowledge nowhere else in recent weeks: Mtume's 'Juicy Fruit' has it's slinky, sophisticated dance and 'love to lick you everywhere' lyric. Then there's the title line of Sylvester's Do You Wanna Funk (With Me)?' which certainly provokes an audial double-take. Sylvester himself is

a semi-reformed drag queen and certainly looked as much on tele. Hey, now don't get me wrong here. I'm not proposing increased censorship heaven forbid! just pointing out that, with Ollie Ohlsen's frequent plugs on the box about TVNZ regards programmes screened after 8.30 pm as more suitable for adults' blah blah, someone responsible for programming music clips is being rather inconsistent.

Nona Hendryx' recent single 'Keep It Confidential' is another black video which would have been more appropriate on Radio With Pictures yet received its solitary screening on Video Releases. And then there was the Yarborough People's 'Heart Beat', Fat Larry's update of the Marvin Gaye oldie 'Stubborn Kinda Fellow'... the list goes on. (Oh of course there are a couple of exceptions, but Michael Jackson and Prince are so huge that the crossover doesn't count.)

One rationale that's been suggested for screening these videos early evening'is that the target audience is primarily a singlesbuying one and these clips were all singles. Conversely the RWP audience is considered more album-oriented so you show, say, a track off the new Talking Heads or Dylan album. Oh yeah? Think of all the heaps of new British singles that get premiered on RWP and what about all the local singles and EPs? Aren't they trying to sell too? The answer is pretty obvious: that if the music's typed white, 'new wave' and/or 'weird' then it's slotted for RWP. If it's black then it's on Video Releases or occasionally Shazam. The final irony is that so many of these white British groups are frantically cribbing black rhythms and styles in order to win an audience. The other Sunday night the Gang Of Four, in their current funk format, even sneaked a black female singer into their RWP performance.