(26) 1997 MTV Video Music Awards

(26) 1997 MTV Video Music Awards. In spikes and dark-blue nail polish, interspersed with ’97’s hottest music video contenders in the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards.

Here’s me dressed in an understated ensemble involving three spiked-black-leather chokers, nose-ring, nipple-rings, kohl eye-shadow, cheetah-skin drop-earring, and enough rings and bangles to fill a branch of Claire’s Accessories.

These were pre-recorded segments, edited with kaleidoscopic effects, that were later used as interstitials between live-broadcast segments of the actual VMAs ’97. During the broadcast these snippets were played out on the fly, presumably whenever they were helpful for smoothing over transitions (and filling up those awkward silences), interspersed with contending music videos by Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott, No Doubt, Rage Against the Machine, Puff Daddy, Iggy Pop, Jamiroquai, Beck, Bruce Springsteen and others.

My favourite blast-from-the-past fragments here are the Prodigy’s “Breathe”, Gwen Stefani in No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak”, Missy Elliott’s “The Rain”, and Nine Inch Nails’ “The Perfect Drug”. Jammed together in quickfire juxtaposition here, they’re like some Long Island Iced Tea cocktail recipe devised by Marilyn Manson, who’s also in the mix here.

I think I recall our studio location was the venerable Silvercup Studios, in the Long Island City neighbourhood of the borough of Queens, NYC—a neighbourhood that included a gloriously urban tangle of elevated subway tracks, elevated highways, industrial streets, extensive projects and a grungy glamour, with a lively nocturnal street economy to match. I hear L.I.C. has now been much gentrified, but its iconic views of the 59th Street Bridge and the Manhattan skyline across the East River will be less changed. IMDb listing here and Wikipedia page here. (5’05”)
(See video here.)

 

(This video is also on Vimeo.)