How about another blog entry on Streetheart? The last one was my idea of the ultimate set list. This one will be much more creative: What if Streetheart had done a music video for their song "Snow White," off their fifth album, the self-titled Streetheart album? What would it look like?
First, some background information and housekeeping. Okay. That album came out in 1982. MTV started in 1981. I don't believe there are any music videos for any songs on this album. Why? I believe it's because this album was released only in Canada, and MTV did not air in Canada. Canada did not yet have Muchmusic, which started in 1984. So there was no place to air videos. I can't remember if the CBC was airing Good Rockin' Tonight in 1982, but if they were, that's just one show, so to air a Streetheart video once and be done with it wouldn't have been worth it to produce a video just for that.
When you look at what the '80s became with music videos, partying, and hair metal, the song "Snow White" would be a natural for a music video, with lyrics about a high-school girl who everyone thinks is "peaches and cream" but who sneaks out of her room and goes "out the window and down the ladder" to go out and party late at night after her parents think she's gone to bed.
So here's my fantasy about what this music video could/would look like:
As with a lot of videos, before the music starts, you see the girl in bed with the covers on her. Her mother has put her to bed, and as the mother talks to her about family issues as she looks at things or cleans up things in the room, not really looking at her daughter, the girl rolls her eyes. One of the things in the room we see could be a photo of the girl wearing her school uniform standing beside her mother, to go with the line in the song, "School uniform, looks so charming." The mother looks at her, wishes her a good night's sleep, and leaves the room. The mother doesn't question her daughter as to why the girl is wearing full makeup and red lipstick.
Now the song starts. The girl smiles and pulls back the covers. She's wearing a black sequined minidress and black stiletto heels. She opens the window and climbs down a tree to her waiting girlfriends friends in a cab. They head to a club.
Now, when they arrive at the club, this next scene recreates what I actually saw once at Fridays, the club that used to be at the Travelodge in St. Vital here in Winnipeg, that is now Doubles Fun Club, coincidentally right around the time this album was released. I waited in line the longest I have ever waited in a nightclub lineup - two hours. During that two hours, two girls pushed through the lineup, the one girl, who, by the way, I have been picturing in my mind as the girl in the video this whole time while writing all this, who looked with her hairstyle and face like a cross between Disney's Snow White and Sarah Hyland, jumped up and wrapped her legs around one of the bouncers and kissed him on the cheek, and the bouncer let her and her friend in the club without waiting in line or paying cover. I remember seeing her dancing with a big grin on her face when I finally got in. I was thinking, "Who are these girls?" So why not do that in the video? If you're watching this on TV or on You Tube and you're not one of the people actually in line, you enjoy watching the underdog triumph. Especially when the underdog is normally smothered and overwhelmed in a world of parents and teachers.
So now the girls are dancing with guys they know at the club. And lo and behold, behind them on the dance floor, on the stage, are Streetheart playing the song. I hope there is the right archival footage that can be used for this. Maybe AI can help. It would be cool if we could see the girl wave "hi" or give a look, then we see Kenny Shields on stage wave back, or return a look. Then we see Jeff Neill and Spider beside each other giving the girl a thumbs-up and a look as they're playing their guitars and basses.
Now, because they're in a club and not at school, and because things are so politically correct nowadays, this video would have to completely ignore the second verse about the "special classes" a teacher is giving Snow White after school that includes the line, "I bet I know who's teaching who." But I think everything I am describing, both before and after this paragraph, will take up the time of the second verse just fine.
Okay, so now it hits the girl the amount of time they've spent in the club. She has a "yikes" look on her face and looks at her watch and is horrified. She runs out of the club by herself and looks around. There's a cab! She gets in. The cab races to her home. She gets out, runs up the tree (yes, with her stilettos still on - eat your heart out, Mariah Carey), climbs in the window, and gets in bed just in time. Her mother walks into the room as she pretends to sleep. Her mother has a contented look on her face. She begins to leave, and says, as she looks at her watch, "Sweetheart, you better be getting up for school soon." As she finishes saying that, she sees the girl's foot with the black high heel her daughter's wearing sticking out the end of the bed. She looks horrified and looks at her daughter's face. Her daughter is fast asleep and the sleep has gotten more intense. She calls out her daughter's name repeatedly, and her daughter doesn't hear her, that's how badly she needs sleep now. And that's how the video ends!
What is the girl's name the mother calls her at the end? I don't know, but in addition to the girl from Fridays I saw above, who I didn't know, so I didn't know her name, there was a girl I worked with at McDonald's on St. Anne's Road in the early '80s who, with her girlfriend, did this exact kind of stuff described in "Snow White." Her name was Debbie, but that name sounds old-fashioned today, unfortunately. Debbie was estranged from her parents and lived with her girlfriend in the Southdale suburb of Winnipeg. Debbie had hair kind of like Disney's Snow White, too, at one point. And Debbie and her friend, Andrea, used to sneak out of the house to go partying, too. Not sure if they went out the window. I think they were underage. But the whole "Snow White" scenario could still work if the girl(s) are 18 (and presumably in grade 12) and can legally drink and go to clubs in Manitoba, because of the parents' "my house, my rules" thing. But people could get into bars while underage a lot easier in the early '80s than today. My first time in a bar was when I was 16. Alas, I didn't become legal until after high school was over. My birthday is in July.
So both that girl from Fridays and Debbie make me think of "Snow White" by Streetheart, and both inspired me to write this. Another Streetheart song has the lyric, "Wonder where she'll be in five years." I wonder where both girls are now.
