More often than not, the best music videos are made for incredibly bad songs.

The reason is quite simple: Artists traditionally make their biggest impact with their first few singles, at a time when the record company isn’t prepared to spend wads of cash on a promo clip that might never be seen. Consequently, a breakthrough video is often a poorly-shot, grainy performance of a band styled by their aunt who works on the Debenhams make-up counter.

A couple of years later the video budget skyrockets at roughly the same time as the band’s music leaves orbit and crashes back to earth. Hence: amazing videos for songs you wouldn’t play to prisoners in Guantanamo.

Luckily, however, some bands manage to strike gold on their second or third album, and get a big-name director for a stunning single – which is exactly what happened to Jamiroquai with Virtual Insanity.

It’s directed by Jonathan Glazer, who was also responsible for the Guinness surfer adverts and nearly drowning Thom Yorke in the video for No Surprises. The concept is amazingly simple – Jay Kay dances in a mental asylum.

The clever part is how it’s filmed. There is one, locked-off, camera attached to a couple of walls and a ceiling which are suspended slightly above the floor. The “set” is then swung around on a set of castors while Jay Kay stands inside it – giving the impression he’s floating across the floor. It’s one of the most visually arresting things you’ll ever see.

The whole thing looks like one continuous shot, but every so often the camera pans up or down to the roof of the floor — if you look carefully, you’ll see a cut when that happens (often the set has changed when the camera swings back into position).

According to wikipedia – so it may not be true – the couches that form part of the set are hooked to the walls so they will move along with the “room”, detaching themselves when Jay Kay presses on them.

The singer likens his performance to “Fred Astaire on acid,” which isn’t a bad description at all. It certainly cuaght the attention of the public, who sent the song to number 3, and the industry, who awarded the video four MTV awards in 1997.

By the way, keep your eye Look out for a ‘blooper’ towards the end. Blood that was previously dripping from the wall suddenly gushes out as though they’ve just accidentally severed a very important artery. It’s probably just someone squeezing too hard on the ketchup bottle, though.

It’s all got a bit self-absorbed around here over the last couple of days, hasn’t it? Blah, blah, Top of the Pops, blah, blah, I wrote some music, blah, blah, voice-over work, blah.

In atonement for all that narcisissm, here is a round-up of some of the gossipy webwrongs and salacious stories from the past week.

Guess where I ended up tonight?

In Studio Three of BBC Television Centre, trying to muscle my way into shot on the final ever Top of the Pops!!

To be honest, it was a bit of an anti-climax. There were no bands, only video clips, and an array of aging TOTP presenters.

Surely they could have managed to book someone on the show – if not Robbie or Madonna, I’m sure Chico would have done it.

In the end, though, it was quite a nostalgic night. The staff were very emotional (although speculating that they’d be back within two years) and the presenters seemed genuinely fond of the show they were saying goodbye to.

“Maybe we should just say ‘See you next week’,” laughed Mike Read as they prepared to read out the closing link.

If only they could…

The Scissor Sisters are back, back, BACK!!! And any qualms that the high priests of campery had been hiding away for so long because their new material was rubbish can be instantly dismissed on one listen to their new single.

I Don’t Feel Like Dancing is exactly what you’d expect. Falsetto vocals direct from the heart of the 1970s, a massive singalong chorus, and a liberal sprinkling of those disco drums they used to have on Pigeon Street.

But what do I know? Let’s see what everyone else has to say:

Club Kingsnake: “The Scissor Sisters’ homage to really terrible bad dance music of the 70s, is the most fucking gloriously badly good song ever.”

Popjustice: You cannot go wrong with disco laser zapping noises.”

Triflin’: WHY DID THE SCISSOR SISTERS HAVE TO GO THE BEEGEES ROUTE?? im really upset” (It would appear Triflin’s author is so upset by the song he has forgotten how to operate the shift key correctly)

Some Russian guy on Livejournal: Scissor Sisters жгут! О, Jake Shears – просто голубая мечта какая-то;)
отличный сингл I don’t feel like dancing – очень хочется крикнуть Everybody report to the dance floor. NOW!!!!

Dial The Operator: “[It] fits with the Sisters signature style as snug as Jake Shears’ jockstrap”

Zeon Music: “Warning: This song’s quite queer”

Well, that just about sums it up. As the song is barely a “secret” any more, I should point out that you can download a high-quality MP3 of it here for evaluation purposes, etc, etc.

PS: Many apologies to Back To The Cereal Box and its author, Drew Mackie, who I completely misquoted in my original post. He loves the Scissor Sisters, and who am I to disagree?

Sometimes, in the course of my day job, I get asked to provide voice-overs. Nothing you’re likely to have heard, mind you, just the occasional programme trail or narration for a news pacakge.

Today, I was asked to pop into the recording studio for a piece on the BBC ‘s website. I dutifully obliged, recording two lines of translated dialogue for a piece from Japan.

At the time, I didn’t pay much attention to the script. My lines were quite simple: “It’s really fun – both the way it looks and the way it smells. It’s the first time I’ve bathed in curry and my daughter loves it.”

Hang on just a cotton-picking minute, there… Bathing in curry?! My daughter loves it? Had I really considered what I was lending my voice to as I sat in the recording booth?

Looking at the video now [click here] it feels like I’ve been sucked into a disappointingly nudity-free edition of Eurotrash.

Perhaps in the future I’ll exercise a little more caution over the jobs I accept. Unless there’s payment involved, in which case I’ll dress up like a monkey and pretend to be the second coming of Jesus. It’s not like I have standards.

The BBC has very quietly started offering vodcasts of their news programmes. It sounds amazingly futuristic and high-tech, but all it really means is that you can download videos of the news to your PC / iPod or PSP. And, if you really like a particular programme, you can subscribe to it, and your computer will magically acquire new episodes as soon as they become available. How marvellous.

Normally, I wouldn’t give a monkeys about such a thing, but one of the first shows they’ve made available is Storyfix, which – for some unfathomable reason – I was asked to write the theme tune.

I’ve written about it previously here and here, so there’s no need to bang on about it any more. But do remember that any time you watch it, it improves my chances of making some money off the music, and that’s what keeps this blog alive!

That and the kit-kats.