Kano, “It’s a War” (from Kano, 1980)
This is my favorite music video clip in forever. And I don’t even mean that in a “ha ha old things are kitschy and weird” way, though this is admittedly kitschy and weird enough that justifying an appreciation of it on a musical basis takes greater rhetorical abilities than I am capable of at this time. Kano was the Italo-disco act that gave us the “Whoomp! There It Is” break, and since I like “I’m Ready” I dug up their self-titled 1980 LP to find out what else they were doing back then. So I heard “It’s a War” and the first thing I thought was “hey, the singer sounds weirdly reminiscent of circa-Plastic Beach Damon Albarn in this. I should find a clip of this song and post it and point out how strange that is.”
Then I found a TV performance of it and the strangeness aspect had to be completely reprioritized.
Here are my four favorite things about this clip:
1) the combination of gold lame suit & certain dance moves make the frontman look like a Bruce Lee Game of Death Robot
2) there are at least three moments where it looks like the dancers are all just going to smack each other upside the head by accident but don’t
3) the audience sits there stock still like kindergarten students at storytime, only to break into applause at what seem like the most non-sequitir times possible
4) the fact that the TV show is called “POPCORN”, therefore alluding simultaneously (though not necessarily by design) to both James Brown and Hot Butter
I do sincerely love this song though. Fuck Steve Dahl in hell for eternity for his attempts to deprive America of things like this.
