ABC Music Humpday Videos - "Y" is for Y&T

Let's take a trip back to 1985!!!! It's Bay Area rock band Y&T's "Summertime Girls"!

This video, my friends, is a classic  textbook example of how cheesy and hilarious hard rock videos were in the 80's.

Let's see:

It was 1985, before rock band members felt the pressure to look "good" for MTV. Many rock bands that came out back then was pretty ugly (Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, etc). The band members were most definitely not very photogenic. In otherwords, fugly as fk. Case in point, the rather porcine drummer in the yellow shirt. C'mon dude, do you really think a leather bikini'd babe is really gonna want to hump on you? I'm so mean.

And oh my (insert diety of choice here) - somebody poke my eyes out with a red hot curling iron! Those guys were wearingcriinge inducing tiny ass shorts!!! Shudder! I mean, it was bad enough when George Michael wore them on the "Wake Me Up (Before You Go Go)" video, but he was at least a tiny bit attractive.  I think gay guys have a pass to wear those tiny Dove shorts because they can pull off that look! 

Don't get me started about the primitive lip syncing. 

The video was also reminiscent of David Lee Roth's "California Girls" video which came out roughly around the same time, but with more girls and less wierdos.

Other clues that will further interest future anthropolgists is the parade of stereotypical So Cal beauties through the skewed lense of the 1980's.

Big teased out hair on both the women AND the men. Check.
High waisted bikini bottoms. Check.
Half shirts. Check.
Muscle shirts. Check.
Roller skates? Check.
Giant boom box being carried while roller skating? Check and check!

Interesting things to note:
This video was filmed before the onslaught of ubiqutious plastic surgery in the late 90's to the present. Check out the chicks at the beach here. You can actually see their real tittays! No humongously and unnaturally round porn star size melons, but actual breasts in their natural shape. The boobage here is pretty real and in most cases, pretty normal. Once again, no oversized jugs like you seein every rockand rap video nowadays. Funny how standards of beauty change over the years.

I must admit, this is the ONLY song I know by Y&T. They've actually been around since 1974 and were originally named "Yesterday and Today", which is a pretty cool Beatles reference to their album of the same name (infamously known as the "Butcher" cover album, if you can find a copy somewhere!). I have to give them points for that.

The band survived disco, new wave, neo glam, and even grunge. They've reunited several times as well. Obviously, I didn't care enough to go to any of their concerts though. I just remember this catchy song during the summer of 1985. "Summertime Girls" was a huge hit that year, along with Dead or Alive's, "You Spin Me (Right Round)", Prince's "Raspberry Beret", and "Voices Carry" by Til Tuesday.

"Summertime Girls" was played out on KGB FM and KROQ. The video was on heavy rotation on MTV when they still played music videos instead of those crappy reality shows nowadays. This single came from their album, "Down for the Count". To listen to snippets of the songs, click here.

"Summertime Girls" got as high as #55 on the Billboard charts. The mid 80's was rife with hard rock and hair metal acts. Those were the golden years of melodic hard rock. Not quite as heavy as real metal, but not as soft like Journey or REO Speedwagon.

Adjust your high collared and layered Izod shirt, sit back on your rattan Papasan chair, press your itchy trigger finger on that can of Aqua Net, spray it round your carefully coiffed poodle perm, and chug that Bartles and Jaymes Seagrams Wine coolers straight outta the bottle! It's time to crank up this shit up to 11!!!!

One more letter in this Music Humpday Series to go! Then I'm gonna start all over again!

(Check this out for more hits from 1985!)