Retro Video Unit (2/7/14)

Yesterday turned out to be a busier day than I'd expected, so I wasn't home for much of it and ended up forgetting it was the day for this feature...

Let's hang out in the '80s a while longer and check out a one-off song that holds up remarkably well, "Pump Up The Volume" by M/A/R/R/S. (Technically those are supposed to be vertical lines between the letters, but they didn't look right onscreen in this font.)



A studio collaboration between two obscure house music acts, "Pump" became a hit on alternative radio stations like WFNX that otherwise didn't feature this type of music. The song was almost entirely assembled from samples, and there are a ridiculous number of versions and remixes of it. I chose this one because it was described as the "official video" and because it was posted by the record label. As a video it uses what appears to be archival and stock footage to keep the emphasis on the music; nowadays we'd probably get shots of a guy with a laptop doing the mix.

(For more on this song, check out this article posted on The A.V. Club just a few days ago.)