Retro Video Unit (6/12/15)

I was originally thinking of going with a different video, but then this one popped up in the right column when I was browsing YouTube. Most people remember The Romantics from 1983's "Talking in Your Sleep," but four years earlier they'd released their first album, with the single "What I Like About You."



It's certainly not a deep song, but it's catchy and upbeat, which is often enough. I first saw this video long before MTV existed, on a late-night syndicated show that I've mentioned before: it was called Rock World, and it introduced me to many bands I might otherwise not have heard of at all, or at least not until much later.

Two things about this video and song are worth noting: the presence of a Rickenbacker guitar, probably the first one I saw in a music video, and the first one I'd seen anywhere since Tom Petty's on the cover of Damn the Torpedoes and John Lennon's in early Beatles footage (The Jam got played on Rock World a short time later, confirming the association between Rickenbackers and coolness); and the fact that the drummer sings the lead vocal on this song, something I'd never seen before. (Tangentially, I'd never seen guys wearing leather suits before either, but I was 16 when this came out and hadn't seen much of the world yet.)