BANNED VIDEO SPECIAL

A few videos from over the years that have been banned for one reason or another, some seem tame in todays point of view but in their time they were positively scandelous, more tomorrow.

Belouis Some - Imagination

Belouis Some (born Neville Keighley, 12 December 1959), is a British new wave musician. He had a few minor hits in the 1980s with "Some People", "Round and Round", (which appeared on the soundtrack album to the film Pretty in Pink), plus "Imagination", which reached #17 on the UK Singles Chart

After the video of this song was played on the Max Headroom Show, complaints to the ITCC brought about a serious change in viewing styles on UK television

Duran Duran - Girls on Film

The song fared well on the radio and the charts before the notoriously titillating video was filmed, but the controversy that ensued helped to keep the band in the public eye and the song on the charts for many weeks.

The video (featuring topless women mud wrestling and other not-very-stylised depictions of sexual fetishes) was made with directing duo Godley & Creme, and was filmed in August just two weeks after MTV was launched in the United States, before anyone knew what an impact the music channel would have on the industry. The band expected the "Girls On Film" video to be played in the newer nightclubs that had video screens, or on pay-TV channels like the Playboy Channel. The raunchy video created an uproar, and it was consequently banned by the BBC and heavily edited for MTV. The band unabashedly enjoyed and capitalized on the controversy.

A Video 45 with videos for "Girls on Film" and "Hungry Like the Wolf" was released in the United States in March, 1983 (The VHS-format tape contains MTV-friendly "day version" of "Girls on Film", while the Beta format contains the uncensored "night version"). The Video 45 won the Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video in 1984, the first year the Academy gave that award.

The uncensored video was also included in the Duran Duran video album (1983) and the Greatest video collection (released on VHS in 1999, and on DVD in 2004).

And have another version that should have been banned for other reasons

Soft Cell - Sex Dwarf

Not the actual video :( even YouToob won;t show it

Their first album, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, further explored the trademark Soft Cell themes of squalor and sleaze. "Seedy Films" talks of long nights in porno cinemas, while "Frustration" and "Secret Life" deal with the boredom and hypocrisy associated with suburban life. A companion video entitled Non-Stop Exotic Video Show was released alongside the album and featured videos directed by Tim Pope, who later found fame as director of music videos by The Cure. The video generated some controversy in Britain, mainly due to the scandal involved with the "Sex Dwarf" promotional film. The original version of the music video featured Almond and Ball in a bloody butcher shop surrounded by chainsaws, nude actors, and dwarves. However, the film was confiscated by police and censored before it was even released. As a tongue-in-cheek substitute, a re-filmed "Sex Dwarf" appeared in Non-Stop Exotic Video Show featuring Almond dressed in a tuxedo, directing a symphony orchestra of dwarves.

Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Relax

"Relax" was initially a fairly unregarded single on the fledgling ZTT label, troubling the lower reaches of the UK Top 50 throughout the latter end of 1983. However, it crucially proved to have somewhat unique staying power, never dropping more than a couple of chart places one week before leaping forward ten places the next. In the absence at this stage of any discernible marketing hyperbole, the record appeared to make its way entirely upon its own merits into the lower reaches of the Top Forty by January 1984.

At this point, several events seem to have conspired simultaneously to help propel "Relax" to notoriety:

* "Relax" was at number 35 in the first UK charts of 1984.
* On Thursday January 5, Frankie Goes To Hollywood performed "Relax" on the BBC flagship TV chart show, Top Of The Pops.
* By January 10, "Relax" had risen to number 6 in the UK singles chart.
* On Wednesday January 11 1984, it is believed that Radio 1 disc jockey Mike Read publicly expressed his distaste for both the record's suggestive sleeve (designed by Yvonne Gilbert) and its evocative lyrics as expressed thereon, and he immediately flexed his radio muscles in effecting a very public, albeit rather personal, ban on the single.

The record sleeve, of course, did advise:

"Relax, don't do it, when you want to suck it to it, Relax don't do it, when you want to come."

* Belatedly backing up their key - if somewhat easily flustered - breakfast DJ, BBC Radio had instigated a complete and utter corporation ban on the single a reported two days later (although certain prominent night-time BBC shows - including those of Kid Jensen and John Peel - would continue to play the record, as they saw fit, throughout 1984).[2]
* The now-banned "Relax" was number 2 behind "Pipes of Peace" in the charts by 17 January.
* "Relax" hit the number one spot on 24 January - during which time, the BBC Radio ban had extended to Top of the Pops as well, which was reduced to showing a still picture of the group during their climactic Number One announcement, before airing a performance by a distinctly non-Number One artiste.

This went on for the five weeks that "Relax" was at number one. The single remained on the charts for a record consecutive forty-two weeks. It would rise up from a declining chart position to number two during the UK summer of 1984 whilst Frankie's follow-up single "Two Tribes" held the UK number one spot.

The ban became an embarrassment for the BBC, especially given that UK commercial radio stations were still playing the song. Later in 1984 the ban was lifted and "Relax" featured on both the Christmas Day edition of Top of the Pops and Radio 1's rundown of the best-selling singles of the year.

Add N to (X) - Plug Me In

Add N to (X) were a three-piece British band specializing in electronic music performed on analogue synthesizers, formed in London in 1994.

The band's members were Barry Smith, Ann Shenton and Steven Claydon.

After several releases on small labels, they turned down offers from major labels and signed to large independent label Mute Records in 1998, and achieved a modest commercial success before splitting in 2003.

Robbie Williams - Rock DJ

The video's ending (beginning with Williams taking off his skin) was cut by most music channels around Europe, including VIVA, MCM and MTV. VH1 Europe decided to use its own video for the song, created from recording studio footage. An example of a TV station that still plays the full video is Bulgarian channel

ADVERT BREAK