Death Valley '69 is a video for the Sonic Youth song of the same name. The song origionally appeared on the "Bad Moon Rising" album from way back in 1985, at about the same time as Kern was making those Super 8 gross-out masterpieces starring the lovely "Lung Leg" - I swear I'm not making this up - who later graced the cover of the SY album "EVOL." There is a great gorey sequence in the DV '69 music video that looks like pieces of liver or stomach (or something...) plopted down in front of a very crudly "killed" Steve Shelley (SY's drummer at the time the video was shot). Kern's very distinctive Super 8 style (gittery, high contrast, EXTREMELY low budget, and super gross-out) that was - and I know this is hard to believe - really, really popular in the New York art scene in the eighties is captured here in it's full glory. Check out "Hardcore," a collection of Kern's mid-eighties Super 8 porno(?) movies. Anyway, it's a Sonic Youth music video that is collected on the "Screaming Fields of Sonic Love" music video compilation thingy. There you have it....
Sonic Youth Feat. Lydia Lunch: Death Valley 69
(1986 Music Video)
sonic youth + richard kern = good stuff
27 August 2001