Music Video Hell #8: The Maine
Now that MTV has about as much to do with music as KFC has to do with Kentucky, the Internet has become our primary source for music videos. With the Internet, though, there is no filter. It’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. Well here, Adams and Eves, is the chaff. It’s your penance for a lifetime of sins: Music Video Hell.
Throughout rock ‘n’ roll history there have been bands named after places. You’ve got your Boston, your Kansas, your Asia. You know what you don’t see, though? Band names like The Boston, The Kansas or The Asia. Why? Because that would be pretty fucking presumptuous. Well, that’s where The Maine comes in. Not only does their band name flip the bird to our country’s 23rd state, it is made even more insulting by the fact that they are actually from Arizona. Arizona! I’m fairly certain there isn’t a state in the Union less like Maine than Arizona.
Oh, and also: they suck. Their music is the sort of turgid bullshit one finds while listening to ear-raping Clear Channel radio stations that have names like The Rock 105 FM or Modern Rock WKRM. It’s bland, corporate pop-punk that could only have been conceived in a board room by a bunch of old white guys asking themselves, “What do the young, hip kids like to ‘rock out’ to these days?” I guarantee that at least one of their songs will eventually be used during a training sequence in a feel-good movie about a destitute, paraplegic orphan with mild autism who overcomes the odds to become football’s greatest hero.
The protagonist of the provocatively-titled “Inside of You” is not paraplegic, but he certainly has other obstacles to overcome. For instance: he appears to be in some sort of pedophile Gomorrah, populated by a leering old man and a roving band of hedonistic fetishists. The video begins in black and white with the young boy weathering the inappropriate touching of the aforementioned old man while sitting on the front stoop of his house. He then wanders around a group of adults, desperate to tell them about the terrifying encounter he just had, but they are all either deaf to his pleas or eager to engage in inappropriate touching of their own. Yearning for escape, he gazes out his window through a kaleidoscopic spyglass made out of a couple toilet paper rolls (such is his poverty), hoping to find a better place. Instead, he witnesses a wild orgy orchestrated by the members of The Maine dressed like escapees from Stanley Kubrick’s nightmares.
The lead singer, John O’Callaghan, sings “I can’t get inside of you,” and in the context of what’s going on in the video, it comes off like the desperate plea of a drunken pederast. Well, I assume the drunkenness on account of his Irish surname. He does this while dressed in an outfit that looks like something the Mad Hatter would have worn had he gone to an all-boys Catholic school as a child. This is not a man I would let my own child anywhere near, but some parents do awful things to advance their child’s acting career.
At the end of the video, the toilet paper roll kaleidoscope breaks and the young boy is heartbroken. Now that he has seen the lascivious pleasures that await him in adulthood, how can he return to the hum-drum world of his current existence? There is a glimmer of hope, though, when some of the evil magic held captive by this device escapes, and the boy is confronted with a now-colorized girl offering him… what is that, a scrotum? Upon first viewing I thought it was an apple, like some sort of Adam and Eve shit. Now I don’t know what it is. And really, that sums up this video as a whole: I don’t know what it is, but it vaguely resembles a scrotum.
Like this post? Bookmark it!
Email to a friend
Your message has been sent!
Please enter a valid email.
Your email failed. Try again later.
Related Posts
Most Popular
About the Author
Jeremy Clymer lives in Michigan with his wife and kid. He shoots his writings out into the ethers of the Internet in the hopes that someone will pick up on his transmissions and shower him with money and/or praise.Email this Author | All posts by Jeremy Clymer
I have no defense for their music, but I’m guessing their name is a reference to the ship that was sunk by an on-board explosion (some gunpowder inside was ignited by some heat source or another), and whose sinking was blamed at the time on the Spanish and used as justification for the Spanish-American war. The papers of William Randolph Hearst originated the buzzphrase “Remember The Maine!” to manipulate the public into forcing the government to take action against Spain.
Actually, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia: “The band’s name originates from a song called ‘The Coast of Maine’, by another band called “Ivory”.” So I think you’re overestimating their knowledge of history a bit much there.