6 ms·
For some reason, this mention of Starship's "We Built This City" led me down a hole of Internet research on my own personal Mandala Effect rabbit hole. I rememb
by iwanttocomment 2y ago
For some reason, this mention of Starship's "We Built This City" led me down a hole of Internet research on my own personal Mandala Effect rabbit hole. I remembered as a kid, the Residents - who I only knew at the time as a bunch of guys wearing eyeballs as their heads - being part of the video for "We Built This City". I later became a fan of the Residents, who hadn't mentioned this at all. No evidence of them appearing with Starship, including the video for "We Built this City". But I hadn't been able to shake this vision for decades. Did I imagine it?
Tonight, digging deeper, I found it! I found the source. In 1984, just a year before "We Built this City", Jefferson Starship (the progenitor of Starship, we won't mention the Airplane here) released a video for their ostensible hit single "Layin' it on the Line".
There they were! The Residents! In a terrible, terrible Jefferson Starship video! Sung by Grace Slick and, uh, that dude from Starship!
Strangely, I'll be able to sleep deeply tonight knowing that this mystery that was knawing at my soul for so many years has finally been solved.
- f1shy 2y agoYou mean Mandela effect, don't you? If not, the name Mandala is yet another Mandela effect. :D
- gcr 2y agoAnd “gnawing,” not “knawing”! :)
- dvh 2y agoIt was always mandala effect. The fractal like nature of mandala characterize the wispy tenuous nature of ones memory.
- bena 2y agoNo, it's named for Nelson Mandela. Because when he died people falsely thought they remembered him dying a couple of decades before. But they likely conflated his release from prison with his death.
- morganf 2y agoBena, the post you are responding to was joking. "It always was something different" - gaslighting - is the entire point of the Mandela Effect. And well done, GP: I laughed outloud!
- bena 2y agoWhile possible, it’s also entirely likely that he was mistaken. And it’s a reasonable mistake, so that’s why I provided the context of the origin and didn’t try to shame him for not knowing.
- hinkley 2y agoThe Mandala effect is forgetting that the effect is about Nelson Mandela not a Buddhist exercise in impermanence.
- tomcam 2y agoDamn son. That line is epic. Pretend I somehow gave you another dozen votes.
- richrichardsson 2y agoMandala effect a typo? It should be Mandela effect, but this is the 2nd time I've seen Mandala in its place.
- NobodyNada 2y agoAre you sure it's supposed to be "Mandela effect"?
- cholantesh 2y agoYes; it is named for the mistaken belief that Mandela died in prison during the 80s.
- jdenning 2y agoWhoosh :)
- dankwizard 2y agoBut he did? Or didn't he?
- solumunus 2y agoNope. Ironically that’s something people misremember about the origin of the Mandala effect, which existed long before Nelson Mandela died.
- nuancebydefault 2y agoLike aluminum and flavor. My spellchecker does not agree even if I write those words correctly.
- shiroiushi 2y agoYou have your spellchecker set wrong: you need to set it to US English, not UK English.
- 2y ago
- thrtythreeforty 2y agoYou can't tell the story and then not link the video!
- jmknoll 2y agoWith a promotion like "terrible, terrible Jefferson Starship video," I needed to go watch it. That really was just a completely incoherent mess. But the guys with eyeballs on their heads were there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqLnVgR7fLw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqLnVgR7fLw
- pavel_lishin 2y agoEvery once in awhile I see an 80s video or movie, and remember: yeah, wow, people really did have giant hair back then.
- ethbr1 2y agoIt's not giant when everyone is doing it: it's just normal. And what do you have against letting your soul glo? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=961x0NmyHKE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=961x0NmyHKE
- nuancebydefault 2y agoI find Lionel Richie a phenomenon. The hair and moustache look weird now, but his songs stand the test of time.
- ethbr1 2y ago+1, but then my copy of Rick James' Street Songs has grooves cut into it, so what do I know of music?
- defrost 2y ago“Lionel Richie's Hello is the Battleship Potemkin of rock music videos...” ~ Humphrey B. Flaubert, TISM, If You're Not Famous at Fourteen, You're Finished - De RigueurMortis (2001)
- kentbrew 2y agoRichie closing out the 1984 Olympics was most excellent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zj7C3GRj7s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zj7C3GRj7s Somewhere in here you can hear Jim McKay explaining the difference between "poppers" and "break dancers" and it is just awesome.
- ethbr1 2y agoSign of our times -- starship more popular than airplane
- euroderf 2y agoBalin had that whiney edge that was in style (and probably always is).
- Synaesthesia 2y ago>"Layin' it on the Line" Damn that song is great! Seems to have an anti-war message too.
- burningChrome 2y agoI remember having my own rabbit hole with the Residents band. In junior high I used to stay up late and watch Letterman. He used to have Chris Elliot the comedian on doing various bits. He had one that imitated the Residents where Chris and several other people dressed up in weird outfits called something like "Maumoshcantz" or something French sounding. Chris' costume had a big black box with three toilet rolls for the face on it and played bizarre, "avant-garde" music. When they finished, Chris came over to sit with Dave. Dave tried to announce the name of the band and Chris scolded him by over pronouncing the name. Then Dave asked what part Chris played and he exclaimed, "I played the guy with toilet rolls on his head Dave! Shesssh!" I recounted the bit to a friend and he instantly said the whole bit was a tilt of the cap to the band The Residents and it poked fun at their outfits and members on purpose. This lead me, pre-internet to start digging around to find out what I could about the band. A few weeks later there was some MTV News story about a musician who died that apparently was one of the members. They made light of the fact nobody knew this since the band had purposefully concealed their identities so they could rotate out people as necessary and then say they just wanted people to focus on the music instead. Strangely enough, there was a similar story making the rounds on the internet about something similar that Slipknot was doing and Corey Taylor even used the same reason they wear masks - so fans can focus more in the music! This of course, brought back memories in my own research that eventually concluded with an older brother of a friend who was into really weird stuff and gave me a somewhat sordid history of the The Residents, and some the eerie connections to their management team Cryptic Corporation. He even pulled out several albums saying there's a possibility The Beatles WERE the Residents and showed me the two albums "Meet the Residents" and "Meet the Beatles" album as proof. Keep in mind, I was like 10, my buddies brother was like 16; so imagine how that conversation went down. Anyways, thanks for bringing this up, it was really fun remembering my own rabbit hole with that band. Which interestingly enough, started with a David Letterman bit and ended with similar rumors swirling around Slipknot.
- dfan 2y agoThe Letterman bit must have been parodying Mummenschanz, an avant-garde Swiss theater group that was pretty popular (as those things go) at the time. They do feel a bit in the same corner of the arts universe as the Residents...
- relwin 2y agoThe Residents for Presidents!
- tetris11 2y agoThe Residents' Hello Skinny lives perpetually in my head, refusing to pay rent and is somehow immune to eviction notices