[Captions are AI generated] It's been three years. We've been doing this for three years and we just don't.
Fuck off. It hasn't been three years, has it?
It has been three years. Our first recording was late 2019.
Was it?
It was before Covid.
Before Covid. I want that to be noted. We weren't a Covid podcast.
Yes.
I thought we were.
No.
That's what I remember.
We can't accidentally wear because we released it during Covid.
Yeah, because it took us months.
Ahead of the curve.
It's a joke that probably doesn't age.
We're back!
Yeah!
Hello world!
This is Country Wind, we've gone too far.
A podcast where Scotsman, an Irishman and a Bulgarian discuss the C-list, the worst
and most memorable music videos.
And today we're returning after our small hiatus with a figurative and a literal squirrel-induced
bang this is the 2002 summer banger move your feet by the danish pop duo junior
senior not sure how i feel about uh literal squirrel-induced bang is that is
that is that what the kids are saying these days
this is what we said when we were kids did you probably i don't know it's a
squirrel it finishes with a bang that's induced by a squirrel oh yeah it
actually does doesn't it
It's probably impossible to have missed this video if you owned a TV and were somewhat
sentient back in 2002, but equally so, the song disappeared from the consciousness as
quickly as it appeared a few months in, but yet the faint memory of the video lived on
enough for us to want to talk about it in detail today in 2023. The video was directed
by British art collective Shinola who are the masterminds behind a whole lot of great
visual things like your favourite Radiohead and Coldplay videos, as well as some fantastic
movie title sequences. Basically, for once in this podcast, the low res quality of the
video is on purpose and not pay-ex.
What is the video itself about though? Well, I'm glad that you asked because we, as usual,
struggling with this one. So there are two guys and a crazy squirrel who loves
causing mayhem at a peanut. But the two guys are inside the peanut. Oh yeah here
we go. No you should do it. Oh yeah like the song. Oh yeah! Nailed it. It's always good when we get
Neil to do musical performances in this. I specifically have this in mind. I am very musically minded. I have a
Spotify account and I listen once a day. It's a single song.
Yeah.
I imagine some people don't watch the videos before the book. Like watch this one because
we can't really describe what's going on. It's just chaos. I don't think I ever really
appreciate how good a song is. It's just like pure joy wrapped in a fucking blanket of pixel
art.
on like on regular circulation on my Spotify, like just the go to generic album I have,
I haven't seen, I haven't watched the video in a while. I never appreciated how good the
video is done and like animated and how well it flows, which is yeah, it's surprising for
pixel art.
Because of the style of the video it's kind of timeless anyway, so it doesn't really get
old. You know, that style of art, that the way it's presented, it doesn't really matter
if you watch it in 2001 or 2023.
It looks as good as it did.
Because it isn't like a filmed video.
It's probably always going to be like that.
It's always going to be just cool.
Because it's really well done pixel art.
Obviously, it's simple, but everything's smooth,
and it flows, and all the art, even though it's obviously
made out of little blocks, is just really charming, I think.
Did you ever see the Amiga or Mega Drive demo things
that people would do?
they basically do like pixel art videos to kind of show off
like how much sort of power they could get out of like an Amiga or Omega drive or whatever.
And it kind of reminds me of that.
And I've done a little bit of diving into it.
So they, the, the, Shanoa use a program called Deluxe Paint,
which was released in 1985.
And it was basically a bitmap graphics editing software tool.
It was published by EA.
So one of their early bits of software.
And I think that's really, to me it's quite interesting
Because they used a tool which, you know, the performers in the, you know, you know,
in the band weren't even born yet.
But yet this video was created with something that is almost twice their age.
And you could probably use it today still to make exactly the same style of video, which
I think is pretty cool.
Yeah, there's a lot a lot of that kind of stuff, like people who make games for older
consoles and people who make chiptunes and stuff.
I remember I can't remember who it was, but I saw a guy, a gig once where the guy, the
boy was like some special cartridge in it and he was using it to make like chiptunes
and stuff like that. They say art thrives on restrictions and stuff like that and what
better way to restrict yourself than using a fucking 30 old piece of software. Probably
more than 30 actually.
But in this video it's like it's kind of perfect. You can make it high res. You can even make
it more pixel like you get pixel art but you know more modern pixel art like whatever the
style of modern-day pixel games would be but it just won't feel the same there's no need
for this should we very briefly just actually talk about what the video is hopefully all
of you have actually seen the video so I remember it but just a very very quick rundown of what
happens.
So as you were saying there was a squirrel and there's two guys trapped inside a peanut
and then squirrel tries to break the peanut and there's a horse jumping over some buses
So we've got a more coherent way of describing this than that.
Any of you watch Adventure Time?
Yeah.
I did, yeah.
I think this is the idea that conceptualized Adventure Time.
I don't know, I watched it and I was like, that's all I can see.
It's just that same ridiculous madness, which doesn't have to make any sense, but you just
keep watching the little journey kind of, you know, take place.
That's a fantastic way to put it, honestly.
There is a description which is a completely different video, which I'm not going to mention
here now, but it was described by the artist as a Dave mayhem, and I kind of feel like
this is perfect for it as well.
It's just mayhem, just things happening.
You have a squirrel who's trying to clearly cause pain to the band.
Quite physical and literal pain.
And also this squirrel drinks.
He kills a bird at one point, he blows up a guy's cigar.
Blows up the whole world at the end.
Everyone in this video is like happy and dancing and having fun apart from this fucking squirrel who just wants to ruin everyone's day
Not squirrels having great fun. Yeah, he's having fun in his own way I suppose
He's being a dick though. You're being a dick squirrel
Speaking of dicks. Oh boy all the new innuents which I didn't realize
When I was a child
The one where there's some very white fluid going into glass
Champagne glass. It's champagne. Actually, I was like that happened. I was like, nope. No, no, it's not an innuent
and then the glass winks at you and I'm like oh yeah.
Oh yeah the glass has got a face by the way.
Yeah it's important not to mention that everything is anthropomorphized.
Is that the word?
Yeah yeah.
Thanks.
Yeah I'm for anthropomorphized.
Hard to say about that.
Everything has faces, smiles, it's a bit disturbing occasionally.
Yeah, the champagne but also the scene of the hot dog when you have the both guys doing
the hot dog squirt on the hot dog.
Lot of fluids. I've got the video playing in the background and I just saw the toast
is quite near the start. There's a couple of slices of toast with faces sort of jumping
up and down rhythmically from the toaster. This isn't an innuendo. I just thought it
was cool. I think that was the moment where I was like, yes, this video has got me.
It generally feels like with time still, like someone in the zenith of happiness in the
year 2002. Well, actually it was post 9/11, but it was the deep end afterwards. So don't
know if all the wars had started yet. So everyone was still kind of like, oh, it's early 2000s.
The pre the world going to shit, joy potentially there. Although I'm sure it was shit in different
ways.
That was pretty... all the crashes and everything.
And I don't know, there was a lot of innocence in early 2000s,
which I don't think we quite appreciated because we are ourselves were children.
Speaking of innocence, I can give you some popular events which happened in 2002.
Oh, God.
Which you might remember.
Oh, God.
It was a year of the World Cup in South Korea.
For you football fans out there, definitely not me, but there you go.
The Euro.
The Euro, just the Euro.
Became the official currency.
You showed up.
Had a face.
Ireland moved away from the beloved Punt.
That's right, I didn't say cunt, I said punt.
To the Europe.
The Queen Mother died, for those who are into that.
What else happened?
That's pretty much anything worth tornadoes.
Tornadoes, oh, they killed quite a few people
Pennsylvania and Louisiana. Oh, that's a shame.
I'm sorry for laughing. Everyone from Pennsylvania and Louisiana.
Another gym chat. Oh, that's it. Now that I've got to the end of my list, everything
else is rather dull. Very important, but rather dull. So you've heard the facts. Speaking
of numbers, I don't understand how this song didn't get a number one.
I agree with you. It's got "this should be number one" in the charts in the UK, at least.
I don't know about other countries, but it's like, "this should be number one" written
all over it and I'm surprised. What was number one? I can look that now. It better be some
fucking good. Yeah, better be really fucking good or else I'm gonna be pissed. Oh boy,
you will be, well no actually, oh there's also Bankers that year actually. Girls Aloud,
Sun of the Underground. Oh yeah, that's a pretty good song. Blue featuring Elton John,
so it seems to be the hardest word, which is not a good song but you know two big British
names at the time, more important John forever. Eminem lose himself, you can't really. Okay
so they had stiff competition. I'm not finished Christina Aguilera. No f**k. Yeah. My namesake
nearly featuring Kelly Rowland. You did a great job on that song, well done. Last ketchup,
the ketchup song. Holy s**t, I forgot about the ketchup song. Pink, Tommy Kitten, Sugar
babes is a lot of time I think it was probably very good to fight against it yeah that feels
like all the like the big pop artists all at once from that decade three yeah three
is respectable concerning yeah what are they one hit wonder I don't I don't remember any
of the other songs I think it probably would be yeah I think they were I'm gonna download
this album though because it's piqued my interest but I don't remember anything else so breaking
out like this one.
I've only had two studio albums over the space of like three years so yeah I don't think
they've done too much after that.
Although let's be honest, this song came out and like if it was released now and it was
put in like in Eurovision it will probably be in other tunes.
Denmark next year, junior, senior, although it kind of might just be senior, sort of senior
at this point.
But, yeah Denmark, get it done. Get them back. For Eurovision, you'll smash it.
Yeah.
When Junior Senior walked, so whoever the fuck was who on Eurovision, no sorry, the
British guy who was Eurovision last year could fly in the sky. His vision. Sorry!
Sorry that just amused me greatly.
First his song was about Spaceman or something.
Was he named Spaceman?
What on earth?
Something Space?
Yeah I'm sorry I'm in the minority, I really hate that song.
But it's very similar, the video if you remember correctly was still like grow, lower is poly,
pixel, something video.
I didn't see it, do you mind?
I did.
I'm really bad for not watching Eurovision, I'm a terrible European.
How do you?
Maybe next year.
It seems like every time I hear about people watching your version they're having a lot
of fun so I think I might jump on the bandwagon.
Oh no, your version is like, it's really dumb but that's its appeal.
And I think Graham Norton, in the UK at least, he narrates it in the UK.
He is quite shit.
He doesn't give a fuck.
He just, you know, he'll throw the shadies to Shane's.
He takes the piss in the most beautiful way to be honest.
[Music]
Pixel Art, are you fans of Pixel Art in general?
I kind of feel like at this point, Pixel Art has been overdone.
Especially in games, because it's so much cheaper and easier to animate.
It's not necessarily battling, but it is getting boring.
There's so many indie games that are just pixel art and a lot of them are really good
but also a lot of them are just well just cheapo like mobile games and it's like...
They need to be really good at it and not just rely on the cheap aspects of it to make
it look not generic.
Although when they put their real faces into it, it was quite interesting, like halfway
through the video they take off the pixel art mask and their like actual faces around.
It's still pixel art spaces though.
It's like pixel-lived photos I guess, is it?
Or would they have actually drawn it?
It's really low res, dithered style image.
I think it would have been like 16 colours.
That's why it looks so sketchy, but that's why it looks the way it is.
But that's a quirk of the software.
It wouldn't, well it would have maybe been able to do like a real photo, but it still
would have looked really different because it can only do so many colours.
It's like like open opening a picture on like a nineties web.
Yeah.
Pretty much.
Yeah.
But I think if I was to have a complaint and this is literally my only complaint with video
is that that their faces are kind of disturbing, but that's purely subjective to me.
I don't know why that's looking at it.
Going to when you watch the video for a second to the beginning and obviously because there's
the part is called junior senior might kind of thing to dare in our father and son.
I did wonder that.
Yeah, not actually because some of the questionable scenes become even more questionable there.
Let's not go into incest as a context, a concept.
Basically the younger, when you see him in real life he just looks like a twin, literally.
So he's animated almost as a child, so it's like when you actually see the pixelated face
doing air quotes like pixelated version of his face he kind of just say okay so he just
a young man. Peanut Dimension. What do you mean by that?
That was me. It's just purely because the thing opens with the evil squirrel with his
hammer bashing a peanut and then it zooms into the peanut and Junior Senior are inside
the peanut dancing. My question is does this entire video take place inside the peanut?
And then when the world explodes is that just him breaking the peanut?
You can take the, you can take the shelled peanuts, you can take the unshelled peanuts.
The list is all, nearly literally got a pair of sunglasses and put them on to say that.
And I did the Morpheus.
Yeah, that's Morpheus impression.
It was good.
I'll take the unshelled peanut.
Which one's the one that takes you to the real world?
Yes.
Because I'm sick of this one.
That'll be the salted peanut.
Chocolate covered peanut.
That's all I really had for peanut dimension.
Oh, I have a peanut related question.
What's your views on Snickers bars?
I'm a fan. I used to for the listeners who don't know.
So Dave's obviously from Scotland.
Nelly lived in Scotland for a while.
I've either of you had a battered peanut or Snickers bars bar.
So I'm just picturing a single battered peanut.
Not a Snickers. I have had once I've had a deep fried Mars bar.
it's a stereotype but I did try it once because I had to try it and it was it was so wrong
it's alright is how I describe it.
I had a Snickers bar.
Deep fried Snickers bar.
And how was that?
I don't remember because I was very drunk in my first week in Glasgow back in 2009.
The first week oh my god you fucking didn't mess around.
You were drunk and eating a deep fried Mars bar.
So it was like, you knew people and they were like, "Yeah, let's strike, that's the thing
it's called."
And I was like, "Is it?
Okay, sure."
Who thought of this?
There is a robot doing the robot while singing the song.
Is robot doing the robot cheating if you're doing the robot competition?
Humans technically probably invented the robot because they were making fun of robots.
Because if robots invented the robot, then us doing the robot would be cultural appropriation.
Oh geez, that's a deep topic there Dave, let's not touch any further than that.
But I don't think we actually invented the robot, I think we did, but maybe that's what
we're making. This is going to become a much bigger issue when AI becomes sentient and
shit because the robots are going to be like "fuck you".
We remember the videos.
It's not how we move, we have human-like limbs now, you bastards. That's my answer to that
question.
saying it will be plain field, eco-field? So robots have like metal joints and shit
so I guess like they would only really move like that so maybe they do have a
better of an advantage because like they're pre-dispositioned to move like a
robot. So do we go down the route of when we say robots do you mean like as you
said like specifically robots made of like metal or do we go down the route of
androids as well? I'd say robots made of metal because this particular robot is like a
classic like robot with a square head. Mr. Robot of something. Although I just
scroll to the back and there's a bit where his limbs kind of fly sideways and do a full
360 degree spin and even for a robot that's fucking impressive. So I think I'm going to
give it to him. It's fast. Yeah, but then he gets destroyed by the squirrel who kind
of gives me the ground root of is that squirrel actually just trying to get squirreled. I
know, but like maybe the squirrel just wants to buy me six. I like squirrel. Some squirrels
just while watch the world burn. Next question on Nellie's list was the best way to drink
a squirrel or what drink would be the best drink to drink a squirrel. The context is
that after the squirrel, the squirrel in the video tries to destroy things. Does short
of some drink which is implied might be champagne, which is a bit of a shitty thing to do shots
on, but you know, short of alcohol and squirrels. So maybe talk about it. This is like a fucking
gangster squirrel he's like he's like in the club drinking champagne spraying it everywhere
so what would be your uh short drink of choice then aftershock i just i just i'd forgotten
about aftershock until you ask that question so dragon soup i mean it definitely gets me
drunk and i'm bigger than a squirrel so i imagine it'd be fine i can probably deal with
it for a shot of sambuca if i've had plenty to eat before that and i don't drink absolutely
anything else. The squirrel is tiny. I mean he has what four or five shots of champagne
in that shot. Yeah. Lots of shots in that sentence. And after, yeah he's pissed at the
end of that because he sees the champagne bottle in the glass and now got faces on her
dancing. So maybe this whole video is just this squirrel's like bender. Maybe. He's just
been out of his tits for days and now he can see his faces on things dancing. Maybe the
squirrel who accidentally came across some campers who were having acid in the forest
and accidentally took their acid.
It's basically cocaine bear but with a squirrel.
Well, points.
It's kind of just getting towards the end of winter here as we're recording and it feels
like this song has just like transitioned me into somewhere just from listening to it
this morning so I think so which is quite impressive. My favorite points is "Don't
Stop the Beat" and "Arm Appears Out of Nowhere and Stops the Record" that was quite good
and the worst part was the real pixel art faces are a little bit disturbing that's
my only mild complaint especially when he's getting the massages.
Oh yeah that's actually right it helps to convey the emotions of pain.
I think this is one of these songs you know, but I personally don't remember when I first heard it,
but it definitely sticks with you. I'm going to be totally honest, and I'm going to quote
the Sunday, the San Francisco Sunday Chronicle. As they said, this is probably one of the best
songs ever, which I think is quite true to word. It's super slick, visually charming presentation,
and it's the sort of song that would win at the Eurovision. I personally can't believe it's taken
until 2023 to, that's 21 years after its release date for me to actually watch this, but as Nelly
alluded to earlier, I'm pretty sure I've seen it, I just can't remember. Stupidly can't remember
when and where, but I'm a little gutted about that, I kind of wish I'd seen this sooner. I think
it's, everything's fantastic and I personally can't fault it. And if there was one song that
could stop wars, I think it might be this one. It's the world piece with the finger achieved.
Because it's clearly destroyed the world. Yeah, exactly. My favourite part was the hot dog,
It just brings me joy to see it covered in sauce every time.
I personally like sauce on everything I eat.
If I had my way, everything would be covered in ketchup.
I had to travel with Neil for about two weeks several years ago.
Oh, God, yeah, he literally had everything covered in ketchup.
He had ketchup covered in ketchup.
That's right.
There was a point where you would just steal ketchup packets
and you could put more ketchup on top of your ketchup.
Honestly, Nelly, nothing's changed.
I'll tell you something, yesterday I was having something
and I was, I was using three types of barbecue sauce, just to see if there's any difference.
Yeah, barbecue sauce is like one step above the Heinz ketchup disorder, thank you.
Which was nasty.
But yeah, yeah, lots of sauce.
Lots of sauce.
What is the deal with Ikea ketchup?
Is it like Heinz or is it?
It's Heinz.
Like the small red pucks, the shitty ones.
I mean I'm sure Neo is the co-
I visited on IKEA the other day and I just got some chips and I got some ketchup and
the ketchup they use now is incredibly salty.
Really?
It's almost, it's almost too much.
Yeah.
Okay, so my final point.
So I know when we started this podcast was to look specifically at bad videos, but it's always so
much fun when we look at good videos instead.
Yeah.
And this is probably the most fun a mainstream video could and has been.
And the video is equally unforgettable and it just brings a smile every time I watch it at all.
Again, I haven't actually seen it in a very few years because it just hasn't been on my mind to watch.
My favorite part is the headbanging pineapple.
It makes me cackle every single time for some reason.
There isn't being fun because it's a fun video. It's great.
It's for anyone who still hasn't seen the video for some reason.
There's a pineapple where the leaves of the pineapple move as the pineapple headbangs and
it's so much fun. It's a great wee scene and my worst moment is what?
Guess what? Worst moments we're talking about here. It's three and a half minutes of pure joy.
Take a look at the show notes today for links to today's video, links to Instagram etc.
Also email gontofarcast@gmail.com. We'd love to hear your thoughts and any recommendations
for videos. If you're enjoying the podcast leave us a review on Apple
podcast, Spotify or your podcast player of choice. Say goodbye everyone.
Bye everyone. See you later. Bye.