Don’t worry, Buster. I’m sure it’s not poisonous…
Ready for some more great music chosen by me, Evil Squirrel, rather than…. um…. chosen for DJ Scratchy by me, Evil Squirrel? Good, because it’s time to present the next most excellent song in my Top 30 Songs We Just Feel Like Playing countdown! We’re into the Top 12 now… which really doesn’t mean anything since twelve isn’t a round number. But it’s a dozen, for whatever reason that’s an important amount… so it kinda sounds cool. No, actually it doesn’t. This song sounds cool, though….
#12. “Union of the Snake” – Duran Duran
There was a second British Invasion of the US pop charts that occurred in the 1980’s… and which band was The Beatles of that new wave? It was undoubtedly the quintet of three Taylors and a couple of other dudes named Duran Duran. Duran Duran wasn’t quite as popular as Jesus, but they were the undisputed teenybopper idols of the early 80’s. And everything the band did turned to gold… including their theme for the 1985 movie A View To A Kill, which defeated the curse and is still the only Bond theme to ever make it to #1 int he US.
Grace Jones approves. You can tell.
After they burst onto the international scene in 1982 with the album Rio, Duran Duran followed it up with Seven and the Ragged Tiger, whose name is almost as long as the nine songs it includes. The first single from Seven was released in late 1983, one of my absolute favorite periods in music history… and it is one of the main reasons I so adore that time. Here is my favorite Duran Duran song, “Union of the Snake”…
The video was released to MTV a week before the single was issued to radio stations (and a month before the album hit stores)… and it’s a doozy. Duran Duran had experimented with exotic (and expensive) videos for their earlier hits “Rio” and “Hungry Like the Wolf”… but their video for “Snake” set the tone for their complex, artistic productions to come. While nowhere near as weird as “The Wild Boys,” this video is a freak show and a half…
AAAAAA!!!!!! Kill it with FIRE!!!!!
Painted men in all-too-revealing costumes seem to be a Duran Duran fetish. Well, at least they don’t ruin the song, which is still great even if it has to be associated with mutant lizard freaks…
Join us again next Monday for the Countdown of Whatever’s first song to come from the decade of the 2000’s!
Evil Squirrel's Nest 
the video was an eyecatcher for all!!!! and thanks for bringing Grace in the game… ohhh all our heros of the glorious 80’s
Grace would have fit right into this video, but I guess she was not available. Maybe getting her hair cut again…
hmmmm – too strange for me – those lizard things are creepy. 🙂
As bad as those lizards were, this was out around the same time as the Thriller video, and those zombies gave me the creeps when I was a kid!
Well they sure spent some bucks on this video – lots of strange things going on – the little kid did a great job. The only thing i didn’t like was the very “unanimated” and mechanical lip sync. Of course the ACTION in the video was the thing to focus on not the mouth movements or lack thereof. Quite a show indeed!
Pam
Ha! I did notice that Simon does a terrible job trying to keep up with the words! I guess they were more worried about making sure the lizard people looked scaly, and nothing…. um… prohibited managed to be exposed by those skimpy costumes…
I betcha there were some prohibited items in the pre-edited version of that video though! And they weren’t lizard tails either!
I only kind of vaguely remember this song. I bet I know every word to an embarrassing number of country songs from 1983 though!
I’d like to say I probably don’t know the words to any country songs from 1983, but there was still a lot of crossover hits back then, so I probably do. And I feel the same way about a lot of country songs from the past decade or so thanks to them getting played all the time at Mecca!
Hmm…oddly attractive in a Grinch sorta way…
He does look like Jim Carrey’s Grinch! And his costume is about three sizes too small…
A strange video and song too, never much cared for it. Its probably one of the few songs Duran-Duran has that I didn’t like. lol
I don’t know why this one has always been my favorite, but I do like almost all of their songs. Their videos are all eye catching, but make you wonder what kind of drugs they were doing while they were made!
This song came from a great musical period but to tell the truth, I don’t recall this one. That may have been due to the fact the local radio station tended to play the top 40 type Duran Duran songs. Silly, it seems classic, Duran Duran. And weird doesn’t even begin to describe the video in a Mad Max kind of way.
Not sure how they missed this one since I think it hit #3, and at the time it was pretty big. The Reflex was their next single and it went to #1, and I think it overshadowed it. Then Hungry Like the Wolf became the song everyone remembered them for when 80’s nostalgia hit, and that sealed Snake’s fate. If you want full on Mad Max, check out their video for The Wild Boys, which was a huge MTV darling (and one of the most expensive videos made at the time)…
👍🏻That station only played the very top hits every hour and may have only played it at when I wasn’t listening. Mad Max videos/movies are borderline creepy.
Duran Duran made some great videos! Love that song, but yes, Wild Boys was even crazier!
Wild Boys was just weird! I was 10 when it came out, so it was entertaining to the kid in me… but the adult says WTF?
I know the song well though it’s not actually one of my Duran Duran favourites. Never seen the video, though.
I’m glad you got to see the video without the international copyright police trying to tap into your IP address. I think that lizard guy is one of them…