120 Reasons To Live: Miracle Legion

Nothing did more to further the cause of Alternative Nation-building than 120 Minutes, MTV’s Sunday-night video showcase of non-mainstream acts. For nearly two decades, the program spanned musical eras from ’80s college rock to ’00s indie, with grunge, Britpop, punk, industrial, electronica and more in between. MAGNET raids the vaults to resurrect our 120 favorite and unjustly forgotten videos from the show’s classic era.

#9: Miracle Legion “You’re The One Lee”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ATHaT641ZA

At the risk of sounding like a sensitive artist (don’t worry; King Missile will have its day in this godforsaken endeavor), the way director Jem Cohen captures the unencumbered dancing of Miracle Legion frontman Mark Mulcahy, and the way he inverts the A-frame Connecticut homes and colors them with the bone-and-amber palette of an Andrew Wyeth painting—it’s pretty special. Cohen is a wizard of the Super 8 and 16 mm documentary video style (Fugazi’s Instrument, R.E.M.’s “Nightswimming”), and 1989’s “You’re The One Lee” is an early masterwork. Cohen couldn’t have a better soundtrack than this, however; Miracle Legion never got out from R.E.M.’s shadow in the crowded, artsy folk-pop market of 1980s college radio, but Mulcahy might have been the only singer in this whitebread milieu to achieve musical moments that could be described as “soulful.” Don’t take our word for it: a 2009 benefit album for Mulcahy titled Ciao My Shining Star featured covers of his songs by admirers such as Thom Yorke, Stipe, the National, Frank Black, Dinosaur Jr and others. The reason for the tribute is almost too painful to mention after hearing a love song like “You’re The One Lee”: It was to raise money for Mulcahy and his twin daughters after the sudden death of his wife Melissa in 2008.