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120 REASONS TO LIVE

120 Reasons To Live: Concrete Blonde

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.

#17: Concrete Blonde “God Is A Bullet”

Stop the violence! You think it’s dated, we know it’s contextualized: The anti-gun “God Is A Bullet” wasn’t just a random act of preachiness in Los Angeles circa 1989, the tense era that soon led to Rodney King, riots and a hilarious punk album by Ice-T. Named by IRS Records labelmate Michael Stipe, Concrete Blonde climbed out of the same L.A. gutter as Jane’s Addiction, and singer Johnette Napolitano had the city’s witchiest rock voice since Exene Cervenka. “God Is A Bullet,” from second album Free, shows the band’s metal roots and its video features a really unfortunate guitar-solo sequence involving Napolitano doing sign language while the drummer practices karate; however, it was an early glimpse at what Napolitano could do with those spooky vocals. (They were employed to great effect on a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” for 1990’s Pump Up The Volume soundtrack.) Goth-inspired follow-up album Bloodletting would turn out to be the band’s breakthrough, and it remains perfect for these Twilight/True Blood-lovin’ times. On its 20th anniversary last month, the album was reissued by Shout! Factory in a deluxe edition and Concrete Blonde reunited to perform the album live.