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.
#31: Siouxsie And The Banshees “The Passenger”
The obvious choices would have been “Kiss Them For Me” or “Peek-A-Boo,” both highly stylized (beautiful, even, in the case of the former) videos and signature songs for Siouxsie And The Banshees. But there’s something to be said for this cover of Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger,” a not-unfaithful version of the song. That something is the confusion of young music fans when it comes to covers. It happens to all of us, and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Some of us believed for years that the Fall wrote “Victoria” and that Hüsker Dü penned “Eight Miles High.” The same was true with “The Passenger,” and whether this version bests Mr. Pop’s, well, we’ll leave that to some future installment of MAGNET’s weekly cover-vs.-original showdown Take Cover!.
