Thanks to archive-minded MTV viewers, many of the promotional spots for these contests have made it onto YouTube. “Lost Weekend” may go down as MTV’s most infamous contest, but it was one of many outrageous ideas executives cooked up during the Eighties and early Nineties. “They were flying by the seats of their pants, trying 100 different things to see what stuck.” “This was the Wild West of the cable era and were doing anything they could to connect with viewers,” Thomason recently told The New York Post. Jefferis story is now the subject of Bradford Thomason and Brett Whitcomb’s new short documentary, Lost Weekend, which recently premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. “On the second night, Alex Van Halen handed me a sixteen-ouncer and said, ‘You’re not leaving this spot until you drink that beer.’ I poured it out in a trash can.”
“The next morning, I had one of the worst hangovers of my life,” Jefferis recalled in Rob Tennenbaum and Craig Marks’ MTV oral history, I Want My MTV. Finally, a friend he’d brought along alerted producers that Jefferis had a plate in his head, the result of a traumatic injury, and that he should not be consuming drugs and alcohol at all, much less imbibing at VH levels. But as the night wore on, it became clear that Jefferis did not have the constitution for this kind of partying.
PINK HOUSES LIVE FULL
But there was also plenty of footage not suitable for broadcast: Van Halen and their crew pumped Jefferis full of drugs and booze, and at one point David Lee Roth locked him in the shower with a stripper. The promotion was a massive success for MTV, which aired much of the mayhem, including the moment Van Halen brought Jefferis on stage, smashed his face into a giant cake and showered him with champagne. Jefferis was the winner of MTV’s “Lost Weekend” contest and his prize was a few days of debauchery on the road with the Eighties metal legends. There’s winners and there’s losers, Mellencamp sings, But they ain’t no big deal / ‘Cause the simple man, baby / Pays for thrills / The bills, the pills that kill.In 1984, a man named Kurt Jefferis nearly partied to death with Van Halen. Well, there’s people and more people / What do they know, know, know / Go to work in some high rise / And vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico, the last verse plays, rattling off class distinctions and the disparities between the haves and the have-nots. The chorus plays again, heaping on the disdain for a country that promises so much in the way of dreams, but provides so little to those who have less. The next verse introduces another story, continuing with Well, there’s a young man in a t-shirt / Listenin’ to a rockin’ rollin’ station / He’s got greasy hair, greasy smile / He says, Lord this must be my destination / ‘Cause they told me when I was younger / Said boy, you’re gonna be president / But just like everything else / Those old crazy dreams / Just kinda came and went. A country that runs on the efforts of the working class, and yet makes sure the “American Dream” is just out of their reach, ain’t that something to see, Mellencamp asks. Ain’t that America / Something to see, baby / Ain’t that America / Home of the free, yeah / Little pink houses / For you and me.Īin’t that America, the singer taunts. Oh, but ain’t that America / For you and me, the artist sneers. With his lyrics, Mellencamp delivers a jab at his country, attempting to give an uninhibited look at what it means to survive in America. The chorus-long-misinterpreted as a rallying cry for America, equivalent to chants of USA! USA!-plays. The song continues, And there’s a woman in the kitchen / Cleanin’ up the evenin’ slop / And he looks at her and says, hey darlin’ / I can remember when you could stop a clock. The man is presumably living below the poverty line, but he is happy with what he has. Opening with the image that inspired it all, “Pink Houses” depicts a black man with a black cat / Livin’ in a black neighborhood / He’s got an interstate / Runnin’ through his front yard / You know he thinks that he’s got it so good. It was another way for me to sneak something in.” The Lyrics But it’s really an anti-American song,” Mellencamp continued of “Pink Houses.” “The American dream had pretty much proven itself as not working anymore. “This one has been misconstrued over the years because of the chorus-it sounds very rah-rah. “Pink Houses,” especially, holds a mirror to the distorted vision of the “American Dream.”
Sometimes misinterpreted as patriotic with their anthemic sounds and American imagery, his songs are more often critiques of American life rather than celebrations of it.
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