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was there a video for "Nightmare"?


Hypestyle

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I have dim memories of reading through one of the fanzines of the time-- black beat, right on, one of 'em... and saw some still photos of a video that was being done for "nightmare on my street"... "Freddy" was to have turntable arms/needles placed on a glove for his claw hand.. but i don't remember ever seeing the video itself...

did New Line Cinema sue Jive records or something to not put it out?

I do remember that lil' disclaimer on many pressings of the LP, "the record Nightmare on My street is not affiliated with any Nightmare on Elmstreet Film in any way" or something to that effect..

hmm....

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jazzy jeff and fresh prince made a video for nightmare on my street.. but you're right new line didnt allow them to release it..as part of the deal jazzy jeff & fresh prince had with new line to settle the legal matters they were offered a few movies..1 of them being house party which they subsequently turned down..

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I'm pretty sure we asked Ready Rock C about "Nightmare On My Street" and that he said he played Freddie Kruger. When asked about it, he said he waz talking about the live performance...not the video. Since the song is so old, i think they would have worked out some kinda legal thing where the video would have been available by now. Think about it, it's been over a decand since those Freddie movies were really popular and FP is so freakin' rich, he could have taken steps 2 getting it approved.

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jazzy jeff and fresh prince made a video for nightmare on my street.. but you're right new line didnt allow them to release it..as part of the deal jazzy jeff & fresh prince had with new line to settle the legal matters they were offered a few movies..1 of them being house party which they subsequently turned down..

really... so if they had done House Party, I guess Jeff would have been "Play" and Will would have been "Kid"..

interesting....

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ready rock c probably wasnt in the video..ive talked to quite a few people who have actually seen the nightmare video and jeff confirmed in an interview that it was made.. i think it might have come out for a week or two before it got pulled

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was Nightmare on My Street released by any chance near Halloween 88? Cos if so it probably was just shown around them couple of weeks surrounding Halloween then dropped like Roy Carroll holding a football.

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  • 2 years later...

was Nightmare on My Street released by any chance near Halloween 88? Cos if so it probably was just shown around them couple of weeks surrounding Halloween then dropped like Roy Carroll holding a football.

I predict this will eventually be released.. whenever there's a proper DVD of the JJFP music videos..

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  • 10 years later...

Just found this very interesting article on the board with lots of information about the video:

 

"Aside from a sadly shelved, huge-budget video for “A Nightmare On My Street” [see song comments, below], the video for “Parents Just Don’t Understand” couldn’t have been a bigger crossover hit for the group. "

 

1*uV4UKDEE3rXkPtvBX9arwg.jpeg

 

ANN CARLI: That song was up-front in the sequence of the album, leading the charge, because we were pretty sure that it was going to be a huge hit. We really tried to do a tie-in with New Line Cinema [the movie company who owned the “Nightmare On Elm Street” franchise], but that didn’t go as planned. Me and Barry Weiss talked to New Line before the album came out, because we wanted to collaborate. But New Line just thought that the Fat Boys made more sense for them. [Author’s note: The Fat Boys did the theme to 1988’s “Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master,” called “Are You Ready For Freddy?” The song played over the end credits and was on the soundtrack, plus was released as a single on Tin Pan Apple Records]. It could have been a huge thing if they had just worked with us. But New Line even sued us. Ironically, Whodini [a Jive artist] did a song for the next “Nightmare On Elm Street” movie, so I worked with them on that. Bob Shaye from New Line testified as part of the suit, it was ridiculous. He was talking about Freddy Krueger like he was his son. Really weird stuff. I had to testify in court and everything. We wanted to make sure that it was viewed as a parody. We changed the monster in the video, we did a lot of things and got a lot of legal opinions before we shot it. It was an expensive video for us at the time. We took all the precautions we could, and they still sued us. They suck for that. I mean, who remembers the Fat Boys record? I might have a copy of that video somewhere in storage. It was an 18-hour video shoot, and part of the set caught fire at one point. That video would have sold so manymore records for Jeff and Will if it had ever been released.

1*5A_wQ4PPLH1u6YEVodM4kA.jpeg

 

DJ JAZZY JEFF: If we didn’t get an injunction against the video for that song, I strongly believe that we would have sold 10 million copies of the album. That song was bigger and better than “Parents Just Don’t Understand,” and it would have built even more off the hype from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie that year. The single still went through the roof, even without a video. The video was an acted-out thing. We were in a movie theater, we went home, and then Freddy came. I remember the Freddy monster in our video had turntable needles as fingers. It was a glove they had made. It was one of those videos that when you watched it you were like, “Oh my God, we’re about to be bigger than Michael Jackson!” It was right after the “Parents” single, so it would have been perfectly timed. The video didn’t even have any clips from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie.

PETE Q. HARRIS: That song was similar to “Parents Just Don’t Understand” in regard to what we did as producers and writers. We took the clap sound on there from Cameo’s “Word Up!” [from 1986]. We used that sound all the time, on almost every record that came out of Battery. It’s a fantastic clap sound. Unfortunately for Cameo, you can’t copyright a sound like that. If the sound of “Nightmare” is similar to other songs that came out of that studio, it’s because they were all done with a Fairlight and used sampled [TR-] 808 sounds. We replayed the “Nightmare on Elm Street” theme, we didn’t think twice about using samples or re-playing things back then. That’s what hip-hop was, we didn’t ever think about getting sued. I think I used a Roland D-550 keyboard to replay the theme. And there’s a piano on there, too. With the skit type of elements, that was a bit more complicated, but not drastically so. Jeff did the Freddy voice, we just stuck it into a harmonizer and de-tuned it. Which is what they did for Freddy Krueger in the film anyways.

JEFF: That song itself was great. I put that Freddy Krueger piano line in there [from the original theme to the “Nightmare On Elm Street” movie], I made sure we put that violin screech in there, too, because that’s how it went in the movie. Pete Harris played that bassline. The album was out and we put the single out. Our lawyer was an entertainment lawyer and he listened to the album and told Jive — and this was before anybody knew anything about what could happen in such a situation — we had some “sample issues” that he thought should be addressed. And Jive basically kind of dismissed him. Then we had our song out, and stations began having “Nightmare” contests on the radio. Which song was the best, ours or the Fat Boys’? And we were killing the Fat Boys record. When we got the first injunction, our lawyers kept trying to explain to New Line that they could just endorse our record, too, because it was helping their movie. They didn’t agree. We had to go into court and tried to play it like we were just kids making music. We had to pay New Line some money, we had to pull the single off the shelves. Luckily we didn’t have to pull the album off the shelves. But we couldn’t show the video we had made. With the video, there might have been four copies of the final version made. I had one of them, and my girlfriend at the time erased it and taped soap operas over it! No one I know has a copy. That song was very big when it came to our live show. I had a pitch-shifter effect for vocals. Will would do the whole song and when we would get to the end, Charlie Mack, our security guy, would dress up like Freddy Krueger, with the sweater and the glove and the hat. He’d come up on the side of the stage, walk up to my DJ riser and he would pretend to kill me. I’d fall behind the riser and you’d hear me screaming. Then I’d turn the pitch-shifter to the Freddy voice and I’d say, “Ha, ha, I’ve got you now, Jeff!” And people would lose it. I did that distorted Freddy voice on the song, too. New Line sent people to our concerts to get film of us doing it. They said, “Not only are you taking the music, you’re also taking the likeness.” They pulled out all the stops and there wasn’t much we could do. One very interesting thing is that as part of the settlement from New Line, they wanted me and Will to do a movie. They offered us three scripts. The first one was “House Party.” As you’ll recall, that movie was based on a DJ and a rapper. They kind of made the movie for us, and we turned it down. I forget the other two movies, but we turned those down, too. I don’t regret not doing “House Party,” even as great as that movie was.

Edited by TheFre$hPrince
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  • 2 weeks later...

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