It figures. I get myself a shiny new blogging platform complete with comments and everything just in time for the cyclical insanity of my job to come back around like the weighty business end of a whirling bola. I hate to say it, but keeping my head down and the red ink flowing nonstop for eight (or more) uninterrupted hours a day leaves me with little inclination to do much with my verbal skills at the end of the day. In other words, I haven’t felt much like writing for a while.

But hey, I care — I really care — about you crazy kids waiting around out there in the early-spring twilight for me to entertain you, so how about my usual fallback for times when I don’t have much time to write something that actually means anything: yes, it’s a music video!

(The truth is, I’ve been missing my Friday Evening Videos feature anyway. I went through a phase in my early teens when I wanted to be a DJ — that would be the radio variety, not the modern-day guys who scratch records in dance clubs — and these entries let me play at that role a little.)

Tonight’s selection doesn’t have any story behind it — I just saw it for the first time myself a couple days ago — but I’ve always liked The Bangles, the all-girl group that’s best-known for their number-one hit “Walk Like an Egyptian” (although I prefer the number-two-charting “Manic Monday” myself) as well as the shortness of lead singer Susanna Hoffs‘ skirts. There’s no question that all four members of the band were easy on the eyes, but they were also very tight musically and they crafted quite a few great, hooky pop singles during the mid to late ’80s, probably more than most people realize. This particular song, “Going Down to Liverpool,” is a bit obscure (it didn’t even chart in the U.S., although it appears on their 1990 Greatest Hits compilation), but it’s a nice little tune and one of the rare occasions when drummer Debbi Peterson took over the lead vocals.

However, the real reason I decided to post this one here is… well, I’ll let you be surprised by who guest-stars in the video. I’ll just say that he looks very Mission: Impossible-ish here, and it’s my understanding he agreed to do this because his son was a friend of Susanna’s… and any friend of Susanna’s is a friend of… well, just take a look: