Rubber Rodeo — Souvenir

JUL 01 1986 · 12:00

Rubber Rodeo — Souvenir (1986) Era: Mid-80s New Wave Country Crossover (1986) - Peak MTV era single from Rubber Rodeo's sophomore album Heartbreak Highway; released at the twilight of the band's commercial run on Mercury/PolyGram Records A culturally significant artifact documenting the brief commercial apex of one of the 1980s' most distinctive genre-fusion acts. The video's warm, theatrically staged aesthetic and fast editing pace are exemplary of mid-decade MTV production norms, while the band's unique cowboy-new-wave visual identity makes this a high-value specimen for studies of ironic retro-Americana in the alternative music canon. The commercial failure of Heartbreak Highway effectively ended Rubber Rodeo's major-label run, lending this video additional historical weight as a document of a pivotal — and final — creative moment. Context: Released in 1986 as the lead single from Heartbreak Highway, 'Souvenir' arrived at a moment when Rubber Rodeo's genre-blending proposition — fusing Roxy Music-influenced new wave electronics with sincere country-western aesthetics — had received significant MTV exposure but was struggling to convert that visibility into commercial chart success. The band, formed at the Rhode Island School of Design, embodied the art-school irony that defined much of early-MTV alternative culture: deploying 1950s cowboy kitsch as a postmodern aesthetic choice rather than a nostalgic one. Their fusion pre-figured the alt-country movement by nearly a decade, and the warm, theatrically staged production of this video reflects the era's MTV house style: narrative-performance hybrids with deliberate costuming as cultural signifier. Director notes: The IMDb title record tt25403162 confirms the video's existence and its 1986 release date but lists no director. The single 'Souvenir' was released from the album Heartbreak Highway (Mercury/PolyGram, 1986), produced by Ken Scott. No production company, director, or crew credits for this specific video have been located in any indexed public source as of the annotation date.