Comments on: A Brief History of Music Television

By: dagnabbit

dagnabbit — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 22:09:45 +0000

Loved 120 Minutes!!!

Nine Inch Nails – “Head Like a Hole” – Awesome video…the spinning skull/spinning staff “strobe” effect was utterly mesmerizing. No image could explain the type of music NIN was better than Trent hanging from that huge twisting mess of tape and metal.

Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Give it Away” – Back when they were good.

Bad Religion – “Atomic Garden” – Does anyone really need more than one BR CD? Mine is “Generator”.

Peter Gabriel – “Sledgehammer” and “Big Time” – Classics

By: Cold can of Kayo

Cold can of Kayo — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 03:52:36 +0000

Interesting about the MJ as first black music on MTV controversy.

Lots of revisionist history going on with that guy right now. Like he has done anything of note since 1991 and the Black or White cut.

I don’t know for sure but the big question would be, how much celebrity must one have to overcome charges of pedophilia?

Many Catholic priests were never convicted but paid off victims in civil suits like MJ did. Can they be reformed and celebrated?

Here’s one, John Wayne Gacy was one heck of good childrens party clown.

Nah, doesn’t work either.

But JWG isn’t worth a whole lot of licensing to Hollywood right now.

There is a lot of money to be made from making MJ as the great emancipator of MTV.

As the LA episodes of To Catch a Predator proved, pedophilia isn’t a crime in Southern California.

Sad.

By: Kara Kovalchik

Kara Kovalchik — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 18:34:21 +0000

@dw: I stand behind my research regarding “Billie Jean” and CBS never threatening to pull their artists from MTV. That information is available in many credible sources, including an interview in Jet Magazine with Les Garland.

By: dw

dw — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:22:39 +0000

This article is revisionist, unless the reporting on the “Billie Jean” debacle AT THAT TIME could be called revisionist. I remember the huge amount of dance music and “blue-eyed soul” videos by white artists, like Hall and Oates, ABC, and Art of Noise, when black artists of similar styles could not get their videos on MTV. Robert Palmer’s “In My System” and “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” was okay but not the videos of the original songs by the System and Cherrelle. It was Pat Boone and cover records all over again. MTV was catering to a “middle-America” audience and felt they would be put off by too many black faces (hilarious when one saw/sees the sales numbers of hip-hop and reggae artists, or saw the white guys in gym class practicing dance moves with, and not simply copying from, their black friends). This is what was reported at the time, what I saw with my own eyes, what Bob Pittman was reported to say, what David Bowie was supposed to have discussed with Mark Goodman. Can you imagine that the first Bob Marley video I saw was “Buffalo Soldier”, and not often? Don’t pretend MTV programming was colorblind, or it was just about the music. It never was and never is.

By: Stacie

Stacie — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:41:00 +0000

Brian in Pittsburgh: I grew up in Springdale and graduated in ‘83 from Divine Providence Academy. I remember watching something I remember as Friday Night Videos, but that could be wrong. I remember it’s where I first saw Hungry Like the Wolf and China Girl. I waited all week for that show! I loved listening to “new music” (not new-wave) on WYDD. I didn’t realize how awesome Pittsburgh radio was until I moved to Orlando in ‘84 to go to college and heard them introducing a year-old Duran Duran song as brand-new.

By: alisa

alisa — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:02:00 +0000

may want to do more research. I saw the “The Frim-Fram Sauce” a jazz song, by The Nat King Cole Trio. The films were played on video boxes in clubs back in the day!!! Black people on the edge again!!

alisa

By: Brandy

Brandy — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:27:00 +0000

I know it’s simple,but I find the video to Gary Numan’s “Cars” fascinating. It’s inexplicable. I moved to England as a child and we only had 4 channels…one of them had a music video hour or two on Sundays…it began with a computerized rollercoaster, I think. I can still tell generally what songs came out when because of when I lived in England (late 80s/early 90s). When we moved back to the states I was glued to MTV. Recently I’ve forced my husband to watch music videos I remember, such as “Money for Nothing” and “Touch of Grey”. One video I remember having a huge impression on me as a very young child was the very last few seconds of “Thriller”…it scared the crap out of me when I was a toddler!

By: Will

Will — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:42:00 +0000

People here in Denver were getting videos long before MTV. Sometime around ‘80 KBDI, one of our local PBS stations began showing videos on a show called FMTV. They sold that name a few years later and changed the show to Teletunes. At first you had to stay up past 10pm to watch, but at it’s height they would show 4 hours straight on weekend mornings. Much of what they showed wouldn’t air on MTV, or only sporadically. It’s where I first heard of Snakefinger, Joe King Carasco, The Residents, Ultravox, and Classix Nouveau.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:14:00 +0000

In Pittsburgh we had two weekend late night music video music shows around the time I graduated high school in 1982, I’m guessing before 1982. One was about a 2 hour time slot and the other seemed like it was 3 or maybe even 4 hours long as it would include just about an entire concert broken into commercial friendly sections. Or, maybe it was 2 different shows back to back, anyway it made you stay uplate. I still remeber a hot Summer night and a BoB Marley concert. Steve Miller’s Abracadaba was definately a video they played, so I’ll look upthe year that was released. Any Pittsburgh area people remember what those shows were called?

By: dawn

dawn — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 09:58:00 +0000

Ah..MTV used to be so cool! In high school, it just wasn’t a party if MTV wasn’t on in the background. Of course, we’d always turn down the volume and put the radio on – it was fun to see the different music with the video.

And how exciting was it when a new video was debuted?