My favorite MTV memory is Liquid Television. Weird cartoons like Aeon Flux and The Maxx and The Head
Those were all so good. Aeon Flux (even though it was American), Akira, and Ghost in the Shell got me into Anime.
That was also an incredible time for sketch comedy with The State!, Kids in The Hall, and Upright Citizens Brigade. You could just leave MTV on and always get something good.
Then they had to learn how much money they could make off reality tv with The Real World, and everything went to shit. It’s a damn shame.
Kids in The Hall
My favorite sketch show of all time, believe it or not. I'm squishing your head.
The Real World
Even the first Real World was a lot better than later years of MTV. I think one thing that MTV never gets credit for is helping to normalize homosexuality in US culture, which they did by always having a gay cast member in the show.
Mine is definitely Beavis and Butthead. That came much later, but I was just old enough to get beer and my friends and I would sit around, drinking beer watching Beavis and Butthead, and laughing our asses off. Yeah! Yeah! Cool.
I rewatched Beavis & Butthead Do America a few months back and laughed from start to finish. Mike Judge is a goddamn genius
For a long time whenever I wanted to mock creepy behavior I'd say "I see you wear braces. I wear braces too." In Butthead's seduction voice. People usually had no idea what I was referencing, but I got a kick out of it, and it was always pretty fun when someone got it.
Nirvana always gets credit for putting the nail in the coffin of hair metal, but I think it was more Beavis and Butthead's shtick of mocking 80s videos that did it.
Weren’t The Maxx and The Head part of MTV Oddities? Definitely a similar sort of vibe, but they were miniseries, rather than shorts on Liquid Television. I loved The Head. My friends and I thought it was hilarious.
Honestly kinda sad I missed the "golden years" of MTV. I didn't grow up with cable or satellite TV; so my sister and I would watch the shit out of Nickelodeon, cartoon network, discovery and animal planet when we were on vacation or at our grandparents house. However, I grew up with my parents waxing poetic about how MTV used to have the best music and they would have (supposedly) gotten a cable or satellite connection if only MTV still showed music videos.
Looking back it was obvious bullshit and they wouldn't have gotten a subscription even if MTV only played their favorite bands and music videos; but at the time it meant I was always hoping MTV would start showing music videos again so my parents would get cable and my sister and I could watch cartoons, science, nature, history and engineering shows.
Before Spotify I would find new music from MTV. Though back then I didn't know I liked techno more than anything else and I would've never found out from watching MTV
How did you find out? I realized that I really like EDM when I started going to nightclubs.
When flying back home with my family from a trip. Airplanes didnt have individual screens and the movie that was on was terrible (on the shared tvs), so I kept checking every radio station available until I heard (not 100% sure on this) Heaven from DJ Sammy and suddenly I REALLY like music for the first time in my life.
It's so great when you accidentally find something that you really connect with.
So thankful someone took me to a Dirtybird show as a late-blooming electronic fan 🥰
I was a metal head in highschool, so it was weird to me how much I enjoyed the music at the nightclubs and raves. It was especially great when the dance floor was packed, and you could feel the music in your bones, and everyone was bouncing off each other. These days EDM is my go-to music for writing code.
Headbanger's ball was the best. And many of the MTV unplugged concerts are now classics
and 120 Minutes.
I still prefer the MTV premier date as the line between Gen X and Millennials No specific date is going to be great at describing generations anyway, and its a fun landmark.
As a millennial I grew up a bit with MTV, but it was also not mine, if that makes sense. MTV is a Gen-X thing in my view.
I remember the first time I saw MTV.
Back in spring of 1982, traveling down the Baja California peninsula with my parents and brothers, we stayed a night at the La Pinta hotel in Guerrero Negro, a coastal town right on the state border between Baja and Baja Sur.
During dinner, I asked the man in charge if there was any chance of putting MTV on the hotel atrium television. He enthusiastically said yes, but they had to look it up, they'd never gotten such a request before, didn't know where to point the large dish out in the desert garden, which satellite MTV was in.
After dinner, I sat on the couch, a lone figure in the atrium, as hotel guests opted for the garden or their rooms. The VJs that night were JJ Jackson and Martha Quinn, played things like "Girls On Film" by Duran Duran, "China Girl" by David Bowie, "Feet Don't Fail Me Now" by Utopia, "Goodbye To You" by Scandal, "Escalator Of Life" by Robert Hazard, "Shock The Monkey" by Peter Gabriel, "Demolition Man" by The Police.
The ambiance created by this channel in this setting, was like an exciting shock of cool water, like being pulled from ancient times into a modern, more connected world. From my small-city, sheltered perspective.
This experience lasted for three or four hours, then at midnight it was lights out at the lobby and atrium, time to go to bed, and it was over.
I didn't see MTV live again for years, although 6-hour VHS taped recordings of MTV made the rounds among friends, the way tapes of recorded KROQ from LA did, our main connection to a larger world of music.
It was perfect, just enough to get my juices flowing at that age, like Harry Haller in Herman Hesse's "The Steppenwolf" - For Madmen Only, but for a teenager - but not enough for the rotation of videos to kick in and become repetitive. Right at that sweet spot that seared a mystique into my memory of the moment.
Back in spring of 1982
I think your memories are off a little date-wise. Bowie's Let's Dance was released in 1983 and Peter Gabriel's Security was released in late 1982.
Martha Quinn
I'm still in love with her.
That's true! It must have been "Ashes To Ashes" then, because I clearly remember Bowie that night.
"Shock The Monkey" must have been on the first recorded VHS tape of MTV I got my hands on, probably a year later.
My memory is all fucked up too and I have to look this shit up. I could have sworn Security came out in 1984, and it was probably my favorite album of the 80s.
Back in the 90s our school had one room with a permantently installed TV set. Class was taking part in this room once a week. When we all behaved - and we did! - we were allowed to watch MTV in this room for the last remaining 15 minutes of the lesson. It was the time where boy groups and Euro Dance music was at its peak. For us 5th or 6th-graders this was the most important thing every week.
With some brilliant directorial works from Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, and Chris Cunningham. It’s fucking unreal how good we had it in the 90s.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-UNeD55uORa4-rwV3dH5KFJPXbaZuEJ-
Alton Brown (yes the cooking guy) directed REM's "The One I Love"
I didn’t know that! That’s the one with the firework overlays throughout the video, right?
I was surprised by this too. It looks like he was the director of photography, not the director. Robert Longo directed the video, and he directed the film Johnny Mnemonic.
But it's still pretty cool that Alton was the DP on that video.
MTV was really great in the 80s. Sorry it went downhill so fast and so long... It's really insane that they can't just make a channel with all music videos. Call it OG MTV or something.
I found a channel recently, I think within the Roku channel, that plays nothing but old MTV videos.
It was no more than a couple weeks ago that I found it, but I'm not sure if I can find it again.
Nonetheless, it's out there somewhere.
Edit: It's in the Roku channel. Go to the music category and it'll take you to music videos galore. Some are playlists of thirty hours or so, some are live. I see seventies, eighties, nineties, and 2000s along with different genres.
they HAD that, MTV 2. in the mid to late 90s when MTV started getting into tv shows (and granted, most were quite good) they started up MTV 2 and just showed music videos, generally more unknown artists, but if you liked hardcore/emo music in the very early 00's MTV 2 was a haven to discover new bands.
The writing was on the wall for MTV with Total Request Live. originally they'd show the entire video...then they'd show maybe 20 sec of a video...then they'd just tell you what videos placed where and maybe show you the top 5. When you'd watch MTV for music videos and they ended up showing you 30min of music videos, if that, 5 days a week you knew it was over.
The Real World and Road Rules showed the execs you could get decent ratings with minimal effort/budget so they axed everything else. All their awesome animation shows just vanished. having VJ's? nah just dump it all on Carson Daily.
THEN they hit their cash cow with Jackass, but they could go cheaper...so Viva La Bam...but wait, they could go cheaper, so lets do Rob and Big, no wait fam....cheaper lets attach our cart to the Drydek horse and now you have Ridiculousness which is the cheapest of cheap they can make, they have to produce ZERO content, and make money off that.
Weird, a couple of years ago, it was only 10 years. They crammed 4 years of music into two years apparently.
Well that one specifies good music. So apparently for 4 years they still had music, it was just bad music.
I was born on the same day that Mtv went on the air, so I’ve grown up alongside them literally my whole life. That’s all I had really, no interesting story to go with that.
Too bad it doesn't still exist. Its just a empty filler channel and has been for over a decade.
thatsthejoke
Now let's do Rolling Stone!
Obligatory response video
"What's the video of the day, Ray?"
TMF gang, what a time that was to be alive
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