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.
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
Though back then I didn’t know I liked techno more than anything else and I would’ve never found out from watching MTV
MTV had the show called AMP that would play very late at night. Electronic music videos during the late 90s.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBXO-yEpu7qfeUQoFVHFsZuHdHAxOW6O8
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.
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-
Thanks a lot for that. Those are all really cool and this is a wonderful trip down memory lane
No problem. I still have the Directors Series DVD boxed set from these three. It was a great medium for creativity and some directors really took it to a new level. I really wish it still existed.
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.
Neat! Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out.
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.
Last time I had cable there were channels with music only they were like channel 674574 or some shit tho
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!
"What's the video of the day, Ray?"
Obligatory response video
More like 2.
They did give at least a solid twelve years of music. The best unplugged episodes were in the early nineties.
The early 90's is also when they started showing less and less music and more shit like The Real World, Road Trip and Beavis & Butt-Head. Even when I was a kid and saw Nirvana's Unplugged set (arguably the best episode of Unplugged), the saying that "MTV doesn't have music videos" was already a popular joke.
I still break out a few of those unplugged jams from time to time.
...at least through ninety-five they still ran music videos overnight and weekly themed shows (120 minutes, headbanger's ball, MTV raps) at specific timeslots, but by the mid-nineties music videos had been relegated to graveyard-shift filler as the network increasingly focused on conventional programming...
...fourteen years is a pretty fair assessment, methinks...
I love the series. I still regularly watch/listen to a couple of gigs.
KISS Unplugged is simply awesome. And Pearl Jam. And Alice in Chains. And... sigh good times, man.
I loved the Unplugged series! Still my favorite version of a few Nirvana tracks.
Is 43 a significant number? Everything turns some number every year
