Drunken Owls and Other Delights

Ah yes...the NASA stock footage, the hand-colored MTV moon flag, the kick-ass guitar riff. Who knew that a simple top-of-the-hour station ID buffer would become so iconic?

I may be obsessing lately over the whole 'freeform' thing due to my Walk in Silence project, but given the recent research I've been doing about 1980s radio, I've come to the conclusion that MTV, at the outset, was definitely the visual equivalent of a freeform rock station. Given the playlist of that first broadcast day thirty years ago today, it's obvious that they weren't confining themselves to just one particular rock subgenre. In the space of one day, the playlist contained alternative rock (The Buggles, Split Enz, David Bowie), classic rock (The Who, REO Speedwagon, Styx), ska (The Specials), 70s pop (Rod Stewart, Cliff Richard), postpunk (Blondie, Talking Heads), and everything in between. Granted, most of this was due to the fledgling station asking anyone and everyone on labels big and small for videos and trying to sell up the fact that a music video channel could be a great publicity tool. Some videos were low tech--nothing more than an edit from a live longform video show (usually something from the King Biscuit or Midnight Special shows), or a simple non-audience performance video shot on film--but some were creative mini-movies, such as the tale of Chrissie Hynde's sad waitress in the Pretenders' "Brass in Pocket" video. Though the station definitely narrowed its focus over the years, I believe it was its freeform beginnings that helped cement its longevity.

It might have been a new outlet for music videos, but it certainly wasn't a new form of music publicity. The Beatles created their own videos back in the mid-60s primarily as an answer to the extreme number of stations that had been clamoring for an appearance on one of their shows. (This video for "Rain" is a great example of one.) In making these visual shorts, they could offer them not only to the British music shows but also to stations all over the world, and it would alleviate their already crazy schedule. By the late 60s other bands were doing the same thing, and by the 70s these videos were showing up on many and varied places: American Bandstand, local community stations, and video revue specials. It was MTV that saw the potential of putting them all in one place--the pop, the rock, the alternative, the post-punk, the ska, and even the 70s popsters--especially now that cable television was finally taking off. It was a gutsy and brilliant move, and it worked.

The first video I ever saw on MTV was .38 Special's "Hold On Loosely", and it was at the local fire station sometime around 1982. Warner Cable was relatively new in the Athol area, and they were one of the first places that signed up for it. I knew about the channel, but hadn't seen it until I visited the station with my dad for something completely unrelated. Still, by 1982 I was hooked on music, for good or ill. I was busy collecting Beatles records, listening to WAQY and WAAF, and borrowing albums from the library, anything to get a bigger music fix. Seeing videos for songs I already knew well from the radio only added to that addiction, and added yet another layer to the music I loved.

By 1982 and 1983, while still taping songs off the radio, I would also put a tape recorder up next to the small tv speaker and record things off MTV as well. There were songs I wouldn't have noticed otherwise, such as Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science", Split Enz's "Dirty Creature", and Adam & the Ants' "Ant Rap". Songs that my local rock station was most definitely NOT playing. I fully admit that there was a day or so back then where I pretended to be sick so I could stay home from school and watch and record. And of course by 1984 and 1985, when the new wave of pop and rock music really came to the fore--Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, Wham!, The Cars, Bruce Springsteen, and so on--thanks to the channel, these bands skyrocketed to worldwide fame, something that might not have happened five years previous. The channel even helped revive the career of The Monkees, when they started showing their silly 60s TV show on the channel for its 20th anniversary in 1986. And in an odd parallel (and perhaps riffing on the retro and comedy themes that were prevalent then), they even introduced new fans to Monty Python's Flying Circus later that year.

And of course, there was the birth of a new show late on Sunday night, on March 10, 1986...a show that grew out of an earlier series that offered the best and latest of the loved and respected indie label IRS Records, The Cutting Edge. This new show was called 120 Minutes, created by one Dave Kendall, who chose to hide in the shadows (literally--you'd see him obscured when he did the record reviews) until 1989 when he took over the show from Kevin Seal. It expanded on the previous show by showcasing stuff that was deliberately not pop: they played the punk, the post-punk, and the alternative music that had only previously been played on college radio stations. By 1987 many alternative rock fans were in heaven with the three-hour Sunday block of Python, The Young Ones and 120. I started watching in late 1986, soon after I'd discovered college radio (and had been watching USA Network's Night Flight when it featured other strange things), and the show became a long-lasting inspiration for my musical tastes as well as my writing. By 1989 alternative was slowly becoming more mainstream (Love and Rockets' "So Alive" hit #3 on the Billboard Top 100 that year). By 1991, alternative eclipsed pop, thanks to Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, to name but two bands that rode the tide change.


I admit I watched MTV less by 1991, considering that I was in college and was way too broke to have cable. I did watch it when I could, and for a few more years it continued to be a fun channel, if less freeform and more formatted. By then I was back to listening to music, creating mixtapes, taping stuff off the radio, and continuing to build my music collection. I'd come full circle and moved away from the visual and back to the aural, in the span of a decade. I haven't watched the channel much since, due to its preference for non-music video programming at this point.

But I won't complain about that...I've made my peace with it, and if I'm jonesing for music videos, there's always YouTube. Besides, in getting old I seem to have started listening to more pop stuff again, mostly the music that's played on VH1 and our local adult alternative station, KFOG.

Still--I have to say a public thank you to MTV for those ten formative years that expanded my musical tastes and knowledge, enthralled me with eagerly-awaited videos, and inspired my writing, both directly and indirectly. I would also thank MTV for its role in my friendships over those years (I might not have talked with my school's British exchange student in that typing class in 1987 if they hadn't been playing Python then). It may not be the same station it was then, but it made my teen years not only bearable but enjoyable and fun, and that's worth remembering.