Speakerbox
Super Member
MTV made an impact on people of my generation just as the internet has made of a younger generation, in that once it became a primary means of entertainment and information, some wondered how we could've survived without it.
Of course music existed long before MTV came around, but MTV came out of a want/need to see those live performances and "promotional film clips" outside of specialized shows and any cable public access channels that were willing to find any content. You didn't have to wait for the end of "The Tonight Show" or the weekend to watch your favorite artists on "Solid Gold", "Soul Train", "The Midnight Special", or "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert", it was now all there. It was in many ways like musical porn: the idea that your favorite artists could be seen and heard at the same time, outside of your record covers and magazines? Crazy. Even though MTV ignored black artists for most of its first two years, it wasn't as if soul, funk, or jazz music videos weren't made. Ashford & Simpson made a video for "Is It Still Good To Ya", Champagne had "How About Us", Al Jarreau had "Thinking About It Too", and Chic had "I Want Your Love". As I state in the article I wrote last week about MTV's 30 anniversary, European audiences were already used to seeing "promotional film clips" long before American labels made it part of the accepted norm of promotion. Even in MTV's first two years, record labels felt little to no need to spend that much money on creating videos. It has been said that for some artists, they were given $1500, a room rental, and told to shoot. What did you get for $1500? Three music videos looking exactly the same, but a small chance to get on that silly and pointless MTV. In time, video budgets became bigger than the album itself, and everyone wanted a cut. Of course, while Duran Duran could fly to Sri Lanka, the S.O.S. Band were lucky if they could get to Stone Mountain, Georgia. Eventually that would change, but there was a time when MTV meant something. Here, I look back at a cable network that made me suck the teet on "the idiot box" for 14 years before it felt a need to grow up and try something new.
http://www.thisisbooksmusic.com/2011/07/28/dust-it-off-mtv-music-television-30-years-later/
==begin swipe==
A younger generation is being told that they are addicted to the internet, Smart Phones, iPod’s and iPad’s. But 30 years ago, kids amongst my generation were becoming addicted to a few new things. In 1981, many of us were enjoying the wonders of video games, either at the arcade or with an Atari 2600 but most of us were finding ways to make usre of those spare quarters we found in the parents’ car ashtray. It may have been minor bloops and bleeps back then, but this was being able to play with things on a television screen. But there was also something else that some of us became addicted to almost instantly. It was a cable network from New York City that called itself MTV: Music Television, and it made its premiere on August 1, 1981. Today, MTV is very different from what it was and represented 30 years ago, and MTV is a brand/household name. What some may not realize was that MTV did not make an immpediate worldwide impact, it would take a few years. It also did not premiere across the United States at the same time. It would be shown in the Tri-State area, but as it drew attention to itself, cable systems felt it would be cool to broadcast the network. As an 11 year old music fan in Honolulu, the idea of being able to “watch” music 24 hours a day, all day, in stereo seemed like an oddity. Can you do that? Back then, people had schedules. For us kids we went to school from 7:45am to 2:15pm, came home, did homework, played outside. We watched cartoons at 3 or 3:30pm, watched until dad came home from work and then it was news time. That meant “shower” and prepare for dinner. We may have watched a sitcom at 7pm, and after one or two shows, my sister and I would go to sleep. I already had my own record player and radio so if I was not allowed to be in the living room after 8, I could play my records. If my dad wasn’t home, I could play my records on the living room stereo. That was my means of entertainment. The fact that one would be able to listen and watch to music 24 hours a day: what does that mean? I watched shows like American Bandstand and Solid Gold but it was such a foreign concept to me, that it made me curious. My parents would receive cable guides in the mail, and one day I read that something called MTV would be broadcast beginning on January 1, 1982. It gave me the number for the channel, and I looked everyday leading up to New Year’s. Nothing. Then one day, in fact it was December 25, 1981, I received an unintentional Christmas present: the gift of MTV. Well, maybe not 100% MTV, but Oceanic Cablevision were testing the signal. Okay, maybe not the satellite signal as I later found out that MTV was broadcast in Hawai’i in the early 80′s on a one week delay, like most of the programming from the mainland at the time. What I saw was people moving around, dancing, singing, and rocking out. The first video I ever saw on MTV was The Toasters‘ “Lois Lane”, where one or two of the guys sported double-necked guitars that spun around like ZZ Top would a few years later. I knew of double-necked guitars from seeing them on Led Zeppelin covers, but this seemed cooler. I would watch a few minutes everyday just to see this music, and on January 1, 1982, the audio kicked in. I loved the radio back then, so to be able to see this thing called “music videos” seemed so grown-up. On top of that, much of the music they played on MTV was not the normal music I had heard on my Top 40 radio stations. No one was really playing Pat Benatar, The Pretenders, The Cure, and as an 11 year old my radio listening habits were moving from AM to FM, so I wasn’t aware there was something called college radio. MTV, in the early days, played a lot of music from England and Europe that would be called “college rock”, and that’s because Europeans made it a regular practice to shoot what was called “promotional film clips”. We were listening and watching grown-up music, and it wasn’t quite the music my uncles or aunties listened to, it felt younger but appealing to kids my age. Once school started up again (Christmas vacation had wrapped up), it was pretty much all my friends talked about. MTV would eventually influence what music was played on the radio stations I listened to, and in Hawai’i at least, there would be one or two stores that made their own clothing with MTV logos, I had two of them. When MTV played videos that would be a “World Premiere”, people would pay attention because it meant this would be “the next big thing”. MTV completely changed my 11 year old mind, so when they ran commercials where artists yelled out “I WANT MY MTV!”, a lot of us said “I DO!”
Of course music existed long before MTV came around, but MTV came out of a want/need to see those live performances and "promotional film clips" outside of specialized shows and any cable public access channels that were willing to find any content. You didn't have to wait for the end of "The Tonight Show" or the weekend to watch your favorite artists on "Solid Gold", "Soul Train", "The Midnight Special", or "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert", it was now all there. It was in many ways like musical porn: the idea that your favorite artists could be seen and heard at the same time, outside of your record covers and magazines? Crazy. Even though MTV ignored black artists for most of its first two years, it wasn't as if soul, funk, or jazz music videos weren't made. Ashford & Simpson made a video for "Is It Still Good To Ya", Champagne had "How About Us", Al Jarreau had "Thinking About It Too", and Chic had "I Want Your Love". As I state in the article I wrote last week about MTV's 30 anniversary, European audiences were already used to seeing "promotional film clips" long before American labels made it part of the accepted norm of promotion. Even in MTV's first two years, record labels felt little to no need to spend that much money on creating videos. It has been said that for some artists, they were given $1500, a room rental, and told to shoot. What did you get for $1500? Three music videos looking exactly the same, but a small chance to get on that silly and pointless MTV. In time, video budgets became bigger than the album itself, and everyone wanted a cut. Of course, while Duran Duran could fly to Sri Lanka, the S.O.S. Band were lucky if they could get to Stone Mountain, Georgia. Eventually that would change, but there was a time when MTV meant something. Here, I look back at a cable network that made me suck the teet on "the idiot box" for 14 years before it felt a need to grow up and try something new.
http://www.thisisbooksmusic.com/2011/07/28/dust-it-off-mtv-music-television-30-years-later/
==begin swipe==
A younger generation is being told that they are addicted to the internet, Smart Phones, iPod’s and iPad’s. But 30 years ago, kids amongst my generation were becoming addicted to a few new things. In 1981, many of us were enjoying the wonders of video games, either at the arcade or with an Atari 2600 but most of us were finding ways to make usre of those spare quarters we found in the parents’ car ashtray. It may have been minor bloops and bleeps back then, but this was being able to play with things on a television screen. But there was also something else that some of us became addicted to almost instantly. It was a cable network from New York City that called itself MTV: Music Television, and it made its premiere on August 1, 1981. Today, MTV is very different from what it was and represented 30 years ago, and MTV is a brand/household name. What some may not realize was that MTV did not make an immpediate worldwide impact, it would take a few years. It also did not premiere across the United States at the same time. It would be shown in the Tri-State area, but as it drew attention to itself, cable systems felt it would be cool to broadcast the network. As an 11 year old music fan in Honolulu, the idea of being able to “watch” music 24 hours a day, all day, in stereo seemed like an oddity. Can you do that? Back then, people had schedules. For us kids we went to school from 7:45am to 2:15pm, came home, did homework, played outside. We watched cartoons at 3 or 3:30pm, watched until dad came home from work and then it was news time. That meant “shower” and prepare for dinner. We may have watched a sitcom at 7pm, and after one or two shows, my sister and I would go to sleep. I already had my own record player and radio so if I was not allowed to be in the living room after 8, I could play my records. If my dad wasn’t home, I could play my records on the living room stereo. That was my means of entertainment. The fact that one would be able to listen and watch to music 24 hours a day: what does that mean? I watched shows like American Bandstand and Solid Gold but it was such a foreign concept to me, that it made me curious. My parents would receive cable guides in the mail, and one day I read that something called MTV would be broadcast beginning on January 1, 1982. It gave me the number for the channel, and I looked everyday leading up to New Year’s. Nothing. Then one day, in fact it was December 25, 1981, I received an unintentional Christmas present: the gift of MTV. Well, maybe not 100% MTV, but Oceanic Cablevision were testing the signal. Okay, maybe not the satellite signal as I later found out that MTV was broadcast in Hawai’i in the early 80′s on a one week delay, like most of the programming from the mainland at the time. What I saw was people moving around, dancing, singing, and rocking out. The first video I ever saw on MTV was The Toasters‘ “Lois Lane”, where one or two of the guys sported double-necked guitars that spun around like ZZ Top would a few years later. I knew of double-necked guitars from seeing them on Led Zeppelin covers, but this seemed cooler. I would watch a few minutes everyday just to see this music, and on January 1, 1982, the audio kicked in. I loved the radio back then, so to be able to see this thing called “music videos” seemed so grown-up. On top of that, much of the music they played on MTV was not the normal music I had heard on my Top 40 radio stations. No one was really playing Pat Benatar, The Pretenders, The Cure, and as an 11 year old my radio listening habits were moving from AM to FM, so I wasn’t aware there was something called college radio. MTV, in the early days, played a lot of music from England and Europe that would be called “college rock”, and that’s because Europeans made it a regular practice to shoot what was called “promotional film clips”. We were listening and watching grown-up music, and it wasn’t quite the music my uncles or aunties listened to, it felt younger but appealing to kids my age. Once school started up again (Christmas vacation had wrapped up), it was pretty much all my friends talked about. MTV would eventually influence what music was played on the radio stations I listened to, and in Hawai’i at least, there would be one or two stores that made their own clothing with MTV logos, I had two of them. When MTV played videos that would be a “World Premiere”, people would pay attention because it meant this would be “the next big thing”. MTV completely changed my 11 year old mind, so when they ran commercials where artists yelled out “I WANT MY MTV!”, a lot of us said “I DO!”
