I so miss MTV

I really do. About a year ago I was watching VH1's Top 100 Songs of the 80s and, later, the 90s, enjoying a godfather (whiskey and amaretto) on the rocks, and it just struck me how very many awesome videos they played over the years.

I think my earliest memory of watching a video on MTV was 83's "Land down under" by Men At Work. (Though Rick James' "Superfreak" in 1981 or anything Prince did for 1984's "Purple Rain" might have been first. It's tough to remember.) As the years rolled by, videos by the Police ("Wrapped around your finger"), Michael Jackson ("Billie Jean", "Thriller", "Beat it", "Say Say Say" with Paul McCartney), Tears for Fears ("Everybody wants to rule the world", "Shout"), Madonna ("Borderline", "Material World"), Cindi Lauper ("Girls just wanna have fun") and A-ha ("Take on me") were part of the culture, the background of life. It was just what you saw. But as I got older, things changed. Music became an important part of my life, part of my memory of life and what I was doing. Berlin's "Take My Breath Away", Human League's "Human", Wang Chung's "Wang Chung", Madonna's "Papa don't preach", "Open your heart", or "Las Isla Bonita", Stacy Q's "Two of Hearts", Bon Jovi's "You give love a bad name" or Europe's "The Final Countdown" will always be 1986-7 to me, when I lived in Santa Barbara and started the 7th grade (well NOW, "The final countdown" makes me think of "a magician named GOB". But back then Jason Bateman wasn't doing "Arrested Development", and instead was about to do "Teen Wolf 2" and tank his career for a good while.)

Later, in High School (88-92) I remember coming home from school everyday and flippin on the TV. At the time, VH1 (with Rosie O'Donnell as one of the VJs) played alot of. . .different videos. Enya ("Orinocco Flow") or Swing Out Sister ("Break Out")- when they weren't showing concert performances from the 60s- so VH1 pretty much sucked at that time and I ignored it.

Ah, but MTV....that was another story indeed. Friday afternoon you'd have Adam Curry- fried blonde hair in his supercool black leather jacket sporting the channel's logo- and the Top 20 Video Countdown. I wasn't into "heavy metal" much (apart from some Metallica) but I remember Rikki Ratchman doing Headbangers Ball. Yo! MTV Raps was hosted by Ed Lover and Dr. Dre. (It confused me when, in the 90s, there was a Dr. Dre doing stuff with Snoop Dogg. I wondered if he was the same guy.) Downtown Julie Brown hosted Club MTV (and yes, I definitely enjoyed the girls dancing on the show- enough to stomach New Kids On the Block or Vanilla Ice when they were on it.) Even their non-music programming (which was a small minority of it, I swear) was pretty cool. Remote Control (Jeopardy for people who watched too much TV. Adam Sandler was on that show). Just Say Julie (with the other Julie Brown.) MTV News with Kurt Loder. Once a year you'd have the Video Music Awards giving out their moon-man statues and showing memorable performances. During the 88 election (Bush vs Dukakis), they had their own candidate, Randy of the Redwoods, also running for president. That was how relevant (and socially conscious) MTV was then- a parody candidate- and it was just fun. Even rap was fun and positive. De La Soul ("Me Myself and I"), Young MC ("Bust a move"), Digital Underground ("Humpty Dance"), Run-DMC and Aerosmith ("Walk this way"), Beastie Boys ("Fight for your right to party"), Tone-Loc ("Wild thing"), Mellow Man Ace ("Mentirosa"), MC Hammer ("Can't touch this"), Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock ("It takes two to make a thing go right"), DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince-aka Will Smith ("Parents just don't understand", "Summertime"), Kool Mo Dee ("Wild Wild West"- I remember this because I went to West High School and they played this at rallies all the time), and any A Tribe called Quest Song. It was just awesome.

As time went by, I think they started to take their unique position a little more seriously. You also have to remember that this was the end of the 80s and early 90s. The Berlin Wall had just fallen. Eastern Europe was opening up. There was excitement and a feeling of change in the air. Scorpions spoke of going to Gorky Park (USSR) to "Listen to the winds of change." And then, in December of 1991, the Soviet Union officially dissolved and the Cold War, which had gone on for more than 40 years (since 1947), and had brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation more than once, ended just like that. And then it was over. The threat that had been hanging over the world was gone. Finito. Done. And Jesus Jones was singing "Right here, right now, there is no other place I'd rather be. Right here, right now, watching the world wake up from history." But it wasn't all positive. Ice-T (long before he'd play Detective Tutuolla on Law & Order:SVU) was finally expressing the anger that many had towards the police with his song "Cop Killer." Public Enemy (again, long before Flavor Flave would become a ridiculous reality tv star) rapped "911 is a joke" and "Fight the Powers that Be" (with Anthrax). Ice Cube said "It was a good day" when none of his friends died in gang violence. The acquittal of the officers in the Rodney King trial set off the LA riots of 92 (capture perfectly in Sublime's "April 29, 1992"). "Malcolm X" came out later that year (and Denzel was robbed of the Oscar for that role). The world felt like it was changing. Things were finally being brought out into the open and discussed. Issues seemed to be being addressed. Dialog was going on, things felt....cautiously hopeful, even for those who really knew better.

And MTV started to grow up too, just like the generation that was watching it. Social issues were given more focus in Special Reports with Kurt Loder. During the 1992 Elections Tabitha Soren, another correspondent, followed the candidates around and tried to speak with them. I still remember Bush Sr being less than polite to her, talking down to her, even snapping at her. I almost could hear him yelling "get off my lawn, stinkin kids!!!" Clinton, instead played very well to the network, I think even doing a town hall special where he answered questions posed by teenagers and young adults.

And of course, MTV did something else. On May 21, 1992 it began airing "The Real World". And that changed everything. The proliferation of reality tv today (most of it being really really bad) came from this innocent (it really was back then) little show. "This is the true story... of seven strangers... picked to live in a house...work together and have their lives taped... to find out what happens... when people stop being polite... and start getting real." You had the innocent girl from Alabama new to the big city (Julie). You had the cool guy in the band (Andre). You had a gay artist (Norm). You had a male model from Brooklyn (Eric). And of course, "the angry black man"™ (Kevin). The feminist womyn (Becky). And the rapper (Heather). And it was interesting. There was a real interest in understanding each other's perspectives, of trying out new things. (Julie befriended a homeless girl and spent the night on the streets with her in order to understand her situation.) They had real conversations, real arguments about real issues. (When I watched it again last year, it was so fascinating to see these people talking about the future in 1992, wondering about the upcoming election, the economy, and issues that concerned them, the future of the country and the world. I chuckled and thought to what was up ahead for them, from the vantage point of 17 years later. It was like a chunk of 1992 preserved perfectly.) It wasn't a party. It wasn't Spring Break (woo-hoo!). It wasn't hedonism. It was just interesting- and even educational. (And then, in successive seasons, the show eventually morphed into nothing but a soap-opera/spring break environment with people willing to do anything to be on tv.)

And of course, throughout all of this and after- the world changes, the expectations and hopes, the surprises- the videos kept on playing. Sinead O'Connor took Prince's "Nothing compares 2 U" and showed how attractive a bald woman in a trench coat could be singing it. U2 presented us a depiction of a troubled relationship in the poignant "One". REM confessed to "Losing my religion," whatever that was supposed to mean. George Michael gave us "Faith" (and everything else from that album) and also a supermodel filled "Freedom 90". And we can't forget Nirvana's "Smells like teen spirit" and Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" (and later Beck's "Loser" and Radiohead's "Creep") and the grunge movement they unleashed, ripping the covers off of suburbia and exposing the sense of disillusionment and apathy many youths had. (It also killed the hair bands- though Bon Jovi hung out in the "rock ballads" section of music throughout that period and survived). Whitney Houston performed her vocal acrobatics in "I will always love you". 4 non-blondes got real high and screamed from the top of their lungs "What's going on?" Arrested Development reminisced about race relations in "Tennessee". Counting Crows' "Mr Jones and me" wanted to be Bob Dylan, or at least big stars. Sheryl Crow said "All I wanna do is have some fun". Lisa Loeb said "Stay" and then turned the radio on and the radio up and this woman was singing her song. And it just went on that way for years and years.

I don't know. It was just the perfect mix of music, social consciousness, hope, news, and movies "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey", "Batman Returns", "Romeo + Juliet" and Mission: Impossible" all had specials on the channel. "Beavis and Butthead" was wickedly funny (fire, FIRE!) especially when ripping on videos. "Singled Out", introduced us to (the slightly gross) Jenny McCarthy. Some might like to forget the Weasel, Pauly Shore, but I will go on record and admit that I thought he was funny, especially in his MTV-esque movies like "Encino Man" and "Son-in-law". Then there was my theme song by Skee-lo ("I wish I was a little bit taller. I wish I was a baller. I wish I had a girl who looked good n I would call her. I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat, and a '64 Impala"). Hangin out with Todd Hibbard and the Page crew watchin the Alicia Silverston-Aerosmith trilogy ("Cryin","Crazy", and "Amazing"), Montell Jordan ("This is how we do it"), No doubt ("I'm just a girl"), Joan Osborne and her fake nose-ring ("One of us"), the crazy Gallager brothers of Oasis ("Wonderwall"), Smashing Pumpkins ("Tonight, Tonight", "Bullet with butterfly wings: the world is a vampire...."), Lauryn Hill in the Fugees tearing. it.up with "Killing me softly". Alanis sang "You oughtta know" (to Uncle Joey on "Full House" of all people) and later showed she either didn't know the meaning of "Ironic" or was trying to be ironic with a song that didn't actually have any examples of irony (which, let's face it, would be brilliant). Jewel and the strange and cool "Who will save your soul?" Fiona Apple (the drama queen) told us she felt like a "Criminal" and then told everyone that the music world was completely phony, all the while accepting a VMA for best female performance, I think it was. TLC "Creeped" on the downlow and warned us "Don't go chasing waterfalls". Red Hot Chili Peppers ("Under the bridge") . Bush ("Glycerine"). Toni Braxton ("Just another sad love song"). Green Day pulled a rotten tooth in "Geek Stink Breath". Weezer and the Fonzie hung out a Arnolds in "Buddy Holly". Dr Dre and Tupac Shakur took us to Thunderdome in "California Love". The seriously awesome Beastie Boys and their vintage 70's cop show video "Sabotage"...

Ahh, I could do this all day. But man it was awesome. So many good songs. So many good videos. For every one I've named, there are 5 that I didn't. How awesome a track record is that for MTV? So many good shows. I miss it.

RIP MTV (b. 1981, d. early 2000's). You were awesome. You were relevant. You will be missed.

And if you want to SEE any of these videos you can do that here:

Big Hits of the 80's Video

Big Hits of the 90's Video

Enjoy.