Pajiba

Aw, Courtney ... I'm afraid I fail to agree. I grew up on that stuff, and it was the 80s, so you might have a point if you want to argue that angle, nevertheless it was the best thing available. The Rolling Stone used to run articles discussing what the MTV boys and girls were wearing. And these were pertinent topics! (Or maybe it was just that we were young and didn't know much better). Anyhow, MTV had its purpose before there was YouTube, iTunes and unlimited broadband in every household.

Like all of us born in the early to mid ’80s

Fuck you for making me feel old.

Yes, popular has always won out over quality. My MTV era was late 80s to early 90s (after which I no longer had cable), so I missed out on most of grunge and whatever else the 90s had to offer. I think that explains my love of classic rock. I was probably the only person in my high school class that like Lynyrd Skynyrd because I really had no pop culture knowledge outside of local radio.

Oooooh! Oooooh! Can I do ESPN next? I'm full of haterrific hatetastic hatevolence to the power of hate squared for the entire channel. Pleeeeeeeeease?! (p.s. anyone know if I can insert an interrobang through html code?)

I agree with you here, it's not that MTV has just suddenly started to suck, it's that the volume of suck has increased on a never-ending scale. I think I swore off MTV after the popularity of TRL and the associated pop acts that dominated for too long.

At least in the old days you could count on blocks of music-centered programming, be it Yo! MTV Raps or Headbanger's Ball. Even if similar products exist, the company chooses to push those products that have alienated the "old" fans like us. (but doesn't that just mean we're no longer of the age that is the target audience? Vast social and cultural implications are invoked here.)

I'm only in my mid-20's, but I can't figure out if my lack of interest in new music is due to MTV, or merely reinforced by it.

Cheers

Like all of us born in the early to mid ’80s

Fuck you for making me feel old.

dude, thats hardly old.

anyway on the mtv thing, i dont think it's that people thought it was great television, is that it was the shit at the time. outside of radio, it was pretty much the only way for a pimply tween/teenager to find new music. to this day, i still remember the cure's friday i'm in love video (i must have been 6 or 7 at the time), my sister had recorded it and played it all the time and that very young age i pretty much said "yep, this is what i'm going to obsess about for a long time...awesome music"

MTV has always been pure shit. It's purpose has always been to sell popular culture as commodity. There was a ton of amazing independent music in America in the 80s and MTV didn't acknowledge it at all. Fuck them.

My problem with this article is that it pretends that Mtv didn't exist before the Carmen Electra seasons of” Singled Out"

While you were still in diapers you missed the "old" part of Mtv (all you had to do was look it up on wikipedia). Mtv was one of the first networks to regularly feature minorities. It also had excellent programming like: 120Minutes, Head Bangers Ball, Mtv Unplugged, Yo Mtv Raps!, Liquid Television, and Remote Control. It also use to feature Live 8 and other awareness concerts.

It was awesome once. It was music with motherfucking videos. The problem now Mtv is competing with multiple forms of media that allow people the same experience (and deliver it better). Instead of continuing to be innovative, it lazily morphed into a terribile network that is half marketing machine half tabloid magazine. That's what makes it suck, but once upon a time.....

"Video killed the radio star" isn't just a clever song lyric.

By bring music into a visual medium, the process became more about what the artists looked like and less about their music. Do you think Tom Petty would be able to develope a burgeoning career in this environment? I strongly doubt it. While I won't place the blame soley on MTV's shoulders for the decline of main-stream music, I do think at least some of the responsibility is theirs. They may not be the ones who started the ugly, superficial trend, but they're certainly the ones who best capitilized on it.

Luckily, the weaker main-stream music gets, the stronger underground music gets. On that note, thank god for the internet.

I was born in 1983 and yep, I completely agree with Courtney's assessment. I think I missed out on what were really the glory days of MTV, back when I was, you know, an infant and didn't get to see MTV in its full 80s glory. By the time I knew what MTV was and had started watching the VMAs and the Movie Awards, it was all Britney Spears and Adam Sandler all over the damn place. It was the twilight of MTV. And now we're firmly entrenched in the long, painful midnight...of suck.

aww. you love parentheses like i do.

Yeah, figgy, I graduated from high school the year you were born.

@Banana -- "Friday Night Videos" was on NBC, and I could swear it post-dated MTV, but my memory could be failing me (see above.)

Have to agree with the majority of the posters here. MTV was awesome before it started playing TV shows (except 'Remote Control' of course- that show totally rocked). I remember being babysat by our pastor's wife and her expressing her feelings that she didn't think my folks would appreciate me watching MTV. It was 1982, and I was 7. Fuck her! I watched it anyways, and I turned out fine.

It wasn't just that MTV played music and inspired the pop culture of my generation, but there was honestly and truly not a fuckin' thing on any other channels at 1:30 on a rainy summer afternoon. You could hang out and play with MTV on in the background, like the radio, you could keep in touch with the latest breaking news thanks to Kurt Loder. And it was a way for a church-going good kid to rebel in a small way, in a way that didn't hurt a soul. So I disagree with you about MTV never being "totally awesome." In its prime, there was nothing like it, and nothing could equal it.

Even when it was getting bad, it still introduced us to some amazing TV. Remember Aeon Flux? They created reality TV with The Real World, and introduced us to Pedro and Puck. Or the second coming of Woodstock. SNL, as much as I continue to enjoy it, can't hold a candle to what MTV has done during its years. So we'll just chalk up this little piece to ignorance. Afterall, you weren't there.

Also like, GAWD, you people are like, SUPER OLD.

And once again, I sense I'm being insulted and not feeling anything.

Haw Haw.

(I think Matt Pinfield was a putz though. A very knowledgeable putz, but a putz nonetheless, who couldn't stop letting you know how knowledgeable he was, when he wasn't fawning. Dave Kendall, of course, was a dork. Oddly enough I think it's Lewis Largent that never offended me, but then he was a bit bland) (I mostly missed the Kevin Seal days, except when we'd have Monday off from school and my friend and I would bemoan how much longer this music was gonna go on [like waiting for "Pinwheel to end], and wishing it was Saturday and Headbangers Ball instead)

(p.s. Martha)

I'm sort of in between the old farts and the whippersnappers, and came of MTV Age around 1987. And unless MTV was really effing spectacular between 81 and 87 (the Duran Duran era? Really?), I'd hate to think that the "good" MTV was Adam Curry, Ricki Rachtman, and videos of ZZ Top, Huey Lewis, Trixter, and Def Leppard. Don't get me wrong: I loved MTV as a teenager, but today, I couldn't watch those mostly crappy music videos for more than 20 minutes before losing interest. How many times could you watch "Land of Confusion"? Or Van Halen's "Pound Cake"?

Oh go suck on a butterscotch candy, geezer.

Sara and D-Day took the words right out of my mouth, even to the point that I also stopped paying attention to MTV when TRL took off. Not to say I still don't tune in for Real World/Road Rules Challenges because that shit is FUCKING INCREDIBLE and fuck you in the dick if you don't like it.

By the time Courtney's generation got into it, MTV was already moving away from the video-centric format toward reality/game show/goofy programming. Their experience of MTV breaking ground was "The Real World," while all previous generations had "Thriller," the extreme satisfaction of seeing your favorite bands/singers/musicians every single day when there were no other options, and Adam Curry's hair.

Courtney, your point that MTV wasn't "the pinnacle of great television the fervor of nostalgia rage would lead us to believe" is completely dismissive and a little condescending to the first generation of MTV that you didn't even experience.

So stop insulting the older people or they'll throw their lawns at you.

I go to lunch for an hour and suddenly it's the coming age war!

I would like to really quickly say that, yes, while I did dismiss the entire first eight years of MTV, I was really trying to talk about programming, and they didn't have many actual shows before that. Also, there are lots of people my age and much younger who play that card, and they have no excuse. So I'm sorry, my sweet sweet fogies.

Tell me, Courtney, how exactly does one suck a fuck?

it was awesome. it's now irrelevant.

(I'll always love you Aeon Flux!)

That's the problem with you young whipper snappers. You seem lack the ability to comprehend the fact that the world existed before you.

Again a simple trip to wikipedia would let you know that the network had a show on as early as 1980 called: Friday Night Video Fights. Not to mention: The Cutting Edge (83), Top 20 Video Countdown (84), Headbangers Ball (87), 120 Minutes (84), The Cutting Edge (84).

Now you kids get off my goddamn lawn!

I have to agree with the comments and the article. The shows on Mtv were never good. Remote Control sucked ass. There were exceptions like The State or Liquid Television, but they were few and far between. They were just something to break up the videos or arrange them in different lists. What sucks about Mtv now is that they don't play videos at all. I'm dumbfounded at what they're going to do now that they're bringing Beavis and Butthead back -- half of that program was the titular characters watching videos as the precursors to Tosh.O and Talk Soup. Are they going to be watching YouTube now? Mtv can eat a bag of dicks.

@ D-Day: the html code for interrobang is &# 8253; (without the space!)

And sure enough, talk of interrobang brings out the dating site spambots.

Count me as one of the old geezers. Dustin the Duran Druan years rocked! Or at least it did to my fifth grade self - and I should note I had excellent taste back then because I had pictures of Jason Bateman plastered all over my walls (side note "It's your move" was classic people and i still have it taped on BetaMax).

Does anyone else remember when HBO had the half hour video show? It was constantly playing Billie Jean and only changed videos once a month but damn if we didn't watch it every single time it was on.

@admin

Whereas I remember rushing home from school to watch Steve
Anthony on City TV's daily video show. I remember when MuchMusic
started! There was indeed much music and that A-ha video playing on a
loop and it was the coolest thing any of us had ever seen.

PUNCH MUCH!

Soon as I read your defense of lady gaygay I stopped reading the article. Sorry, but I wish gaga, biebs,and ke$ha would all go to the same party and the house would burn down with them all inside of it.

Yeah, I remember when MTV had videos, too. Some were cool, a few were crap, most were mediocre. It filled a void.

Then they started playing stuff besides videos and it pretty much ceased to fill a void. It was now contributing much the same kind of crap that every other channel on non-premium cable did, and fewer and fewer videos. Now there's no reason whatsoever to watch it.

Another old geezer chiming in here (I was born in '76). MTV was a huge part of my childhood, even though I didn't have cable (thanks friends who did, though!). Now I love y'all born in the 80s, but those early years were truly something special. They weren't just the "Duran Duran" years - they were the years of classic, crazy-ass Prince, Michael Jackson before he became too creepy to watch, and Madonna before she became too British to watch. It was watching a relatively new format (the music video) get perfected before your eyes, but there were still the rough edges to keep you interested (now, much of it is far too overproduced and slick). The network had its finger on the pulse of the time, and for those who grew up back then, it felt like it was programming for us.

Was it ever truly high art, or even a great network? Absolutely not. But it was something that delivered what it advertised - music. You went in wanting to watch music videos, and that's what you got.

As soon as they got away from that - that's when it started to suck.

Now git off my lawn, unless you intend to mow it.;)

For the Canuckistanis: everything that is wrong with MuchMusic in 2010 -->

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0IIvvt_o5c&NR=1

FYI, this was a segment produced by MuchMusic's crew as part of the intro to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Be sure to check out the expressions on the faces of the CTV newscasters when they cut away at 2:01...

Let's hang out by the curb and litter, Courtney.

I think everyone misses the point of Puck. Out of everyone that has ever been on the show, he was the only person to recognize what a fucking farce it is and to refuse to go along with the charade. The entire premise of The Real World is so retarded yet only one person on the show's history wasn't willing to act like a fucking monkey for their puppet masters. That's why MTV makes sure to only sign up completely vapid shitheads willing to only act their parts as predetermined. They never want another person like Puck pissing on their parade.

"Reality television" is a phrase that should be punishable by death upon usage. Could there ever be a more contradictory phrase? As soon as the cameras are on and people are aware of it, it is no longer reality.

And I'm gonna sound like a huge asshole here, but couldn't you guys have found someone whose formative years weren't in the 90's to write an article about the history of a music channel that began in the early 80's and also whom I'm guessing has no idea who Blind Faith is?

Geezer lady here. There was a time when some of us would come home from work and just put on the MTV and let it stay for hours. MTV was good and 120 Minutes was great.

^^^^^^^^^^^^ Sugarmomamatch. C O M ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
A 35+ year old female who is on the "hunt" for a much younger, energetic, willing-to-do-anything male. The cougar can

frequently be seen in a padded bra, cleavage exposed, propped up against a swanky bar in San Francisco (or other cities)

waiting, watching, calculating; gearing up to sink her claws into an innocent young and strapping buck who happens to cross

her path. "Man is cougar's number one prey"

Raise your hand if you can remember JD Roberts on The New Music.

Posted by: Mrs. Julien at August 5, 2010 1:58 PM

My hand is raised, Mrs. J.

I miss "Headbanger's Ball," and that's about all.

MTV's 4 days older than I. I remember Headbanger's Ball. It introduced me to a lot of music that I still love. Matt Pinfield was a tool though. YO, MTV Raps was my first introduction to rap. 120 minutes was fabulous. I remember the "Justify My Love" controversy. I remember the premier of the heavily, HEAVILY edited "Closer" video. I watched MTV from the age of 8 til it started to suck (i.e. the overkill of stupid shows and TRL). I remember watching MTV nonstop the day Cobain was found dead. Somewhere around 1995-96, MTV started showing a ton of shows and a lack of videos. I remember thinking on 9/11 that that was the first time in a long time that MTV was playing only videos. They were a nice break from the news coverage that was inescapable that day and the following days. I miss old, music video friendly MTV.

Yup, you're too young to remember when videos where on MTV. That's all I've got....

i remember watching the MTV launch in NYC in 1981. i was 9. ten years later, i watched the launch of MTV brasil in Rio.

good times.

so, yeah, it started to suck after the advent of the real world, but how is it that no one has mentioned the genius of celebrity deathmatch?

I just have to jump in and say that I was born in '76, Headbanger's Ball was a wonderful glorious thing in it's day and get your lawn out of my dentures.

I stopped investing my humours in music when those cloudy-eyed Elizabethans stopped caring about what makes a great lutenist, and sold out by playing the corporate melancholic goose. Now, it's all just the same pre-packaged flummery and buboes with no respect for the ars subtilior, various l'homme arme parody masses, or courtly love-centric secular motets. I mean, ugh...do they even KNOW who Wulfstan the Cantor was?

The old programs were so much better too:

Leave It To Pater
Eight is Enough, But Tithe Was Too Many
Monk On A Hot Wood Stake
Wheel Of Conversos
The Spanish Ramada
Pope Versus Anti-Pope
The Grievous Misfortunes of Astro Boy and Astrolabe
To Extract The Truth
Win Ben Stein's Pottage
At Home With Julia's Cockatrice
Heretic Confessions...

...it goes on.

I used to be able to think of two and three-part organa when I though about Notre Dame and I would be secure in knowing that that was a universal truth. Now what has it got? I can't even tell you how many times I had be whipped and walked around the town square twice in the usual fashion for nearly dropping my basket of fish entrails--so enchanted was I by the strange and discordant clashing of parallel-moving melismas over a cantus firmus. I've spent many a day in the ducking stool for not being able to silence my wicked child of Eve tongue, so brazenly allowing it to wander seemingly endlessly over heart stirring classics like, 'Puer natus' or 'Haec dies'. If someone could just tell me what the words mean, it would open up a new realm of understanding for me...the first realm. That 'Dies irae' is a bolting little hussy tune too, hm? Wonder what that could be about?

But that was in the days when people had discerning tastes, ask them about the Guidonian Hand now and you'll quite the inappropriate and saucy response. I'm no one's 'ma'am', I'll prithee tell you that much. And it's not getting any better.

Last Whitsun, I was doing my usual rounds when I found a young fey not five steps away from the margrave's ceremonial piss pot. 'Thou wretch,' I said to him as sweetly as my wiles allowed, 'Wretch!' I repeated, rapping at his doublet and nearly sending his ruff into the very habitated piss pot. At which point the saucy young goat responded, 'yon hag, I shall have you know...', and after that he was all a green willow, weeping, ripping at his codpiece and gnashing the feather in his cap. Anticipating the cruel violence he was about to inflict upon those senses that were designed by our Lord to heareth not but the most devotional missa sine nomine, I was not able to escape his moanings in time to prevent mine own affliction (both of my wooden legs having caught the palsy some time past)I could do nothing but endure his half-rhymes. His love seemed once to him so docile like an unspoiled isle, but some sort of further inspection revealed her crueller than Scylla.' He followed this with fourteen continuous minutes of sighing, only interrupting himself to incorrectly realise the figured bass of his lute score.

I had to admit there seemed a true and sinful sentiment to his lamentations. Presently, I laid down my wares of the day of candied quince and eel cloacas to offer some consolation to this struck little cur. I asked him, 'Sinful wretch, what is this song that you play to your augmented fancies?'

As a response, he informed me of a most beautiful but cruel lady of Burgundy whose fine eyes with their immolating gaze took union with a pretty mouth now twisted into mockery of my love of and musicianship.' It seemed that this lady and her obedience court coiterie had sharp words for his tuning skills, calling his just and mean intonation 'gamey'. Even her hated betrothed/uncle could draw a tear from those ducts so unrelentingly dry to his own attempts when his ravaged fingers chanced upon a clavichord--and he was 63! And he had lost six of his fingers in the great Bonfire of the Arsonists.

He continued: 'Spurned again by truest and most heartless love, I resolved myself to diseased prospect of being forced to live out the remainder of my days giving myself over to the royal attendants employed by me, first in line to the throne. But hope arrived in little more than a word and a slap to my face.'

'You there, with the face of a yaws outbreak--well...well I'm sure that you understand the matter of age in my upcoming nuptuals to my despised betrothed/uncle.'

'Yes, it's all I think about. Every night, the hair shirt that I have my boy wear to perform my penance burns with the torment of knowing that come the next Immaculate Comeuppance, you, my delicate undergrowth, my own Princess Lachrymae will smite my hope and by transitive property, me.'

'Unless...'

'Before she had time to slap me again, she vowed that I could straighten out my well-temperment, we may some day be able to join madrigals...after I killed her uncle betrothed. Oh, flow my tears! How could good conscience allow this? At this point, he had outlived the life expectancy of all of the residents of Yeovil combined, how much longer would he tarry with us in the mortal realm?'

'Must I doubt your devotion? You murder at my will, that is what love is you hashish-addled troubador wannabe!' These were the dulcet tones of she the woman he called his Sweet Ducky. But the rush? 'Yes, there is the issue of age. You see, in one week, I shall be turning nine and I'm feeling my age. I have no time left now but for dynasty-building.'

This humble fish-spinster was intrigued by the tale of this insolent slut, if more than a little disgusted by the lurid details of the tale. Madrigals? So, I spit. I had to, it's vile. And how shall the task be completed I wonder?

'And all I have to do is give him this: His wedding gift from his new bride. Princess Lachymae has already poisoned this lute I've been playing!'

Before the town square could shout 'unclean', and 'trite' and 'easy way out of the story', or 'a big letdown', 'kill the author to death', the explosive pneumatic leprosy meant for the betrothed Iaccoca took hold of my poor, wretched friend.

AND THAT'S WHY WE CAN'T HAVE COLOURED TELEVISION

-I've never seen American MTV before. Seriously. I've heard good things about it, though.

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