MTV is 25 Years Old Today
MTV is 25 years old today. In honor of MTV's barfday, here -- such as they are -- are some of my MTV memories. (Thanks for the prompt, Abel.)
When I was a kid, we received MTV at home only intermittently. It was technically one of the "free cable" channels, but for some reason, there were years when we had it, and years when we didn't. I spent many hours becoming superficially acquainted with VHF/UHF and the obscure knobs and buttons on the nether regions of our TV and VCR, trying to make MTV come in.
One blissful stretch of MTV-having occurred when I was probably in about 4th grade, and my sister in 1st. It was around the time that my mother first started experimenting with leaving us home alone while she ran short-ish errands. Alison and I were forbidden to watch MTV, so naturally we raced to the set as soon as our mother turned the key in the lock (a process repeated in reverse at the first sign of her re-entering the house), and prostrated ourselves before the MTV gods.
MTV's influence was not really as pernicious as my mother feared, I believe, but neither was it as cool-making as I hoped. Mostly, my sister and I just made fun of things. Here's what was on MTV a lot at the time:
1. A Don Henley video for a song called "A Face in the Crowd," or something. It was very earnest and we cracked ourselves up for hours with our imitations of it.
2. Quite a lot of Tom Petty videos. We liked to make fun of the way he said "Yerrr so bad..."
3. Peter Gabriel videos, which were cool.
4. Depeche Mode videos, which ditto.
5. Paula Abdul videos. The one for "Opposites Attract" where she dances around with that cartoon cat. How cool!?!? I used to want to make music videos, actually. I imagined myself as a music video director, or a "choreographer," which is how Paula Abdul was described in the pages of the Bop and Tiger Beat magazines I sometimes bought with my allowance at the beach.
6. Michael Penn video for "No Myth." I did not make fun of that song, for I secretly loved it. I don't exactly love it anymore, but it still gets stuck in my head with statistically improbable frequency.
7. Motley Crue! There was this one song and video that we made fun of the most of all. The band was all, you know, teased hair like a bunch of Troll dolls, skinny legs in tight leather pants, etc. There was a half-naked woman on a bed, and a white tiger that padded softly through the room. It was the tiger that we thought was so funny and stupid. Like, "How could there be a TIGER there?!?! I mean come on! Really! WTF?!?!?" Why that was the one improbable detail among all the improbable details on MTV that we took the most exception with, I will never know. The song was a little bit sexy, and I think that grossed us out. Also, I would like to think that we were displaying incipient good taste.
8. I also really liked that one song about the father who is a busy executive and misses all the trivial-yet-important events in his son's life, such as Little League practices, etc., until the son becomes a grown man with a family of his own who is, natch, too busy to spend any time with his old dad. It was so sad! But I loved the frisson of its sadness. Somehow much more acceptable than the Don Henley sadness, for some reason. Eh.
So ah, what do YOU remember about MTV?
When I was a kid, we received MTV at home only intermittently. It was technically one of the "free cable" channels, but for some reason, there were years when we had it, and years when we didn't. I spent many hours becoming superficially acquainted with VHF/UHF and the obscure knobs and buttons on the nether regions of our TV and VCR, trying to make MTV come in.
One blissful stretch of MTV-having occurred when I was probably in about 4th grade, and my sister in 1st. It was around the time that my mother first started experimenting with leaving us home alone while she ran short-ish errands. Alison and I were forbidden to watch MTV, so naturally we raced to the set as soon as our mother turned the key in the lock (a process repeated in reverse at the first sign of her re-entering the house), and prostrated ourselves before the MTV gods.
MTV's influence was not really as pernicious as my mother feared, I believe, but neither was it as cool-making as I hoped. Mostly, my sister and I just made fun of things. Here's what was on MTV a lot at the time:
1. A Don Henley video for a song called "A Face in the Crowd," or something. It was very earnest and we cracked ourselves up for hours with our imitations of it.
2. Quite a lot of Tom Petty videos. We liked to make fun of the way he said "Yerrr so bad..."
3. Peter Gabriel videos, which were cool.
4. Depeche Mode videos, which ditto.
5. Paula Abdul videos. The one for "Opposites Attract" where she dances around with that cartoon cat. How cool!?!? I used to want to make music videos, actually. I imagined myself as a music video director, or a "choreographer," which is how Paula Abdul was described in the pages of the Bop and Tiger Beat magazines I sometimes bought with my allowance at the beach.
6. Michael Penn video for "No Myth." I did not make fun of that song, for I secretly loved it. I don't exactly love it anymore, but it still gets stuck in my head with statistically improbable frequency.
7. Motley Crue! There was this one song and video that we made fun of the most of all. The band was all, you know, teased hair like a bunch of Troll dolls, skinny legs in tight leather pants, etc. There was a half-naked woman on a bed, and a white tiger that padded softly through the room. It was the tiger that we thought was so funny and stupid. Like, "How could there be a TIGER there?!?! I mean come on! Really! WTF?!?!?" Why that was the one improbable detail among all the improbable details on MTV that we took the most exception with, I will never know. The song was a little bit sexy, and I think that grossed us out. Also, I would like to think that we were displaying incipient good taste.
8. I also really liked that one song about the father who is a busy executive and misses all the trivial-yet-important events in his son's life, such as Little League practices, etc., until the son becomes a grown man with a family of his own who is, natch, too busy to spend any time with his old dad. It was so sad! But I loved the frisson of its sadness. Somehow much more acceptable than the Don Henley sadness, for some reason. Eh.
So ah, what do YOU remember about MTV?
posted by katherine | 10:19 PM
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