MTV RIP

In a surprise only to those of us who assumed they had done it long ago, MTV has officially removed the word "music" from it's logo.

It's pretty hard to explain to young people that at one time, MTV really WAS a fascinating, artist-breaking, relevant entity; I suppose it's like old-timer trying to tell people today that at one time the Rolling Stones were an exciting, "dangerous," great band and not a joke who still fool stupid people into spending $350 a ticket to watch them sleepwalk through Start Me Up and Brown Sugar night after night. But there was a time when you'd watch MTV with the VCR at the ready, hoping to catch your new slices the way you had done with the radio and a tape recorder.

I didn't have cable as a kid, but friends of mine did, and I can still remember watching without blinking for hours as Duran Duran, Rick Springfield, Adam Ant, Def Leppard etc would come on the screen. I thought they were from Jupiter of something; surely they were not human. Looking back now it's obvious those videos were made for about a tenth of what Kanye spends on electric water picks, but that's part of the charm by now, isn't it? There IS something charming about those early days; I mean is there anybody that can erase the picture of Safety Dance from their minds even 30 years later? It makes sense, it makes no sense, there's no way it would be remembered today without that video. And there's a bunch like that.

I probably saw zero minutes of MTV from 1984 until college, save the occasional sleep-over at a friends house where we'd stay up all night watching 120 Minutes hoping that Bastards of Young or Sometime to Return would come on.

Then with college I got cable, and at that point there was that ugly transitional period of music so shitty it just made grunge  sound that much better a year later when it hit. If I had a nickel for every time I saw Cradle of Love, by Billy Idol, Signs by Tesla, and Rico Suave by...Rico Suave? then I'd have about $14,332.15. The best thing about MTV at that time was of course Unplugged, which was eventually pulled because they were already uncomfortable enough showing music videos; surely showing the actual musicians playing the actual songs was a little TOO "real" for them, so of course it got dumped. And, of course, 120 Minutes was still pretty cool.

And now that it's dominated by reality shows, people will try to blame The Real World for MTV's artistic plunge; but again, it's hard to believe how different that show was when it started. Young, idealistic, curious people thrown together and spending hours on end talking about what they thought the world was or could be, just like any of us was doing at the same time in the halls of our dorms. Of course it fairly quickly morphed into "outrageously hot people hooking up underneath rivers of free booze, all very aware of which character they were to play, be it angry black guy who does not wanna be "the angry black guy," girl taking break from boyfriend to "show she can have her independence!" who fucks everyone in sight and then gets pissed when he bf isn't thrilled with that, the gay guy who won't come out to his family but doesn't mind doing it in front of the world, the "musician" who is excited because gee, all of a sudden record labels/industry people are interested in his "music," the girl who cries a lot and then leaves, etc etc. I mean, looking back, those first few seasons play like Masterpiece Theater to today's Jackass IV.

Anyways. Who cares, MTV has been a joke for a long time. But there WERE moments throughout it's history when it could've been so much more. And now they have, to quote one of the more unforgivably shitty piece of shit "bands" they unleashed on us for reasons still not understandable, done it all for the Snooki.

I was gonna post THE greatest non-video video of all time, Bastards of Young, but instead have chosen Alex Chilton. I like how halfway through they just start talking to each other.


The Replacements Alex Chilton
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