MTV's 30th Anniversary on VH-1 Classic all weekend

[Carloscda]

Will show these kids what MTV use to be like before all the wack reality shows!!

I hope they show the lost weekend with Van Halen!

[chefcraig]

And this is in the Front Line why exactly?

[Hardrock69]

1. Fitting that the MTV 30th-Anniversary weekend is not on MTV but some other channel.

2. Why the fuck is this in Front Line? If anything, it should be in the Music forum, except for the fact that MTV is not a music channel anymore, so it almost should be sent to the Dump or something.

[SunisinuS]

What is this thing called MTV?


I think it is actually a chupacabra.

[Terry]

So far it's nothing that great...just a mishmash of old clips from The Real World, Unplugged, Club MTV, various VMA shows, Remote Control, etc.

I have as yet to see one full length music video outside of a Will Smith / D.J. Jazzy Jeff tune.

The emphasis seems to be on the non-music video programming that began to creep in around the end of the 1980s. MTV peaked in 1985 anyway.

[Unchainme]

I had been having this convo. with my younger bro. the other day who had been lamenting the fact that MTV doesn't play his genre of music (Techno/House/DJ type shit) in lieu of playing chicks that are pregnant, spoiled bitches and guidos.

And while I'm not a huge fan of his music, he does make a good point. In europe it's seem to have really caught on due to a lot of exposure, and it could be argued that while these guys don't play an instrument per-say, it takes some amount of skill to do what they're doing. They ain't Justin fucking Bieber bullshitting and looking pretty for the camera.

It would be amazingly awesome if MTV went back to it's roots and just went "FUCK IT" and play videos by any given amount of artists and genres.

Put on a Dance Club show and have it hosted by the Jersey Shore kids who happens to DJ.

Bring back Headbangers Ball and have Dave Mustaine host along with the Juliya chick that used to host
Uranium on Fuse. Fuck Jamey Jasta and the shit videos that were shown on the rebirth a few years back.

Bring back "YO MTV RAPS!".

Bring back "Unplugged" but limit to those who actually have fucking talent (no fucking Taylor Swift pleas.

And for the rest of the schedule? Music. Music. Music. Special Concerts, Videos, Biographies, Movies (has to be related to music somehow). Open up the Vaults too. Don't just play the Lady Gaga's of the world, go way back, be it NWA or Van Halen. Play it. It's the ultimate fucking treat to tune into the radio and here an old classic you dig, it's the "ah shit! crank it!" reaction for me. Fucking Panama? ...snap!

[Terry]

Meh.

MTV's head got stuck up their own ass re: their popularity and impact on the music industry.

While I'll grant that they certainly DID have an impact, it wasn't necessarily a positive one from where I sit.

Considering the amount of visually pleasing, melodically deficient bands that were launched into the public consciousness solely because they looked good in music videos vs. the amount of actually decent bands that MTV "broke" into the biz, the shit factor is lopsided and doesn't weigh in MTV's favor.

While others may well like this stuff, I could give a shit about Yo! MTV Raps, Jersey Shore, the bulk of the Unplugged programs, Club MTV and even large sections of Headbanger's Ball which were given over to poofters like Poison, Trixter, Winger and the like.

In many ways, the advent and onslaught of the "music video" killed quality in mainstream music.

The first four years of MTV were purty kewl, though...especially those Pat Benetar vids in heavy rotation; she was hot, visually pleasing, rocked and could fucking sing her ass off...AND she made music that DIDN'T necessarily need a music video to make it good. MILES above the relative tripe the Taylor Swifts of today bring to the table.

All that being said, I WOULD gladly stick Mariah Carey in the pooper.

She can even call herself 'Mimi' while I do it, long as she emits one of those high-pitched squeaks when my balls slap against her pissflaps. XTina can massage my prostate orally all the while.

[chefcraig]

The emphasis seems to be on the non-music video programming that began to creep in around the end of the 1980s. MTV peaked in 1985 anyway.

Yep, after Live Aid, there wasn't anywhere else to go but down. While I loved the Remote Control game show, it was about a decade ahead of it's time and really belonged on Comedy Central, which didn't even exist at that time (1987). The Unplugged phenomenon lost it's novelty fairly quickly, mainly through overexposure and genuinely lame "artists". Outside of some now pointless movie and video award shows, the only worthwhile programming the channel has come up with has been Beavis & Butthead and Celebrity Deathmatch, and even they were products of the 1990s. Everything else has been reality-tv garbage.

[SilvioDante]

For me, MTV played a HUGE roll in my teen age years. I grew up in a city in the Midwest that was kinda off the beaten path. Too far from major cities to hear their radio stations, and no where near a huge college to hear the college radio stations. Radio was VERY formula. I remember when my parents had MTV installed. I think I may have stayed home for days just watching. I saw and heard for the first time people like Elvis Costello, Prince, U2, Ozzy and even my first look at the Mighty Mighty Van Halen with their video for "So This is Love" ("Gotta a brand new Oakland scarf right here...") It literally changed my life.

Ironically, the Buggles were proven right, video DID kill the radio star. MTV became less of a mirror of music but started to try control and influence music. Now its a constant stream of drunk, horny, borderline retarted teens and twenty-somethings.

[tojoro]

I noticed during each commersial break, they aired an ad about the itunes store now carrying episodes of thirty shows from MTV, so I'm guessing the weekend was one long infomercial?
Just went to take a peek, and all I saw was Darla, Aeon Flux and Celebrity Deathmatch...unless they're adding more, as B&B were prominent in the ad.
Not that I gave a shit about any of the shows. It used to be a cool medium, but it was also the beginning of looks being more important over talent. That and the mystique factor was gone as well.
I have to give kudos to emptyvee, though, as it aired and was most likely responsible for the best footage of CVH I've ever seen!

~T.

[chefcraig]

I have to give kudos to emptyvee, though, as it aired and was most likely responsible for the best footage of CVH I've ever seen!

~T.

And thanks to the brothers Van Halen, outside of poorly filmed bootlegs, it just may be the only footage of CVH that you (or anybody else, for that matter) will ever see.

[Unchainme]

And thanks to the brothers Van Halen, outside of poorly filmed bootlegs, it just may be the only footage of CVH that you (or anybody else, for that matter) will ever see.

Don't know Craig. Largo '82 seems to be an alright condition, along with "US Fest", both have been pretty well-circulated. Very easy to view on youtube.

[chefcraig]

Don't know Craig. Largo '82 seems to be an alright condition, along with "US Fest", both have been pretty well-circulated. Very easy to view on youtube.

And that gives lie to your point and weight to mine, with regard to respecting an overall fan base. Seriously, look...were either of these "releases" you mentioned made available in sanctioned form by the band, with easily accessible user menus, commentary, bonus footage, ect. to the average fan? NOPE. Next, define "well circulated." Would this not imply that hardcore VH fans had to take unnecessary (and more often than not, costly) steps in order to go beyond the "official" product issued by the band? Read: Steps the band could have profited by in more ways than just money?

Take it a bit further: The live South American version of ZZ Top's "Beer Drinkers And Hell Raisers." Unless you just so happened to be an "in the know" VH fan, nobody else knew this track/footage ever existed, and even so, it only appeared years after it had taken place. On the other hand, if this gem happened to show up in a professionally rendered clip on MTV in regular rotation sometime, say in 1983...

[Unchainme]

Fuck it, may as well make the list of positives and negatives that MTV has contributed to pop culture history.

POSITIVES:

-Alternative music, and non-mainstream artists were given a platform to be aired that normally wasn't there. Elvis Costello probably wasn't really all that well-known to some kid living in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. MTV was able to expose him to such an audience.

-Artists such as Van Halen, Nirvana, Guns N' Roses, Metallica (like it or not to the hardcore fans), Michael Jackson, U2, Journey, all made careers off of pretty much having their videos played on MTV.

-Suburb kids were introduced to Hip-Hop, thanks to artists like Will Smith, RUN DMC and NWA, and due to YO MTV RAPS being put on the air. Chalk that up as a tossup in a way due in part to the douche bags that happened to forget what skin color they were. You ain't gangsta if you're mom makes your lunch everyday, sorry holmes.

-It aired Beavis and Butthead one of the funniest animated shows of all time.

-MTV from all sounds of it, was a major reason why Cable was pushed to the forefront to every American household.

-Must we forget that Diamond Dave used MTV like his canvas during his hey-day. Dude made some very memorable videos, from his days with CVH to him goofing off in the "Yankee Rose" videos.

NEGATIVES:

-MTV was orignally designed to purely be a AOR Rock FM Station on TV. Pretty much to get airplay, you had to be a Rock Musician of some sort (RUSH, Reo, Van HALEN, Pat Benatar, Rolling Stones, Journey..even..gulp...sammy hagar..). Unfortunately MTV became a victim of it's own success, straying away from it's orignal format you eventually had peeps like Debbie Gibson, Madonna, New Kids on the Block, and Whitney Houston make the rotation. Now? good luck finding a rock video on the network.

-MTV could be blamed for the wasteland that is Reality Television, thanks in part to them airing dreck like "Real World", for what begot that begot a whole list of Spin offs and Jersey Shore. Allowing people with next to nothing talent wise make millions by making asses out of themselves.

-MTV attempting to be "Socially Responsible" is dumb as hell. STOP. IT. You're a TV Station. You ain't my school guidance counselor. Also, their one-sided promotion of politics makes them look pretty disgusting in my eyes. You allow Clinton to use it as Campaign tool, while ignoring or not allowing anybody remotely from the right to voice their opinion. fuck, you even had A INAUGURAL BALL FOR THE GUY. Gore, Kerry and Obama were all allowed to be interviewed on the network during their respective campaigns. And before you ask, I DESPISE the GOP, just believe in fairness when it comes to one expressing their POV.

-MTV (in it's mutated greedy asshole form),Ticketmaster, Clear Channel killed Rock N'Roll. Any arguments against that claim?

[Nitro Express]

MTV was the perfect example of technology surpasses need. The cable companies could offer all these channels but they were hurting for content. Having a music channel was a natural choice but where do you get material to run on it 24/7? David Lee Roth said in the early days of MTV you could get your video on the air by just having a video. So this spawned the whole 1980's MTV experience which I consider pop art in itself. The whole thing was pop art because it was on the fly and entering new territory. What killed MTV in the 90's was market research done to maximize profits. It became corporate and had an agenda.