The spaceman bumper video, Sting going "I want my MTV., David lee Roth’s Just a Gigolo.
And Martha Quinn.
My peak is was when I was making a mix-tape on our new VHS VCR, and was able to capture Fishheads on my tape. I watched the tape a few years ago, remembering the other more popular songs, but then Fishheads came on. You could see something like that only on MTV back then.
I was extactic when they played a Rush concert. Introduced by Alan Hunter (?). I still got the VHS tape somewhere…
Does anybody remember that one obscure video…. Thriller?
My fondest memory of MTV is all of the stuff I saw on 120 Minutes that I would have never seen otherwise. I’d set the VCR to record it and watch it several times over the week and record the next episode on that tape the next week. Some of them would get repeated ad nauseam, some were played only once. One of the ones that sticks in my head hard is King Missile (Dog Fly Religion)'s “Take Stuff From Work”.
(For those playing guitar at home, the guitar part is A major. Not “in”, “is”.)
About a decade later, 120 Minutes was still pretty good. Watching this made me a lifelong fan of Carla Bozulich’s songwriting and Nels Cline’s guitar playing. I doubt it was aired more than once on 120 Minutes. The only version on YouTube is this 240p resolution version with weird drops in volume during the solo.
For early MTV of course, it was either:
Anytime they played DEVO:
(damn, still love that tense synth part)
Or when they’d play old videos in the noon slot when they’d play their (I think it was called) “Classic Cafe” segments, featuring old Beat-Club and MusikLaden performances. If nothing else, I wouldn’t have known about Blue Cheer at a young age without them.
It’s the first time I can remember being miffed at an awards show. “Sabotage” lost MTV’s Video of the Year (1994) Award to Aerosmith’s “Cryin.’” I think REM’s “Everybody Hurts” video beat the Beastie Boys video in other categories that year. I like REM and Aerosmith both, but “Sabotage” is still a great video today while the other two aren’t all that exciting. The Boys were robbed.
Agreed 100%,
This guy tried his hardest to rebuild MTV.
I don’t know if I have a single MTV peak. It’s more like a series of high points. The very first video I saw on MTV was Bananarama’s “Venus” way back in 1986 which I still vividly remember. There was “I Touch Myself” by the Divinyls in 1990. My mother was not happy about that song. There are just so many moments including Run DMC’s “Walk This Way,” Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Meatloaf’s “I Would Do Anything” that I can’t just narrow it down to a single peak.
And I have to admit that some of the non-music shows have stuck with me. I loved Liquid Television, Daria, Beavis & Butthead, and some of their other animated shows. There are some episodes of Liquid Television that live rent free in the attic of my mind and some down to visit once in a while.
Perhaps my fondest memory is Green Jello’s, later Green Jelly after a cease & desist order, video for “Three Little Pigs.” My father wasn’t really into MTV, but he loved that music video, and any time he walked into the living room and MTV was on he’d ask, “Is the piggy song coming on?”
I aged out of MTV by the time I was finished with high school. I’d still watch it on occasion, but by the mid 1990s it wasn’t really a significant part of my media consumption.
I remember being fascinated by the video for Alan Parsons Project, “Don’t Answer Me”. Which also seemed like part of the solution to “I’m not a hot young singer” – do something with the video besides make it about you. The coolest videos were the ones with stories or features besides “Look at that person sing”
The song was only mildly catchy but the effects and animation blew me away.
this was riveting when it came out. I thought the song was a lot more than “mildly catchy” though.
“The Real World” was also way ahead of its time as a harbinger of what reality TV could become.
David Bowie, “Ashes to Ashes.” Even at twelve years old, I could tell this was a new art medium, and that Bowie and his collaborators were masters of it.
Also, Quarterflash’s “Harden My Heart*.” And Gary Wright’s “Really Want to Know You.” And something by the Tubes — guitarist in a suit and tie, standing in an artificial shallow lake in the dark.
Also Split Enz, “One Step Ahead.”
Each of the videos created a unique world.
*I recall trying to guess which of the actresses playing Rindy Ross’s younger selves was closest to my age of twelve. 
My peak was the first 3 years or so. I liked their bumper music/station ID montage of the MTV “song”: a crunchy, power chord guitar riff with the Apollo Saturn V rocket blasting off and splashy graphics. The original VJs like J.J. Jackson, Martha Quinn and Mark Goodman.
just a (relevant) fact:
Even tho MTV was a global thing, they had different teams/VJs for the USA, Europe and possibly other parts of the world as well.
As a young teenage lad, I may or may not have watched a deal of MTV Internationale on Telemundo primarily for a Ms. Daisy Fuentes.
And it changed TV forever, and not for the better.
Don’t get me wrong, I watched it. I watched a couple of the seasons all the way through. But it opened the floodgates and now it seems like a good 25% of television is this stuff. Just throw randos together, film it all, and now you have the lowest budget kind of show possible and people will still watch it.
In 1981-82, when I was eleven-twelve (same time as all the videos I mentioned in the post above), I liked an MTV video by a minor musician named Joe “King” Carrasco. My mother saw he would perform at a bar/restaurant in Manhattan (a forty minute drive away), so she took me. I met Joe before the show; he signed a paper and wrote “be on the lookout for ‘Bad Rap!’”.
Looking back now, it must have been interesting for him to see how this new MTV thing was expanding his audience from college-age party dudes to random tweeners and who knows who else.
First of all, thanks for posting that. I know the song well, but I never saw the video. Now, I have, and I liked it. Thanks again!
I agree with you though. Videos were best when they told a story, or used some sort of effect (A-Ha’s “Take on Me” and rotoscoping, for example), or something that wasn’t, as so many videos have become, two dozen dancers doing elaborate choreography behind the singer on a soundstage.
Probably the best “story music video” I can recall is the video for Ian Hunter’s “All of the Good Ones are Taken.” Basically, despite being surrounded by glamorous women who would love his attentions, Hunter only has eyes for a diner waitress, who wants nothing to do with him. His attempts to convince her otherwise are hilarious—watch his reaction to the toasted cassette.
One of their bumpers.
ETA: we didn’t get cable until '85 or '86 so I missed out on its early days. My first exposure to MTV likely was while visiting one of my sisters in '83.
Ah, I hadn’t seen that one in 40 years. What a perfect 80s video. It’s got fire dancers, and why not?
I love the era of the rock n roll saxophone. I still call the band “Quartermas”. Maybe the video needed a martian spaceship, I don’t know.
Sounds like I Don’t Want to Wait Anymore