Do you remember when MTV played music videos?

[salinqmind]

I’m reading “I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution” by Craig Marks. It’s 600 pages but its mostly little comments and quotes by the artists and the technicians, and it goes fast. What fun! What a great idea for a book, looking back all these years later and saying, ‘wow, look at my hair, I remember making that video’!

[Arden_Ranger]

My first husband was a DJ when MTV first aired. We taped the first 24 hours for prosperity because he thought it would be neat to have. We also taped the first Top 100 countdown. There are some pretty awesome videos on that tape. Which I still have.

[TBG]

Most of the videos I watched on MTV were thanks to Beavis and Butt-head. I remember when all they showed was videos, I just didn’t watch it then.

[NDP]

@anya_marie

I didn’t find Lush until I saw them on VH1 Classic, and the band had been broken up for awhile.

I don’t know how much they WERE on MTV because I could only watch so much when I had to wait my turn for the tv.

You often saw Lush (along with other “alternative” bands) on “120 Minutes” which MTV aired late Sunday night. However, you rarely saw them on MTV outside of that program.

[Taomist]

We got cable around '82 as well, and MTV was my favorite, of course. I was in high school still, and just loved it.

BTW, MTV as a website has quite a bit on it, including this link to the top videos by year…they go back ALL the way. So, enjoy!

I really enjoyed MTV’s ‘Unplugged’ format, as well, though I stopped watching it regularly once I had other things to do <like college and work, hehe>. However, I do think MTV did more for music popularity than any Clearchannel blitzkrieg does now. I often wonder whether MTV has any clue how much influence they could STILL have if they just knocked off the reality *(%^ and went back to what they did best?

ZZ Top was the awesome, btw. <3

[dangermom]

I was terribly deprived because my mom didn’t (still doesn’t) believe in paying for TV, so we did not have cable. I had to watch it at my friends’ houses, and I remember the first videos I saw-- Be Good Johnny by Men at Work and some Styx video.

When I was in high school the whole town got cable whether we liked it or not, and my mom did the ‘opt-out’ which meant we got free cable until they got around to turning it off (which was never). I lived to watch Inner Edge–I think that’s what it was called. Half an hour of alternative music.

[Uncle_Jocko]

@Anamorphic

I very vividly remember the day we got our cable installed, summer of '82, I believe. As soon as the installer left, I plopped down on the couch, turned directly to MTV (channel 34), and there I sat until dinner time some hours later.

The very first video played when I turned it on: Split Enz - Six Months In A Leaky Boat

Other favorites from that era:

Squeeze - Black Coffee in Bed
The Stray Cats - Stray Cat Strut
The Fixx - Red Skies
Modern English - I’ll Melt With You

I like your style. I became a huge Fixx fan thanks to MTV.

I was in college in a small town in Iowa in the early 80s. The local cable system didn’t add MTV to their lineup until early 1983, which was the middle of my freshman year. Before that we had to be happy with NBC’s Friday Night Videos, Radio 1990 on USA, and the couple of videos Casey Kasem showed on his weekly TV show. So having MTV was a huge deal.

Our (rather cool) campus activities director converted one of the lounges in the student union into a video lounge - blackout curtains on the windows, rows of chairs facing a huge screen with one of those old-style, big-ass projection TVs showing on it. Weekend evenings he showed VHS movies (probably violating all kinds of copyright law); all the rest of the time it was nonstop MTV. I spent so many hours sitting in that room, waiting for ‘just one more video’ in hopes it would be something cool, like Madness or ABC or U2 at Red Rocks or Devo or the Police or Weird Al …

Great times. Great times.

[The_Dord]

@SaharaTea

It’s funny, I think most people from my generation mourn MTV’s decision to change to a reality programming format instead of music videos. I know I did. But I recently read a book about the first ten years of MTV, which contains interviews with a lot of the execs, directors and artists who helped shape it. Many of them agreed that by 1992, music videos had become way too expensive, bombastic and corporate to sustain any real creativity. Rap videos in particular were all the same. And I was surprised to hear how many artists absolutely hated having to make videos - bands like The Police, who had hugely successful videos but really hated all the b.s. that came with filming them.

Here’s a fun look back at the original group of MTV VJs. Martha Quinn was such a doll.

Fun Fact: All the surviving VJs are on Sirius XM 80’s on 8 channel!

[dinahmoe]

@dangermom

I lived to watch Inner Edge–I think that’s what it was called. Half an hour of alternative music.

The Cutting Edge? That was a great show.

[dangermom]

@dinahmoe

The Cutting Edge? That was a great show.

Maybe? Surely it was after 1987? I think the Inner Edge must have been the imitation radio program I listened to–same idea, non-trademarked title.

[Becky2844]

The Fine Young Cannibals----Johnny

Robert Palmer----Addicted to Love

[Snooooopy]

@Alley_Dweller

OMG! Someone else who likes Lush! (Sorry, it’s just that this so seldom happens.)

I never realized MTV played any of the 4AD bands.

Gala was one of the first CDs that I ever owned, and I still enjoy a pretty good portion of the songs on it, especially “De-Luxe.” None of their other releases really connected with me in the same way, though. I’m not even sure that I even bothered to listen to Lovelife all the way through. Maybe I ought to sit down and give all that other stuff a listen; if nothing else, I will enjoy picturing Miki and Emma in my head while I’m doing so.

[Accidental_Martyr]

@NDP

You often saw Lush (along with other “alternative” bands) on “120 Minutes” which MTV aired late Sunday night. However, you rarely saw them on MTV outside of that program.

Cable TV wasn’t available in the tiny Alabama town where I grew up. I really didn’t see MTV until I moved away for college. I used to tape 120 Minutes on Sunday night and then watch it on Monday after class. There was a lot of really good stuff on that show back then (late 80s-early 90s).

[Oslo_Ostragoth]

@Becky2844

Robert Palmer----Addicted to Love

That one demands a link, in case anyone is unfamiliar with it.

p.s. I didn’t remember the two long skirts…

[Soylent_Juicy]

When MuchMusic first came out as a pay channel it was offered free for a little while. I was about 11 or 12. I remember I tried to stay up to watch the full 24 hours and was so disappointed when I realized that it was actually an 8 (IIRC) hour loop.

[kferr]

@Zebra

i was watching MTV before they played videos 24-7. Back when they had to play filler stuff so they didn’t have to play Video Killed the Radio Star again. The 20 minute version of the moon man video was very compelling.

Me too. Now any time I see a rocket launch on TV the MTV music starts in my head.

[Duke]

@Alley_Dweller

OMG! Someone else who likes Lush! (Sorry, it’s just that this so seldom happens.)

I never realized MTV played any of the 4AD bands.

And there’s a third Lush fan here. A lot of the 4AD bands did get play on 120 Minutes, as has been stated above…even some of the really early Throwing Muses videos got limited airplay.

Thanks to 120 Minutes I should have been a Teenage Fanclub fan about 5 or 6 years before I actually was, because when I finally saw the video for Star Sign I recognized it as something I’d seen before and that was the only place I could have seen it. And right before 120 Minutes went off the air I saw the video for Working Girls by the Pernice Brothers and immediately became a fan. I wonder how many other bands I could have become fans of.

[kaylasdad99]

Back in 1981, when MTV started, I was in the middle of my training days in the Navy. Not a lot of time to watch TV at all, and the common room TVs that I did have access to typically didn’t have cable. So MTV really wasn’t accessible to me.

Even if it had been, television audio quality at the time wasn’t really very high fidelity, was it? I wasn’t VERY aware of it (MTV), but to the degree that I was, I didn’t expect it to be particularly worth listening to.

And I’ve always considered music to be something to be experienced through the ears, rather than the eyes.

[anya_marie]

I was listening to the radio on the way to an errand in my car when they announced that MTV would premiere a video by the Black Keys and - had the very cynical thought that MTV was pretending to give a shit about music for a little while.

Sometimes I’m awful curmudgeonly for a 33 year old… and don’t even ask me what i think about those Jersey Shore kids.

[Chicagojeff]

@Duke

And there’s a third Lush fan here. A lot of the 4AD bands did get play on 120 Minutes, as has been stated above…even some of the really early Throwing Muses videos got limited airplay.

Thanks to 120 Minutes I should have been a Teenage Fanclub fan about 5 or 6 years before I actually was, because when I finally saw the video for Star Sign I recognized it as something I’d seen before and that was the only place I could have seen it. And right before 120 Minutes went off the air I saw the video for Working Girls by the Pernice Brothers and immediately became a fan. I wonder how many other bands I could have become fans of.

That’s what I’ll always be grateful to MTV for… Being able to hear Cocteau Twins… catch the latest Bauhaus video…while living on the southside of Chicago… I could watch Headbangers ball (loved the interview with Dave Mustaine while he’s wearing a straitjacket) 120 minutes… (Love’s Easy Tears…-Cocteau Twins) and then Yo MTV raps… (Ed Lover Dance… “Left my Wallet in El Segundo”… Tribe called Quest)… Where could you get that today?
If I ever meet Kevin Powell I’ll ask him if he feels guity…