OT: MTV Turns 30

[JRNYMAN]

How many of you remember the actual launch of MTV? I sure do! The promos and hype in the weeks and days leading up to the official launch created so much excitement and anticipation - my friends and I had a party celebrating this unique concept of a television station dedicated solely to music. Not music in general..... Our Music! I remember staring at the blue screen on the TV in the minutes before it went on the air wondering what we were about to see. At that moment all we saw was a countdown clock in the corner of the screen. The promos were very well done by the former DJ's who we would call VJ's. The promos promised us MTV wouldn't just bring us the music - it would bring us music news, in-depth biographies, exclusive interviews, concerts... They were going to bring us music in ways that had never been done before - and they did.

As the final seconds ticked away, instead of all of us cheering and yelling, we all got eerily quiet... 3, 2, 1.... As excited as we were, we also didn't have a clue what we were about to see. The blue screen turned from blue to black and a couple of seconds later, the screen came alive with the now legendary and iconic Man on the Moon/MTV flag promo which was accompanied by a simple yet killer little guitar riff which would become an anthem for a nation's youth who were entering a decade where the future looked brilliantly bright, everyone was better looking than every other generation before us, and best of all, MTV proved to us that if united, we were a force to be reckoned with.

God, I loved MTV. Once it hit the air, I honestly don't remember if I ever watched anything else - ever. It was on at my friends' houses night and day just like at mine.

I cringe whenever I'm reminded of these anniversaries and how many years it's been since... this that and the other thing. This particular anniversary however, I'm happy to step up and salute. 1981 was an awesome time to be 16 years old and MTV made it even that much better. Soooooo many memories forever attached to the songs from that era due almost exclusively to the accompanying video - a video we'd most likely been anticipating for weeks and almost assuredly saw for the first time at 7:00 on a Saturday night because that's when the "World Premiere" took place.

Remember when MTV mattered? Better yet, remember when a nation's youth mattered enough that the corporate fat cats created an entire network around the music we listened to and cared about?

My TV guide lists channel 29 as being MTV and they even use the same logo as the network I remember from 30 years ago. I honestly couldn't tell you what MTV's initial stand for now. 30 years ago, they stood for MUSIC TELEVISION.

VH1 has been celebrating the anniversary all month on their site with tons of factoids, trivia, videos, commercials, concert footage, etc. from back then. I thought the coolest thing was the compilation videos they have put together which are literally 10 minute clips taken taken from some point on the day it launched. Another is their video compilation of the first 30 videos which aired starting with the one I mentioned above (MTV's promo)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=182oUgBf ... r_embedded

Any music trivia buff knows what song/video was MTV's first, but what about the second? Now THAT'S a good music trivia question!

Here's the link to the celebration on VH1's site.
http://blog.vh1.com/2011-08-01/mtv-memo ... ed-on-mtv/

For those who have never seen the launch of MTV, here's the first 10 minutes of MTV's existence starting with the space shuttle countdown and the first MTV flags montage and the classic MTV theme song as well as a couple of videos and some dialog with Mark Goodman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw6xesXL ... detailpage

What were your favorite memories about MTV and pop culture in general from back then? This could turn out to be a very interesting and dare I say it... even COOL!

[Pelata]

I remember the launch and I watched it for over a decade...it can now go bankrupt and die.

[Greg]

I never got to see the launch because we didn't have cable TV until sometime in the late 80's. Not sure about your part of the country/world, but we couldn't get MTV unless we subscribed to cable television. Anyways, I do remember getting to see it for the first time when we did subscribe to cable. It was around '86, and I pretty much watched MTV non-stop....of course until my parents would come in and take over the TV set..lol! I remember the videos that seemed to be played continuously - Heart's Alone video, Europe - Carrie, Poison - Nothing But a Good Time, Whitesnake - Here I go Again / Is This Love, Madonna videos, Genesis, etc...I remember the VJ's - the Adam guy who looked like a member of Europe or Whitesnake himself..... it was fun watching MTV.

And then....MTV got away from music and started focusing more on TV shows. The Real World, Beavis and Butt-head, etc...then enter VH1. VH1 became my favorite station between the two, because guess what? They showed music videos. Nowadays, neither station seems to have anything to do with music. Every now and then, I do try to turn on VH1 Classic, but that's very seldom.

[JRNYMAN]

I remember the launch and I watched it for over a decade...it can now go bankrupt and die.

I'm willing to bet your comments speak for most of our generation.

I never got to see the launch because we didn't have cable TV until sometime in the late 80's. Not sure about your part of the country/world, but we couldn't get MTV unless we subscribed to cable television.

Yup, that's how it worked everywhere. If you lived in a densely populated area as I did in the Bay Area, it was only a matter of convincing Mom & Dad to add it to their monthly bill. And I can remember that being no small task for some of my friends - especially those friends who came from religious backgrounds. The uber-conservative, Christian, republicans who had a death grip on the country at that time didn't see MTV with the same excitement as did we, the exact demographic for which it was created. Some parents were so adamant about "protecting' their children from the unknown evil that might exist on MTV that they wouldn't let their kids spend the night at friends' houses where the channel was available. That one pretty much belonged to the Mormons I knew.
For those living in rural areas, it would be years before the cable companies expanded far enough to even be able to offer basic cable, let alone premium services. And, then there were those who never laid eyes on MTV until they went away to college or moved out on their own to an area where it was available.

[quote="Greg"]Anyways, I do remember getting to see it for the first time when we did subscribe to cable. It was around '86, and I pretty much watched MTV non-stop....of course until my parents would come in and take over the TV set..lol! I remember the videos that seemed to be played continuously - Heart's Alone video, Europe - Carrie, Poison - Nothing But a Good Time, Whitesnake - Here I go Again / Is This Love, Madonna videos, Genesis, etc...I remember the VJ's - the Adam guy who looked like a member of Europe or Whitesnake himself..... it was fun watching MTV.

It WAS fun watching MTV! It was the quintessential music delivery method and seemingly every genre of the R&R portion of the music landscape embraced it. It was that aspect of the channel that I really liked a lot - the diversity of the kinds of Rock music you'd get to experience without ever changing the channel. In any given hour of programming you'd hear/see Stray Cats, ZZ Top, Billy Idol, Debbie Gibson, Toni Basil, The Ramones, The Police, Thompson Twins and Twisted Sister! (I still laugh and appreciate the "We're Not Gonna Take It" video! ) The music industry took this new medium VERY seriously with record execs treating music videos more like mini movies than a visual extension of a song - and they were. They became these larger than life, technicolor interpretations of the song - many of which I remember wondering to myself, "WTF does this have to do with the song?!" Some even took it to a higher level spend tens of millions of dollars on a minute finished product. The biggest that come immediately to mind are Thriller, (of course) and David Bowie's epic, high budget production of Blue Jean - 17 mins. if I remember correctly.
MTV was far more than simply Music Television in its exact definition. MTV defined the pop culture of our generation. It gave all of us growing up at that time a place to collectively partake of the music. Looking back, I think one of the coolest things about our "generation" was we didn't feel the need to label it, (Gen X, Generation Y, etc.) nor did we use it as a crutch for some ridiculous cause or interest or political revolt. We were simply the kids who got to witness and appreciate a brand new way of enjoying our music, 24 hours a day! It was a cable network built for and about music videos that realized unparalleled success and growth to the point it was the biggest cable television network in the world within 10 years of its launch. It was a formula you couldn't hand-design to realize that kind of success. And for some reason that kind of success was no longer good enough for the bigwigs calling the shots. They decided to shake things up, roll the dice, and experiment with the golden formula. They started down a path which had less to do with music and more to do with..... I honestly have no fucking idea what it hs to do with.
For a very large percentage of us 40-somethings, MTV became as much a part of our lives as getting our driver's licenses, going to prom, going to college, etc. It gave us a way of experiencing the music beyond the album. For me, MTV delivered what are now great memories. But sadly what it was and what it has become are two vastly different things, the latter I have no desire to be a part of.

[Arkansas]

http://forums.melodicrock.com/phpBB/vie ... highlight=


later~

[JRNYMAN]

http://forums.melodicrock.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=52305&highlight=
later~

DAMN! I hate it when that happens.
Thanks for the heads up Arkansas.