M-TV-emories

This post is necessary due to convergence. I recently finished the book “I Want My MTV”, and Friday night I went to the 80’s video attack at the Crystal Ballroom. Both would have stirred up a lot of memories on their own, but together, there was more.

Because I had read the book, when certain videos came on, there were things I knew. That’s why his hair is messed up! That’s not her real mother, but she bonded with her! You really can see which scenes were shot before and after they brought out the cocaine! (I’m not saying they were all good stories.)

Anyway, it got me thinking about some of my own memories of MTV. Some of them are very mixed now, as I can see how while they provided me with some music that I loved, they also withheld other music that deserved to be heard. Granted, the radio stations did this too, but it changed the industry, and not all of those changes are positive. For now though, I am just going to revisit what it was like then.

I think we got cable, including MTV, when I was in about 4th grade. It was near the beginning, but it had been out for a few months. The first video I saw was “Centerfold” by the J Geils Band.

I know it was something I watched, but where it really started affecting me was definitely more around 1985. It was a combination of things. First of all, there was music that I was really responding too, and I became more of a consumer, where I was buying (and memorizing) albums and concert tickets. That was when I started buying teen magazines. I just had to know more about these bands—though the mags wasted a lot of space on actors. Obviously, at the time it was primarily a-ha and Charlie Sexton. I couldn’t even tell you who number three was, because it was those two up top and all the rest were runner-ups.

One of the great tragedies of high school was that after 9th grade my friend Ericka moved and did not have MTV. I would watch the new releases and write descriptions of them to her. This was a ridiculous undertaking, because I would be writing about colored lines going around Michael Hutchence’s head. That does not really give you a sense of the video, but they were so important to us that we would do things like that.

The summer before 9th grade Zia Elda (“Aunt” just sounds too weird, but yes, she is my aunt) visited from Italy, and she would watch a lot of it too. I remember specifically that she did not like Prince (Disgraziato!) or, well, I’m not sure whether she didn’t like David Lee Roth or she was just kind of confused by him. She called him Pazzoida, which basically means crazy man. Then, when she got back to Italy, she would hear Bon Jovi’s “Wanted Dead or Alive”, and she would miss us.

Mom recently found an old booklet that Maria had made for her, thanking her for different things. One of them was “Thank you for liking my music.” You know, that did mean a lot to us.

The real point of the decline appears to have happened with the advent of The Real World. I didn’t mind them having television shows. I loved The Monkees and Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and I didn’t really watch The Young Ones much, but I had nothing against it. However, reality television sent a lot of things downhill. I was not even watching then.

For me the decline started gradually. I mean, yes, MTV was a facilitator during that dark period when “Ebony and Ivory” was stalking me, but I got over that. Somehow it became less compelling, and then I was out of the scene for a year and a half while on my mission. When I came back I turned it on, and I didn’t like it. It was all rap and grunge, and I didn’t care for either.

Well, maybe it wasn’t the genres even, because I had liked rap pretty well before. Everything had gotten harder—more angry and depressed. I had been in a really different environment, but I don’t think it was just me. Music and my basketball team (Portland Trail Blazers) had both taken dark turns. Also, once you finish school and start working, there’s less time for television anyway.

So the videos went away, and everyone complained, but then when MTV2 or Fuse or Classic VH1 would promise videos again, that would fall off too. The ratings were too unreliable. Suddenly things like pop-up video or other specific shows made sense, because then it would tie together a block of time for advertisers, but it was never enough to maintain a whole channel. I will be getting my video fixes via the internet, I guess.

It was fun to remember though. There was a time when it worked, and for a while there Friday night, it was like being back there, only with worse knees. It still added 13000 steps to my pedometer. Honestly, the music was not my favorite (although they did play “Word Up”)—but it probably varies a lot from night to night, and another night it would be great. Jones gets good reviews too, so we will probably try that at some point.

I was disappointed that they did not play “Love is a Battlefield”. I can do that dance.