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August 01, 2006
Ladies and Gentlemen... Rock and Roll
25 years ago today, the world changed.
On August 1, 1981, MTV signed on the air on exactly one cable system, in northern New Jersey. No one -- not even those directly involved with the channel -- had any idea what they'd unleashed. And in the ten good years MTV had before frankly plummeting off the precipice of good television and into pure suckitude, they changed the music industry, the TV industry, the advertising industry, and even society itself.
Here's a YouTube clip of MTV's sign-on moment. Doesn't Mark Goodman have that early-80s "I'm coked out of my head" look in his eyes? And doesn't Martha Quinn have that "Even though he's only 13 right now, the Mudge is gonna be my wall-shaking stud someday" look in her eyes?
The early 80s were MTV's glory years. Everything they did was new, fresh... they doomed aesthetically challenged acts like Christopher Cross and made image as important as sound in the music industry for the next two and a half decades. They got past their shameful omission of black acts early on, and became the vehicle through which Michael Jackson conquered the world. MTV hosted Headbanger's Ball, Yo! MTV Raps, and featured contests that none of us who watched the network then will ever forget. ("Asia in Asia?" And come on, say it with John Cougar Mellencamp and me now... "and we'll paaaaint the mother paaaaink!")
To be a teenager then was to live for MTV. One of my childhood friends was the first to get cable in our area in like 1982, and we'd come home from practice every day and literally sit and watch four hours of MTV. And, the network gave me my first rite of passage; my very first celebrity crush was the pixie-ish Martha Quinn. (I never did get over having a thing for petite women... it's all because of Martha.)
MTV has become stupid, frankly. There's no M in their TV anymore. They're all inispid reality programming now. They haven't played a video in what, 6 years? Does anyone even make videos anymore? Or is it a lost art form? I suppose it's natural that I stopped being interested in MTV by now, being out of their demographic by at least a decade and a half as I am. But MTV was a beloved and embedded part of my teen-dom, of my growing up, and I have fond memories for what it was then, and what it set out to be. 25 years ago today.
Oh... and happy birthday, Jami.
