Saturday, August 1, 1981

[spatch]

"Ladies and gentlemen: Rock and roll."







And we never looked at music the same way again.

MTV Bingo calls: Dutch Angle, B&W, "Live" Set, Abstract Background, Chroma Key, Dennis DeYoung

Comments

[spatch]

And for those keeping score at home:

The Buggles - Video Killed The Radio Star
Pat Benatar - You Better Run
Rod Stewart - She Won't Dance With Me
The Who - You Better You Bet
PH.D - Little Susie's On The Up
Cliff Richard - We Don't Talk Anymore
Pretenders - Brass in Pocket
Todd Rundgren - Time Heals
REO Speedwagon - Take It On The Run
Styx - Rockin' Paradise

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

They ended up playing the first hour on VH1 Classic on the day-of. Including period commercials and all.

[spatch]

Forgot to mention (and can't edit a comment that's already been replied to) that I didn't include the REO Speedwagon clip because it was only 3 seconds long; someone at MTV hit the wrong button. For serious. There were problems with dead air all day due to people forgetting to load the next tape. (Mark Goodman ends up introducing the REO Speedwagon video after it, um, aired.)

I hope the VH1 special featured all of that, too!

[jotasbrane.livejournal.com]

Am I miscounting, or...?

[spatch]

Secret Hidden Bonus Track

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

That would explain why I didn't remember it. :) I remember watching MTV at my aunt's house in the early days and seeing "It's A Mistake" about a dozen times in two hours.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

DUN! DU-DUN! DU-DU-DU-DUN!

[28bytes.livejournal.com]

Dennis DeYoung, boutonnières and player pianos... those were the days.

[spatch]

DUN! DU-DUN! DU-bleepblipboopblipblipbleepboop-UN!

[spatch]

and seeing "It's A Mistake" about a dozen times in two hours.

Well, at least they were honest about it.

[susskins.livejournal.com]

Whenever I think of the first few years of MTV, I first think of Thompson Twins. Big hair and giant, off-kilter hats.

[spatch]

I don't think I ever actually saw the video for Rockin' the Paradise until now (and also just realized MTV got the title wrong.) DeYoung is so "Clown In The Sky" dramatic, it's brilliant.

[spatch]

Boy George was The Guy With Makeup In The Hat, and the Thompson Twins were The People With Makeup In Hats.

The very first thing I remember seeing on MTV was David Bowie's "Let's Dance". An old tube radio is hurled through the air in slow-motion during the intro and smashes on the ground as the beat kicks in. I didn't realize then I had scored both Destruction and Slow Motion on my MTV Bingo card. I'm pretty sure that Chromakey, Feathered Hair and Woman In Long Flowing Dress In Front Of A Wind Machine weren't too far behind.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I remember being awed by the video for Yes's "Leave It" which just consisted of a series of wacky video manipulations performed on an upside-down still picture of the band.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

The first video I remember seeing on MTV was Rod Stewart's "Some Guys Have All The Luck". We didn't have MTV at my house, but when I hung out with the kids next door we watched it for hours at a time and that video was on all the damned time. I remember thinking it was weird that it didn't show up on the radio nearly as often as it did on TV.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I remember being such an MTV addict that I watched the 17 or 21 permutations of that same video. They showed them all at once one day.

In one of them, they're just hanging upside down and lip-syncing. That's it, no cuts. In another, they pan over to them doing the same thing on a set -- as if they were hanging upside-down for real and the set was real.

There's no reason to wonder how Anderson, Wakefield, Bruford & Howe happened. ...or as the Dead Milkmen called them, "Anderson, Walkman, Buttholes and How!"

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

MTV got a truckload of Rod Stewart videos from the start. I think CBS Records just dumped every artist film they had and Rod must've been desperate about half a decade earlier. Rod Stewart would've evaporated from public conscience had it not been for the first decade of MTV.

[beth47.livejournal.com]

...and really, the Safety Dance was not as safe as promised.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I guess the source actually wasn't a still picture, but that video in which they stood there and lip-synced.

[spatch]

I had no friends who danced so I couldn't hang out with the Safety Dance guy anymore. It was just so awkward bringing him to parties.

[spatch]

Rod had a weird time in the 70s. He went into this David Bowie Identity Fugue, bouncing from folky soul (I love the Small Faces) to glam and then disco, which pretty much lost him the respect of the folky soul and glam crowd. On the other side of things, Blondes Have More Fun (with Do Ya Think I'm Sexy? and all) was his last #1 album in the US until 2004.

The exposure on MTV definitely helped Rod in a major way. "She Won't Dance With Me" is from Foolish Behaviour, the album he released in 1980 to say "See? I'm not disco any more, I swear, I'm now New Wave! Ish!" I don't think that message would have been nearly as successful without MTV. A few months after the August premiere Rod released Tonight I'm Yours and Young Turks and all that to confirm it.

A decade later we got his cover of Downtown Train and the circle was complete.

[spatch]

My favorite lip-syncing moment of all time is the Monkees' television version of Daydream Believer, where Michael Nesmith deliberately places his tie over his guitar strings while he plays.

It's even better than the Ashlee Simpson SNL debacle, because Nesmith is stickin' it to the Man here. The TV Network Man. Yeah!

[dskasak.livejournal.com]

"Young Turks" has my favorite guitar solo of all time...because even someone as cloddish as myself can play it.

[ilovehpl.livejournal.com]

Aw. I had such a crush on that Pretenders guy.

[28bytes.livejournal.com]

I just got my DVD copy of "Caught in the Act" (a.k.a the "Mr. Roboto" concept album tour stage show) and words cannot do it justice.

[spatch]

(DTMF Tones 4-Lyfe)