What the hell happened to Mtv!? This profile is dedicated to the real Mtv. The Mtv from the early 1980's. Back when they played music videos.. Yeah, you see... Mtv stood for "Music Television". I bet that teenagers today would be surprised to find out that Mtv was ONLY music videos. There were NO reality shows, no cartoons, no talk shows, etc. Only videos and nothing else.
I made this profile to give new life to the old videos. It's the least I could do to support the artists that I cherish.
THE MTV OF MY CHILDHOOD (1983)
I remember watching Mtv passionately as a child back in 1983, maybe even earlier. That was back when cable television was brand-new and there were only perhaps 25 channels.
You would turn it on and there would be rock videos. For hours and hours there would be non-stop music videos. I don't remember the commercials being irritating as they are nowadays. In fact, they usually had artistic Mtv commericals, such as the famous astronaut on the moon.
It may be considered racist nowadays, but they really only ran videos of white rock bands. However they did play Michael Jackson's Billie Jean quite often. Teenagers today will probably never understand how popular, sexy, and stylish Jackson was back then.
The rock videos were often from the UK and they were considered New Wave. Although there were some heavy metal videos in the early days such as Twisted Sister.
Most videos from the early '80s were shot on sets. Very low-budget. Just some fake walls, some oddly positioned furniture or abstract designs and completely amateurish lighting. Lots of neon and fog machines.
But that wasn't at all lame. It looked great.
Of course, in those days many of the men wore make-up. The '80s was not all hair-bands. In fact during the early days it was very stylish to wear a suit and have what could be considered "anime hair". Sort of short hair but with it coming down into your face. I see this fashion becoming very popular (again) at the moment amongst my students.
As a young child, around 6 or 7 years old, this was very impressionable upon me. Its true that I was only a little kid, but I was completely aware of the 1983-1984 music scene. To this day, I am confident that I can consider myself to be part of that scene. Although, yes of course, I was just in elementary school, and I wasn't buying records, and I believed in Santa Claus... but I watched Mtv daily.
It is also noteworthy that my mother watched Mtv as well. She was of the Beatles/ 1960's generation, but they played high quality music on Mtv! We would see for example: Genesis, Dire Straights, Duran Duran, Men at Work, The Police, Billy Idol, etc...
Mtv was something that you could be proud of. Now of course I'm sure that the WWII generation of senior citzens wasn't too happy about Madonna and Def Leppard...But my parents generation could easily sit and watch Mtv. It was great music performed by talented muscians.
This feeling can be characterized by the Dire Straits video : I Want My Mtv. It was like Mtv was a gift from God. A triumphant success for humanity. Like the astronaut landing on the moon and planting an Mtv flag.
That all began to be destroyed by the early 1990s. Of course I enjoyed Beavis and Butthead and Ren & Stimpy, but you just have to scratch your head and ask, why are those on Mtv? The 1990's saw enormous amounts of non-music shows such as The Real World, cartoon series after cartoon series, all kinds of crap, endless annoying commercials, and a whole lot of very negative gangsta rap. My parent's generation and even my own generation seems to have completely given up on Mtv during the 1990s. Of course my generation would still watch it, because the shows weren't necessarily bad. But the point is: it was not real Mtv!
Now I have students who were born in 1991 and they will have never ever known what Mtv used to be like.
I can only imagine that the producers, presidents, and CEOs of Mtv must be enemies of fine taste in music. Who let these guys in? Any reasonable rocker or music junkie would have been thrilled to direct Mtv and continue a tradition of excellence. Who in their right mind would decide to cut music videos and show reality shows, ghost shows, x-treme sport shows, and jackass instead? I mean, what the hell? That stuff belongs on another channel.
Can't we have music videos on Mtv? Is that too much to ask for?
