Did anyone know that there was a VMA awards last night?  Does anyone remember what VMA stands for?  Let me refresh your memory…  Video Music Awards.  You do remember what channel is responsible for the VMAs, don’t you?  You don’t?  Come on, it’s easy… it’s the channel that plays videos by your favorite artists 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  No, wait a minute…  it only plays maybe four hours of videos a day now?  You’re kidding me, right?  You’re not???  And you’re also telling me that MTV no longer stands for Music TeleVision??????

I realize that I am far past the sell by date of the hip younger crowd of today but back in the Spring of 1983 I was HOOKED on a budding new channel called MTV.  Cable was finally coming to my very small town and I’d heard from many folks elsewhere about this cable channel that was playing NOTHING BUT VIDEOS all day, all night, all week…  literally HEAVEN for a budding music junkie like me.  Sure, the local radio stations were still fairly cool and magazines like Hit Parader, Creem, and Circus were the mags to read to catch up on the tunes and bands of the day but seeing your favorites in performance mode was another thing entirely.  I’d caught a brief glimpse of the channel during the Winter of ’82 at a family friend’s house (I seem to recall it being a snippet of “Run To The Hills” by Iron Maiden but that’s well over 30 years ago now!) and couldn’t wait for us to get cable so I could plant myself in front of the TV and see what the hubbub was all about.

The WOW factor that day and ensuing weeks was a bit like Christmas day.  Videos on top of videos on top of videos, music on top of music on top of music…  not every single thing great but so much overwhelming stuff to sift through, good and bad.  Naturally, the artists I was most familiar with were the ones I looked forward to the most (AC\DC, Pat Benatar, The Who, Billy Squier, Cheap Trick, etc) but there were so many other artists to pique the interest of this music nerd that it was hard to tear myself away to eat dinner or even do my homework.  The Fixx?  ABC?  The Producers? The Vapors?  Madness? Missing Persons?  The Human League?  I wasn’t hearing this stuff on the radio so this was totally different but at the same time, very fresh and very cool.  And when those hot summer days rolled around?  The heck with playing ball outside, I’m going to sit in the A/C and watch MTV all day!

There is an excellent book out called I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Video Revolution that describes the early days of MTV (approximately 1981-1992) and its impact on pop culture and the world that I highly recommend to anyone who grew up during this period or has an interest in the history of music video.  Although it is almost 600 pages long, it is a fairly quick and easy read that is broken down into short interview segments with various people associated with MTV from the VJs, artists, directors, producers, executives, and others broken down into detailed chapters discussing the creation of the channel, hiring of the VJs, making of various videos and television shows, etc etc etc.  A fantastic read that is well worth the money.

My own personal “glory days of MTV” would probably be up to 1987 or 1988.  The early years were certainly the most fascinating-  where else could you see (or hear!) something like A Flock Of Seagulls “I Ran” followed by Def Leppard’s “Photograph” followed by Duran Duran’s “Hungy Like The Wolf” followed by The Who’s “You Better You Bet” followed by Quiet Riot’s “Metal Health”?  So much diversity in the early days of the channel and because it was music I watched religiously.  Sure, my tastes were starting to run more towards hard rock but I still was a sucker for a good, fun song (who doesn’t like “The Safety Dance“?  Amirite???).  But somewhere along the line all good things must come to an end and MTV started to gravitate towards trends and became too homogenized for its own good.  Things seemed to move from “let’s focus on making a great album with great songs and then maybe make a performance video for a song or two” to “get me a choreographer, a case of hair spray, and teach me to pout before I even think about making my next record”.  That said, I still tuned in for quite a few years afterwards just to check out what was new-  shoulda bought me some MC Hammer genie pants back in the day…  🙂

Oh yeah, trivia question of the day… most everyone knows that The Buggles’ “Video Killed The Radio Star” was the first video ever played on MTV.  But do you know who the second artist played was?  Find out HERE and check out the other videos that were played on MTV’s first day of existence, August 1st, 1981.

“And in the end…”