lumen
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response 25 of 31:
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May 17 21:10 UTC 2000 |
Re: the Beatles-- well, that would seem to point to the fact that the
Brits put pop music to video for a long time. But as I said, you could
probably take out musical numbers from Elvis movies and tout them as
videos-- Elvis really couldn't act well, and any attempts he really
made to were suppressed. It's been noted that there were some biting
and slightly realistic scenes from "Jailhouse Rock" that were never
used and were never shown until a documentary brought them to light.
I should correct what I said earlier: Nesmith found a company that had
an empty *broadcast* feed, and "Pop Clips" was a series he created to
convince them to start MTV.
"I Want My MTV" was a promotional slogan that a *lot* of artists were
involved in. It's interesting to note that the Police were involved,
as Sting sang this slogan for the Dire Straits song. brighn is correct
in stating this was inspired by an overheard conversation, and the
program noted Dire Straits was not a particularly video-ready band
before the video was made. It looks horribly dated now, but at the
time, they were barely keeping up with the computer animation. What's
hilarious is that an MTV VJ was quoted as saying this tune seemed to be
a mobius strip of sorts in its statement. The computer animated
characters were only used to avoid some controversy and distance it a
little from raw reality, so the show said.
I managed to tape the entire series as it was shown as one program last
Saturday. The history is pretty comprehensive; the discussion includes
influences on television, on movies (like lousy movies that essentially
promoted soundtracks); discussion of video cliches, pop, rock, and rap;
commercialization of the music video; music videos 'saving the world'
("We Are The World", Band Aid: "Do They Know It's Christmas", "(I Ain't
Gonna Play) Sun City," the Pet Shop Boys' involvement in MTV Russia and
the claim that MTV helped bring the Berlin Wall down, etc.)
I feel a little deprived: as I said, glam rock was the order of the day
once MTV came to my house-- Twisted Sister, David Lee Roth, and Motley
Crue were the bands I could remember. But MTV wasn't accessible
everywhere very early on. In its first year, only a few houses had
access, and this was the point behind the "I Want My MTV" slogan. If
it was available in Spokane (MTV Network's kid channel Nickelodeon was
in the early 80's), I doubt I would have been permitted to watch for
long.
In their specials about MTV VJs, MTV itself explains the details of how
they kept the bills paid-- even wall to wall vids of commercially
successful stuff didn't do it. My guess is M2 can do more of what
early MTV used to do since income from expenses for satellite carriers
or large population cable areas covers the costs.
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lumen
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response 26 of 31:
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May 25 23:01 UTC 2000 |
I'll cut to the point since this item is about dead. The whole thesis
of the VH1 program was the question: Did video kill the radio star?
Technically, no. But the rise of MTV has made video a necessary
marketing tool for creating superstar careers. Relatively few people
make it big on radio play alone these days.
Again, I thought the program was a pretty thorough analysis of the
connection between film and music that could be described as the music
video. It also makes sense of the connection that movies and music have
now days.. from Elvis and the Beatles to music video directors moving to
become movie directors and vice versa (Russel Mulcahy directed
"Highlander"), it all has a root somewhere.
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lumen
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response 31 of 31:
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May 31 01:27 UTC 2000 |
well, yeah, but the program points out that it was inevitable.. we're
running on a capitalistic system, and artsy videos just didn't pay the
bills. The whole *point*, or objective, I should say, of MTV was to
prove that a music video channel would sell records, and they stated
that very clearly.
What's even funnier is that VH1 also ran a program connecting porn and
rock (via the groupie phenomenon, I guess). Edgy rock stars are either
appearing with groupies in porno flicks, or associating with porn stars.
There's even talk about some of them recording music for porn videos
(which would be an improvement for the vids). So the idea of MTV
running 3-min softcore pornos doesn't sound *all* that surprising to me.
It's hard to stay progressive, since that doesn't make a lot of money.
MTV, much like any network, fell to corporate greed a long time ago and
subsequently went more and more mainstream. Sometimes I wonder if it
could get any worse.. there is less there that is unusual. 120 Minutes
isn't the show it used to be, and neither is AMP (which is AMP 2.0 now,
actually), and it comes in at 02:00 here.
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