I miss Kennedy, she was so hot with those cat glasses.
A long time ago MTV was a music video channel.
Congratulations MTV! Most networks took 40 years or more to turn into smut-filled uninteresting crap. You did it in 25! Way to push the envelope.
1. THE DEBUT: Aug. 1, 1981. The first video? The slyly prophetic "Video Killed the Radio Star" by the now-forgotten Buggles. Only a few thousand people on a single cable system in northern New Jersey could see it.
That was my cable company, Cablevision (or was it Vision Cable?) out of Fort Lee.
Overnight, MTV became the talk of my highschool. It was really cool back then. They played music videos. Weird that they forgot how to do that.
When I was 21 - 22, just before MTV came on the air, my musician roomate and I thought it would be the greatest channel ever. We didn't have cable, but we were going to when MTV was added to the lineup.
We thought MTV was going to be, well, Music Television. We envisioned great musicians and bands in concert, interviews, etc.
Finally, in Spring 1982, MTV came to our local cable company.
When I, at last, turned on the mythical musical nirvana for the first time, I was confronted with......A Flock of Seagulls and something called a "music video" where not-good-enough-to-get-out-of-the-garage third rate pop bands lipsynced to crappy bubblegum nonsense while a sophomoric, incoherent collage of movie clips played throughout the song.
I watched for several hours, and it got no better. That was May 1982. I assume it's even worse, now.
Martha Quinn sure was cute, though.
I miss Kennedy, she was so hot with those cat glasses.
And it was all over from there.
ping
Just another "has been" from the '80s...sadly I stopped caring about MTv when the rap explosion started. Been downhill from there for sure.
In case anyone is unaware, every single thing you see on an MTV set; clothes, furniture, lights, are placement ads for given companies. Everything you see is for sale and is placed there by ad execs.
Everybody knows this bit of trivia. But if you want to stump somebody, ask them what was the second video MTV played?
Answer: "You Better Run" by Pat Benatar.
Things have changed.
"Springsteen, Madonna,
Way before Madonna
There was U2, and Blondie
Music still on MTV
Her two kids in high school
Tell her that she's uncool
'Cause she's so pre-occupied
With 19, 19, 1985..."
Without Beavis and Butthead we wouldn't have King of the Hill (Mike Judge)
These days my TV remote skips over (programmed it out)
Ch 28, which is MTV. I do have VH1, and that's for stuff
like I love the 70s.
After breezing though all the posts, I'm surprised no one mentioned "Hungry Like The Wolf". Until Money for Nuthin came along, it was the most played vid MTV had.
Uh, really?! These two were not what I would have called "babes".
Seriously, though...Video Killed the Radio Star was MTV's first video and its' last should be something called MTV Killed Music because there's a direct correlation between the advent of that network and the downward slide of the quality of talent that's been shoved at the public. Allowing a handful of twits to become entirely too powerful in making the decision as to what was or wasn't good music did us no favors except to make so-called "alternative music" more widespread.
How appropriate that one of MTV's biggest shows was Jackass since that describes the majority of people willing to sit idlely by and let a television network decide/dictate what they should/shouldn't embrace as quality music.
Clapton's performance of Layla on Unplugged was good too.
I miss the ZZ TOP Videos the most. MTV died about 1985 or 86, after that it turned to crap.