Posted on 07/31/2006 4:31:14 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
(AP) NEW YORK -- No one knows how to throw a party like MTV. So there must be quite a bash planned for Aug. 1, celebrating 25 years on the air. Right?
Sorry. MTV is staying in that night. There are no plans to even mention the birthday.
When your average viewer is 20 years old — too young to remember Martha Quinn, not even born when Madonna buckled on her "boy toy" belt — perhaps it's wise not to mention you're 25. MTV wants to be the perpetual adolescent.
On a relentless mission to stay hip, MTV casually discards generations. Yesterday, "Beavis and Butt-head." Today, "Laguna Beach."
And at each stop, MTV changes pop culture.
Without MTV, you might not have reality television. Commercials wouldn't have vertigo-inducing quick cuts. Musicians wouldn't need to look like models to survive. Kelly Osbourne wouldn't have gotten near a recording studio. And only seamstresses would know about wardrobe malfunctions.
A look back at 25 memorable MTV moments:
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. Sometimes the screen would go black when someone at MTV inserted a tape into a VCR. Within a few years, millions of kids demanded their parents buy cable so they could see MTV. Along with CNN, it led TV's transition out of the three-channel world. "This was the fuse that lit the cable explosion," said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.
2. BEAT IT: March 31, 1983. Michael Jackson becomes the first black artist with a video on MTV. The segregation was MTV's early shame, ironic considering its later role in popularizing rap. And the early snub wasn't forgotten: "You don't have all of music television when you are leaving things out," says Los Lonely Boys singer Henry Garza.
3. THRILLER: Dec. 2, 1983. Less a video than a 14-minute mini-movie with Vincent Price, ghouls and goblins, the premiere of Jackson's "Thriller" was an event. MTV gave it a set time on the schedule — several, even. It was the apotheosis of the idea of music videos as an art form. With director John Landis involved, it also was proof that Hollywood's finest weren't looking down upon what are essentially promo clips.
4. MADONNA BUSTS OUT: Sept. 14, 1984. Performing "Like a Virgin" at the first Video Music Awards, Madonna popped out of a cake dressed in a wedding gown and writhed through her hit. At that moment, Madonna became a superstar, put the VMAs on the map and set an enduring tone. Who cares about those ugly "moon man" trophies? What matters is making the audience gasp.
5. MONEY FOR NOTHING: 1985. The Dire Straits song was about MTV, mocked MTV and became the band's biggest hit because of MTV. It was one of the first videos to feature computer animation, and Sting made a clever cameo echoing his role in iconic "I want my MTV" ads. The rules for music stardom had changed. Being photogenic was now crucial; an eye-catching video made hits. "It was America's first national radio network," says record executive Phil Quartararo.
6. BYE-BYE VJs: Original video jock J.J. Jackson's contract expired in 1985. Nina Blackwood followed him out the next year and so did Martha Quinn, breaking the hearts of countless teenage boys. Alan Hunter and Mark Goodman were next. Only Adam Curry lasted into the '90s. MTV refused to follow its aging first fans, courting teens instead. It also realized that airing videos was a dead end and began aggressively developing other programming. Those were probably the most important financial decisions MTV ever made.
7. SPRING BREAK: March 21, 1985: College students who couldn't make it south in person could turn on MTV to catch the party. Each year it returns, a drunken bash with young, firm, scantily clad bodies oozing with sweat and undulating to the music. Stop us! We need a cold shower. "There were people who looked like they were having sex on the dance floor," VJ Suzie Castillo says about last year's festivities in Cancun. MTV's spring break coverage arguably gave rise to the "Girls Gone Wild" video series, where the breasts didn't need to be pixelated.
8. RAP BLASTS OFF: Aug. 6, 1986. It's no coincidence that "Yo! MTV Raps!" premiered about the same time rap started becoming the dominant music form for young America. Hip white kids like Rick Rubin or the Beastie Boys may have loved rap before, but "Yo! MTV Raps!" brought it into every suburban living room. "Going from the network that was called on the carpet for not having blacks to this was a huge leap, and it was the right one for MTV," says Christina Norman, MTV's first black president.
9. PEE-WEE'S RETURN: Sept. 5, 1991. It was a hard fall for Pee-wee Herman, from star of one of television's most popular kids' shows to a national punch line when an undercover officer saw him masturbating in an adult theater. Herman went undercover himself for more than a month until creeping out onstage at the opening of that year's VMAs. "Heard any good jokes lately?" Herman asked, to howls of laughter.
10. ENTER GRUNGE: Sept. 29, 1991: Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" video killed the hair metal scene and signaled the ascendancy of grunge. The images themselves were an arresting accent, with the tattooed cheerleaders and what seemed like an underwater pep rally in a dank gymnasium. "The band, the sound and the imagery in the video was sort of a breath of fresh air — or a scream," said MTV series development guru Tony DiSanto.
11. CLAPTON UNPLUGGED: March 11, 1992. Only the most desperate of fading 1980s bands — Nuclear Valdez, Squeeze, the Alarm — responded to MTV's first requests to show off their acoustic chops. But fans responded to the intimacy and stars soon lined up: Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen (who got nervous and insisted on an electric guitar) — and Eric Clapton, in his first performance since his son died after falling from a skyscraper window. "Everybody who was there felt something special was going on," says Van Toffler, president of MTV's music services. Clapton had to be talked into releasing the show on CD, and it became his biggest-selling album.
12. BOXERS OR BRIEFS?: April 19, 1994. Two years in office, President Clinton submitted to 90 minutes of questions on complex policy issues by 16-to-20-year-olds before a live MTV audience. Everything else was forgotten when 17-year-old Laetitia Thompson of Potomac, Md., asked: "Mr. President, the world's dying to know. Is it boxers or briefs?" "Usually briefs," the president replied, looking slightly non-plussed. Today, most presidential candidates use MTV to reach first-time voters.
13. HEH-HEH. COOL: March 24, 1994: Who'd have thunk that "Beavis and Butt-head" would make the cover of Rolling Stone? When Toffler received a pilot tape of two adolescent cartoon characters playing baseball with a frog, he watched it nearly 100 times. "You have a feeling in your bones that there's something different about it that's unique and it will either flop miserably or succeed brilliantly." It was stupid, gross-out humor — but many older people secretly wished they could act that way.
14. REALITY BITES: June 23, 1994. It's hard to recall a time when setting up a group of strangers in a camera-filled home was a new idea. But the 1992 debut of "The Real World" "invented reality TV," says Thompson. "It's absolutely ground zero." And the inclusion of Pedro Zamora, who was gay and soon to die of AIDS, in the 1994 season did more to promote tolerance than hundreds of public service announcements. "It was probably the most riveting piece of television I had ever seen," says Brian Graden, then a young, gay man and now an MTV programming exec. "I had never seen someone like myself reflected back to me ... it really changed things for a whole generation of gay people."
15. FEEDBACK LOOP: April 14, 1998: Jesse Camp wins the first "I Wanna Be a VJ" contest. Stuck in a rut, MTV was searching for some way to make its audience feel connected to the network. The wild-haired, willfully outrageous Camp seemed sent from central casting, and it was the audience doing the casting.
16. TIMES SQUARE LIVE: Oct. 22, 1998. The Backstreet Boys shut down Times Square during a "Total Request Live" appearance. The ruckus cemented "TRL's" role as pop culture's home page, with Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears as king and queen of the new scene.
17. JIGGLE IT: Sept. 9, 1999. When Lil' Kim presented a VMA with a pasty-clad breast, Diana Ross couldn't resist a playful fondle. Lucky Ross wasn't there eight years earlier, when Prince performed wearing pants with the butt cut out. A year later, Howard Stern parodied that look by descending from the sky as "Fartman."
18. TIPSY: Oct. 1, 2000. Thinking about "Jackass" Johnny Knoxville getting tipped over in the port-a-potty still makes you hold your nose. Knoxville specialized in painful on-camera tricks, and "Jackass" quickly became MTV's most popular show. Unfortunately for MTV — or maybe fortunately if there's no such thing as bad publicity — many stunts were copied by viewers.
19. MARIAH'S MELTDOWN: July 19, 2001. No one knew quite how to react when Carey made a surprise appearance on "TRL" pushing an ice cream cart filled with popsicles. A nervous Carson Daly kept trying to cut to a commercial, but Carey wouldn't stop talking. She said she had a gift for him — then took off her oversized T-shirt to reveal a tight tank top and skimpy shorts. A week later Carey was checked into a hospital for "extreme exhaustion."
20. $ @ !: March 5, 2002: Sharrrr-rronnnn! The first bleeped-out swear word on "The Osbournes" premiere was followed by 58 others. For a while, the foggy-headed rocker, his type-A wife and self-involved kids became America's first family, if only for the sheer weirdness of their life. They quickly wore thin — and were responsible for a rash of dull has-beens who thought their lives would make great television — but not before Sharon got her own talk show, daughter Kelly a recording contract and son Jack a stint in rehab.
21. DOGGING EMINEM: Aug. 29, 2002: The rap star was in no mood to hear Triumph the Insult Comic Dog chew over his feud with Moby. So when approached by the puppet on the VMAs, Eminem delivered a sucker punch and then flew into a rage backstage. "He was really furious," said MTV executive vice president Dave Sirulnick, "which was startling because here was this guy who built his career on dissing and dishing. And this was a puppet."
22. ASHTON PUNKS JUSTIN: March 17, 2003. "Candid Camera" with an edge, the debut of Kutcher's series "Punk'd" had a crew posing as the "Tax Enforcement Agency" seizing Justin Timberlake's possessions after saying he owed $900,000 in back taxes. The title is now ensconced in the popular lexicon.
23. CHICKEN OR TUNA?: Aug. 19, 2003. "Newlyweds" followed the telegenic Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey as they navigated marital bliss. They truly became famous when cameras caught Simpson confused by whether a can of Chicken of the Sea contained tuna. Presto! America had a new favorite dim blonde.
24. THE KISS: Aug. 28, 2003. It was MTV's idea to bring back Madonna for a reprise of "Like a Virgin" for the 20th video music awards, and MTV's idea to pair her with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. The open-mouthed kiss that she planted on the two young stars? That was pure Madonna, and it outranked the creepy Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley for most memorable kiss.
25. STEPHEN & LC: Nov. 26, 2004. Viewers were gripped by the love triangle on new MTV hit "Laguna Beach," and Kristin's partying on spring break in this episode temporarily cost her her boyfriend. MTV's original idea was a reality version of "Beverly Hills 90210," but they ended up with a reality version of "The O.C." instead. The real-life soap opera breaks convention by unfolding slowly, with none of the reality TV cliches like confessional interviews. "Again," Thompson says, "MTV is two steps ahead."
"Beavis and Butt-head" = The finest TV entertainment ever created.
YES! HBB! Have you seen it lately? It's terrible. Sometimes they have an old video, though, like "Alison Hell" by Annihilator.
I can honestly say that I have not watched MTV in over 20 years, though. By the time I was a senior in college they had ruined the format (at least for me) and I'm sure my head would explode if I tried to watch the crap I hear about on MTV now.
Here's to the "good old days" (which is basically anything we fondly remember). :-)
I recently saw a copy of Zappa's 1981 Halloween show that was live on MTV and Frank had to endure questioning from Nina Blackwood. I'd forgotten how BRAINLESS she was and Zappa was completely brutal in his treatment of her. Priceless.
Now they don't even play music...
Heard VH1 was supposed to be a 48 hour special showing the first 48 hours of MTV. I remember in '85 thinking about all the whiny 30-somethings who couldn't get over their '60s nostalgia with My Generation and such shows. Now everything from the '80s is on the same channel.
"2. BEAT IT: March 31, 1983. Michael Jackson becomes the first black artist with a video on MTV. The segregation was MTV's early shame, ironic considering its later role in popularizing rap. And the early snub wasn't forgotten: "You don't have all of music television when you are leaving things out," says Los Lonely Boys singer Henry Garza."
I would dispute this. I remember seeing Ray Parker Jr.
(Raydio) singing "You Can't Change That" much before '83.
MTV doesn't play music, it doesn't have to. It sells celebrity now.
M2 sprung up to show the videos that MTV wasn't anymore and now M2 is more reality shows.
How many teen sex lifestyle channels does Viacom need?
They forget Musical Youth (Pass the Dutchie, 1982) and Eddy Grant (Electric Avenue, 1982) and Prince (Little Red Corvette, 1999 both 1983) and Herbie Hancock (Rockit, 1983)...
But then commies love to revise history.
Remember that the MTV/VH-1 Concert For New York had the police officers and firemen boos for Hillary Clinton overdub by Viacom with CHEERS. And that it the only version available from Sony.
"The segregation was MTV's early shame" - IRONIC considering Viacom is behind the black only BET. And where would one find the modern ROCK & ROLL bands with black singers like The Dirtbombs and The Bellrays? Oh wait, those are integrated bands (and Lisa Kekaula has a white husband). Unwelcome at MTV OR BET.
LOL
Great to watch when wasted!
Vaya con Cornholio
The Great Cornholio
Buttniks
Watching Radiohead's Creep
Screamers
Watching Korn's Blind
Woodshop
Watching Radiohead's Fake Plastic Trees
Watching Wax's California
Actually, "Billie Jean" debuted in December 1982.
"Electric Avenue" was in '83. The first video by a black artist was "Billie Jean" in December 1982. MTV initially refused to air the video because they said bluntly that a black artist would not appeal to their white rock audience. CBS Records head Walter Yetnikoff then threatened to ban his rock acts from making videos and MTV relented.
There are other factual errors in this article. JJ Jackson, Nina Blackwood and Martha Quinn were fired at the same time in 1986 (I think in June). Alan Hunter left a year later and Mark Goodman left in 1988. Quinn came back in 1989 and left three years later. "Yo MTV Raps" debuted in 1988, not 1986.
Well MTV has gone all black category in the latest video awards...
Best Rap
Best Hip Hop (what's the difference)
Best R&B
And then crossover categories like Best Male Vocal
Odd thing is I heard someone say that Grunge probably saved MTV and I think the idea has some truth to it.
Electric Avenue and Pass the Dutchie were both released and hits in 1982. Don't know when MTV started to show their videos. I do recall them being aired from about the beginning of my experience with MTV.
Psychedelic Furs "Love My Way" was the first video I saw (and I assume it was new in release). Was that 1982?
I moved away from Ohio and cable in spring of 1984 and recall at least 2 New Year's broadcasts.
I didn't get cable until February 1983 and I remember "Electic Avenue" as a current hit around the summer of 1983.
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