A Concise History Of MTV (1989-Present)

Thoughts On Synth Britannia

It isn't often that I come across a documentary that hits so close to home for me by zeroing in on a subject I was once truly passionate about, whether we're talking space exploration, oceanography, paleontology, cartography, or, in this particular case, the electronic pop music of the early 1980s.

BBCFour's fascinating documentary Synth Britannia was, for me, a lot like watching a documentary about my own "musical awakening" in 1981 and 1982. Like pretty much every other kid in seventh and eighth grade, I listened to the local Top 40 station and let them relentlessly pound the hits of the era into my skull, but it was that exotic, impossibly perfect, alien-sounding electronic pop music that I could only find on MTV that held me completely rapt back then.


A year later, for a few incredible months, that same wonderful, mesmerizing music actually threatened to become the Top 40 in this country; a time that I will always remember as one of those mini "golden ages" when it seemed like mainstream radio could do no wrong (sadly, I don't think another one of these eras came along until 1990 or so). Synth Britannia covers that magical time period and the years that led up to it, tracking the rise of electronic music as a form of pop music from roughly 1977 to the middle of 1983.

Ever since watching that program, I've been stuck in a bit of a time warp as far as my home play list is concerned. The last two weeks in this office have been soundtracked by the best of the golden age of wireless; revisiting the early glories of Ultravox!, discovering the rich solo career of their forgotten original leader John Foxx, marveling anew at the recently remastered Kraftwerk catalog, taking another stab at Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire (two challenging proto-electronic acts that I last sampled during my early 90s industrial phase) and playing through the entire Depeche Mode catalog while poring over the incredible Beatles Anthology-styled mini-movies packaged with their "collector's edition" releases that cumulatively chronicle their entire existence from 1991-2002 in incredibly revealing detail.

There were many joys and highlights to Synth Britannia, but perhaps the most striking part of the program was seeing these once unremittingly dour pop culture figures opening up a bit and showing that they didn't take themselves as completely seriously as, say, Sting does. OMD bassist and lead singer Andy McCluskey in particular was hilarious, while Human League singer Phil Oakey spins a good tale as well. Both figures offered plenty of pointed (and funny) insights into the electonic scene and their respective roles in it (with McCluskey getting a delicious parting shot at 90s Britpop at the very end). It was also interesting to hear deposed League synthesist Martyn Ware admit his jealousy at Gary Numan's "Cars" and discuss his motivations to challenge the his former band's chart supremacy with Heaven 17.

Now for the inevitable whining blogger complaints ...

The biggest problem with Synth Britannia is that, even at 90 minutes in length, you come away from the program a bit let down in the end since it seems to run full-tilt into a brick wall about 88 minutes in. I can understand and maybe even agree with Mr. Critic's point that the genre turned overtly commercial somewhere during 1983 (and the quick cut from that statement to poor Howard Jones dancing about with Jed The Dancing Mime was admittedly a hoot), yet it felt like a cop-out to end the program by saying "... and then things got really lame. The end." Regardless of what the producers may think of the Thompson Twins, I wanted more, and being told in effect that every synth-based act to come down the pike after the middle of 1983 was another load of bandwagoning crap struck me as irritatingly purist, especially when following the lionizing of Soft Cell, for crissakes.

I was also a wee bit irked that the Walter/Wendy Carlos' soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange seemed to be the lone early progenitor to synthpop, with no mention whatsoever given to David Bowie's Low (an album that, to me, is a far more obviously influential work). This omission becomes a bit more glaring when significant face time is slotted to Numan, whose twin genre classics Replicas and The Pleasure Principle owed an undeniable stylistic debt to Bowie's 1977 masterpiece.

Lastly, there is that inevitable list of bands that failed to make the cut. I'm sure this had much to do with time and budget constraints, but you also wonder if there was some unspoken lumping in of these missing artists with the post-1983 acts disparaged above. Was Thomas Dolby too commercial to count as true synthpop? Talk Talk? Visage? Pete Shelley? Blancmange?

My own geeky grumbings aside, Synth Britannia is definitely worth your time if you're into this kind of music. Here's hoping there will be some more in-depth examinations of this era in the future.

The videos linked throughout this post (and a lot more in the same spirit, including some very cool live BBC performances) can be found here.

Michael Jackson: 1958-2009

Video killed the radio star, hip-hop killed rock, mp3 killed the album, runaway consolidation and niche marketing killed pop music, and now the self-appointed King Of Pop is dead. I guess it all adds up in the end somehow, doesn't it?

For me, this news isn't quite like Kurt Cobain shooting himself with Nirvana still reigning (albeit in wobbly fashion) as the biggest rock act on the planet: the shock and loss just isn't there. The Michael Jackson that I choose to remember fondly tonight vanished over twenty years ago: a troubled ex-child star who'd started to come apart at the seams in the turbulent wake of one of the biggest pop culture achievements of the century. If you want to read a more thorough and in-depth life story or perhaps a litany of his greatest weirdest moments, you're going to have to look elsewhere as I'm here to celebrate Jackson's halcyon days before the looming specter of middle age and the yawning chasm of 24/7 celebrity culture programming turned his life into the world's weirdest reality show.

There will be a lot of talk about financial foolishness, lost childhood and Peter Pan obsessions, but if you really want to get some clearer idea of the real tragedy of Michael Jackson, simply watch "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough," "Rock With You" and "Billie Jean" for a clear look at the vibrant, raw talent he once was. Primitive by today's standards (oooh, lasers!) these clips still offer an instant primer to understanding Jackson's popularity at the time as his voice, stage presence and stunning physical grace were simply unmatched in pop music.

Then along came The Big One: despite essentially being a PG-rated re-shoot of An American Werewolf In London (by way of a George Romero zombie film), the John Landis-directed "Thriller" video continues to hold up under scrutiny 26 years after its debut. Universally hailed at the time as the greatest video ever created, there are definitely arguments that can be made that "Thriller" still holds claim to the title. Even if you disagree on that point, there is no argument that "Thriller" remains a conceptual, cultural and budgetary milestone, and perhaps the most fully-formed realization of the possibilities of the music video format. That said, this short film (and, more to the point, its parent album) also created an impossible standard that Jackson sought continuously to beat for the rest of his life.

The follow-up to a blockbuster solo debut, Thriller was not only the kind of a mega hit you only saw once per decade, it pretty much dominated the entire year of 1983 (with only The Police's Synchronicity putting up any kind of spirited fight for the throne). As a fourteen year old with an insatiable fascination for the music business, Thriller made for a hell of a story to follow as single after single made the Top 10 and the album sold in the kinds of quantities that record companies never dared to dream of. Beyond that angle, I don't think Thriller had a major effect on my tastes as I was pretty well over the moon on New Wave and electropop, with my taste in R&B more along the lines of "Rockit" and "Little Red Corvette" than, say, "P.Y.T." Listening to the album now remains a largely entertaining 45 minutes, with the lyrical subtexts a lot more noticeable thanks to the passage of time: Thriller is the state of Jackson's psyche at the end of 1982: a bit naive ("Human Nature"), intermittently dark and intense ("Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "Beat It"), yet possessed of a certain charming innocence that, in its resolute failure to change, started to became increasingly creepy and disconcerting over the albums that followed.

A barely-memorable reunion album and tour with The Jacksons in 1984 was the only peep the world heard from Michael Jackson for nearly three years while the hub-bub from Thriller-mania gradually died down. It was during this crucial down time that throwaway sight gags in comedies like Beverly Hills Cop began to send-up Jackson's style and image, while the first real whispers of "that boy ain't right" began to circulate in the gossip columns. Over time, the aura of invincibility around The Gloved One began to ever-so-slowly dim.

Then came 1987's ravenously-awaited Bad, which managed to become a decent-sized follow up for Jackson as far as sales and popularity were concerned (and I don't think anyone aside from Jackson really expected anything approaching halfway to Thriller's ridiculous level of success), but was also a record that I personally found to be a troubling letdown. Despite some of returning producer Quincy Jones' best work and top-flight musicianship deployed throughout, Bad was the beginning of Jackson ratcheting up his own self-importance to nearly unbearable levels while perfecting the art of writing songs and creating videos that screamed "HEY EVERYBODY! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! DAMN IT, GO AWAY AND STOP LOOKING AT ME!"

Four years after Thriller, high-budget music videos with dialogue and Hollywood actors were commonplace, and Jackson had his work cut out for him attempting to reset the playing field. In trying to continually up the ante on himself, Jackson's newer clips became self-parodic mini-epics where he tried to have it both ways: you know, the kiddie-friendly entertainer who happens to be a hard-assed, hair-trigger street-fighting man not to be trifled with by anyone (eventually up to and including Marlon Brando for crissakes). It is here that I signed off and moved on, letting what eventually became Wacko Jacko The Morphing Human Freakshow become the preferred pet of the tabloid crowd. Besides, by 1988, I was neck deep in the far more interesting weirdness being released by Prince, Jackson's only true competition that whole decade, if not exactly his successor.

In the end, I'll simply forget that the last 20 years ever happened as far as Jackson's career goes and remember him for that first electric decade of solo work and the timeless 70s soul he cut as a child with The Jackson 5. After that, let's just say that he wasn't my King Of Pop. Dangerous? Hardly. Invincible? No. HIStory? Sadly, yes.

Doin' The Time Warp

Twenty one years ago last month, someone somewhere out there decided to videotape three hours of MTV (commercials, VJ bits and all) and then shelve the tape for posterity. At some point recently, this person then took out the old tape, played it back while running it through a video capture program and put up two massive .avi files of the whole thing (in pretty decent quality stereo to boot) up in one of the usenet video binary groups I monitor.

Now, I don't know who this person is, where they live, or why they went to all the work to cap and post this little time capsule, but I would just to comment that they completely RAWK my world right now. I've just finished watching all 3 hours of ancient old-school MTV, and it was pretty damn remarkable-bordering-on-amazing viewing experience.

O.K., I have to admit here that there was one part of this cultural time warp that wasn't very amazing, and that was the playlist itself. For all of the great music MTV nearly single-handedly exposed me to in 1982 and 1983, this chunk of programming time doesn't exactly hit a lot of high musical watermarks ...

Night Ranger "Don't Tell Me You Love Me"
Huey Lewis & The News "Heart & Soul"
The Tubes "Monkey Time (Live)"
Prince "Little Red Corvette"
George Thorogood & The Destroyers "Bad To The Bone"
The Police "Synchronicity II"
Sammy Hagar "Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy (Live)"
Steve Miller Band "Jet Airliner (Live)"
Kansas "Fight Fire With Fire"
Michael Bolton "Fool's Game"
Quiet Riot "Cum On Feel The Noize"
Bow Wow Wow "Do You Wanna Hold Me"
The Who "You Better You Bet"
The Motels "Suddenly Last Summer"
Madness "Our House"
Nick Heyward "Whistle Down The Wind"
ZZ Top "Sharp Dressed Man"
Garland Jeffreys "96 Tears (Live)"
Stevie Nicks "If Anyone Falls"
Elton John "I'm Still Standing"
Thompson Twins "Lies"
Billy Idol "Dancing With Myself"
Men At Work "It's A Mistake"
Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson "Say Say Say"
Quarterflash "Take Another Picture"
David Bowie "Modern Love"
Billy Squier "Lonely Is The Night (Live)"
INXS "The One Thing"
The Romantics "Talking In Your Sleep"
Jefferson Starship "Be My Lady"
Robert Plant "Burning Down One Side"
Talking Heads "Burning Down The House"
Split Enz "One Step Ahead"
The Fixx "Red Skies (Live)"
The Pretenders "Back On The Chain Gang"
Joe Walsh "I Can Play That Rock N' Roll"

Egad, Michael fuckin' Bolton. Ow ow ow. Lemme tell you, that was a fun one to explain my girlfriend while it played. Sheesh, this must have been the only 3 hours bloc of MTV programming in all of 1983 that did not feature Duran Duran, Icehouse, Blancmange, ABC, Naked Eyes, Thomas Dolby, U2, Berlin, Adam Ant, Culture Club, Eurythmics, Devo, A Flock Of Seagulls, Eddy Grant, Heaven 17, Missing Persons, Ultravox, Talk Talk, Wall Of Voodoo, Yello, Men Without Hats, X, or even Burning Sensations. Dohhh.

Anyway, back to the interesting/remarkable parts of this experience ... the playlist above (embarrassing content aside) makes startlingly clear just how many "recurrents" were in MTV's rotation at the time, even when videos were exploding in number and influence. Of the 36 listed videos above (a staggering number in itself when you consider that MTV might show a few more than this in a week's span these days), only 6 were for songs in that week's Billboard Top 40 singles chart, and 9 in the whole Hot 100.

Also striking was just how cheap and comparatively low-tech everything was done back then. I'm not really talking about the videos here (truthfully, the only comparatively "expensive" videos back then were done by Asia, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson and Duran Duran) so much as the entire MTV production itself. Watching Mark Goodman sitting around on the floor of an indie-record shop kind of set while reading music news from index cards, seeing lots of primitive, non-animated TV productions class-grade screen graphics for concert dates (and the odd black and white artist pic), the self-effacing humor in the channel's promotional clips touting stereo broadcasting...it was like watching the complete antithesis of what MTV looks like now. There was no flash in the presentation whatsoever, no irritatingly transparent pandering to a specific target demographic, no Carson Daly, no game shows, no godawful motherfucking reality shows.

Sorry, I got off on a tangent, didn't I? O.K., taking a couple of deep breaths and attempting to quell my forthing, near-atavistic loathing of everything MTV has become and represents since, oh, 1992 or so. Back to memory lane ...

Perhaps the funniest part of the experience was watching all of the advertising sandwiched between often-excruciating videos and Goodman's clownish, pre-slacker delivery of news and forthcoming channel events (tune in for the world premiere of Bob Dylan's first video "Sweetheart Like You!" OMG!). The most refreshing/maddening aspect of the ads was their relative paucity to what we're used to these days on any channel: there are never more than two consecutive commercials on this recording, and sometimes only one ad airs during a music break. Also interesting was the wide breadth of advertisers covering a pretty wide range of possible demos, which I'm sure was a result of no one on Madison Avenue knowing who the hell was watching MTV and when. Indeed, it's pretty difficult now to imagine a time when MTV not only had to scramble for programming content but also had to accept advertising from whomever offered in order to keep themselves afloat, and the cast of contributors was quite varied: Pioneer, Cambridge Cologne, Sega, Atari, Cody Wild Musk (this was a hilarious ad), Murray, Wrangler, the National Coffee Association, Raisinets, Safeguard soap, the Chevy Chase bomb Deal Of The Century, Big Red chewing gum, Compound W, Twix, Sansui, K-Tel/Time-Life knockoffs, and Hubba Bubba bubblegum.

So, this was MTV in the first week of November 1983.

* Tons of music videos
* No non-musical programming whatsoever
* A few commercials here and there
* VJ's that acted at least functionally intelligent and seemed to actually be enthusiastic about the music they back-announced and not who Puck pissed off on the last Real World.

Damn, those were the days...