Showing posts with label 40th anniversary. Show all posts

Sunday, August 1, 2021

The 40th Anniversary of MTV

In celebration of MTV’s 40th anniversary, this is a snapshot of significant dates and videos in the network’s early years. This page covers from MTV’s beginnings on August 1, 1981 to the point when the network started to shift away from music and more toward general youth programming in 1992.

Spotify Podcast:

Check out the Dave’s Music Database podcast episode The Birth of MTV which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the cable network by showcasing some of the videos that were instrumental in establishing the format. It debuted August 3, 2021.

August 1, 1981: The Launch of MTV

The first video to air on the brand new network was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. You can see a full list of all the videos which aired during the first 24 hours here.

1982: Duran Duran “Hungry Like the Wolf”

Duran Duran were one of the first bands to become stars because of their videos. The early days of MTV were marked by a lot of videos from British new wave bands. Duran Duran were photogenic, had catchy songs, and grasped the power of video. “Hungry Like the Wolf” was shot in Sri Lanka and captured the atmosphere of the movie The Raiders of the Lost Ark.

March 10, 1983: “Billie Jean” Breaks the Color Barrier

Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” had already hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 when MTV aired the video for the first time. The video has been credited with breaking the network’s color barrier, which isn’t entirely accurate. The network was dominated by white, album-oriented artists, but they did play some black artists. However, “Billie Jean” was considered the video to knock down the doors, a move largely attributed to the president of CBS Records threatening to pull all the label’s videos from the network if they didn’t air “Billie Jean.” That year, Prince, Eddy Grant, Donna Summer, Herbie Hancock, and Lionel Richie followed with videos in heavy rotation.

December 2, 1983: “Thriller” premiered

By the end of 1983, Michael Jackson was the biggest music star on the planet, making the premiere of his epic video for “Thriller” a monumental event. The $900,000 budget was the biggest ever for a music video at the time. John Landis, who’d done An American Werewolf in London, directed the nearly-fourteen-minute, zombie-themed mini-movie and it transformed music videos into a serious art form. It ranks #1 on the Dave’s Music Database list of the Top 100 Videos of All Time.

March 9, 1984: First Top 20 Video Countdown

Four of the videos featured on the first countdown rank in the Dave’s Music Database list of the Top 100 Videos of All Time – the aforementioned “Thriller” at #14, “You Might Think” at #9, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” at #7, and “Jump” at #2. The #1 video that week was Kenny Loggins’ “Footloose.” You can see the full top 20 here.

“You Might Think” had just premiered on MTV that week. It would go on to be the first Video of the Year winner.

September 14, 1984: First Video Music Awards

Dan Aykroyd and Bette Midler served as hosts for MTV’s first annual Music Video Awards (often abbreviated as VMAs) ceremony, held at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. Among the awards given out were Video of the Year to the aforementioned “You Might Think” by the Cars, Female Video to Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” Male Video to David Bowie’s “China Girl,” Group Video to ZZ Top’s “Legs,” and Best New Artist Video to Eurythmics for “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This.”

The most memorable point of the night came not from an award winner, but a performance. Madonna debuted her song “Like a Virgin” dressed in a bridal gown and making waves by writhing around on the floor. One of the comments on the YouTube post said it “was the equivalent of breaking the Internet in the 80s.”

Check out the links below to see annual winners for various MTV video awards:

1985: aha “Take on Me”

“Take on Me” was first released in October 1984 and was a hit in a-ha’s native Norway, but didn’t gain an international audience. They re-recorded the song and shot a new video with director Steve Barron, who’d also directed Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and the Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me?.” The combination of live action and pencil-sketch animation took 16 weeks to finish. It won six awards at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards and ranks at #3 on the DMDB’s top 100 videos list.

1985: Dire Straits “Money for Nothing”

Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler was inspired to write “Money for Nothing” after overhearing a delivery man in an appliance store lamenting how easy musicians had it. The video played up the same idea with computer-animated versions of two working-class guys commenting on music videos. It ranks at #7 on the DMDB’s top 100 videos list and won Video of the Year in 1986.

March 10, 1986: 120 Minutes Premiered

The show focused on alternative rock and underground videos. One of the most celebrated videos of all time, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991),” made its debut on the network during the program. The classic which is largely credited as the quintessential grunge song ranks #4 on the DMDB’s top 100 videos list.

1986: Peter Gabriel “Sledgehammer”

The groundbreaking video combined claymation, pixilation, and stop-motion animation. Gabriel had to lay under a sheet of glass for 16 hours while the video was filmed one frame at a time. Although MTV didn’t say how many plays it had received, they revealed in 2000 that “Sledgehammer” was the most played video in their history. Nine of the top 10 were from the 1980s. See the article here. The video ranks at #2 on the DMDB’s top 100 videos list, and won the Video of the Year in 1987 as well as eight other awards.

April 18, 1987: The Headbangers’ Ball Premiered

The show focused on heavy metal music. Guns N’ Roses first appeared on the show in October to promote their Appetite for Destruction album and trashed the set. Their single at the time, “Welcome to the Jungle,” became a top 10 hit on the pop charts in 1988 after the success of their #1 single “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” Both songs appear on the DMDB’s top 100 videos list.

August 6, 1988: Yo! MTV Raps Premiered

The show celebrated hip-hop music. Run-DMC became one of the most important rap acts of the 1980s. Their song “Rock Box,” from 1984, was the first rap video in rotation on MTV. Their 1986 remake of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” was the first top 10 rap hit on the Billboard Hot 100. The inventive video cheekily pitted Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry against the rap trio in a battle to see who could outdo the other with them covering together in the end. It appears at #17 on the DMDB’s top 100 videos list.

November 26, 1989: MTV Unplugged Premiered

The show featured artists performing their songs acoustically. Early episodes featured a variety of artists. The very first episode included Squeeze, Syd Straw, and Elliot Easton. Later episodes focused on big-name stars, including Tony Bennett, Mariah Carey, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Nirvana, Rod Stewart, and Neil Young. Many of the Unplugged performances were released as albums. Eric Clapton’s was the most successful, going ten times platinum and winning the Grammy for Album of the Year.

May 21, 1992: Real World Premiered

This unscripted TV show followed seven real people thrown into a house together and filmed to see how they interacted. Not only did it launch reality shows, but it marked a shift in MTV’s programming from exclusively music-based to more teen and young-adult programming. Many have since lamented the disappearance of “music” from “Music Television.” In fact, the network did eventually just go by “MTV” and did not refer to itself as Music Television anymore.

Resources and Related Links:

Dave’s Music Database: “Top 100 Videos of All Time”
Dave’s Music Database (8/1/1981). “MTV Went on the Air”

First posted 8/1/2021.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Woodstock "Remembered" - by Someone Who Wasn't There

Check the Dave’s Music Database Facebook page for daily music-related posts. Also check out books by Dave Whitaker, including the collection of past blog entries, No One Needs 21 Versions of “Purple Haze”…And Other Essays from a Musical Obsessive. This essay is included in that book.

Note: the original 8/14/09 post was re-edited in August 2011 with images and videos added.

When the original Woodstock thrust itself upon the world four decades ago, I was all of two years old. Considering my parents were neither interested in rock & roll nor the counterculture, I have no great tale of toddling along in a diaper amidst the hippie masses. I didn’t behold Jimi Hendrix wailing on “The Star Spangled Banner” or witness Country Joe’s infamous – ahem – “FISH” chant (or any of the behavior it advocated). There will be no firsthand accounts from me of seeing people destined for the “freak out” tent or slithering nude through the mud. All I’ve got to “remember” what transpired at Yasgur’s farm on that August weekend in 1969 is a computer hard drive stocked with hours of live performances.

There’s an old joke that if all those who claimed to be there really were, then the 400,000+ official festival goers would swell to millions. Subtract those who may have been present physically but not necessarily otherwise, and there’s no telling how many people were or weren’t there. It begs the question of whether actually being there was a prerequisite to claiming the event as one’s own.

Perhaps more importantly is the question of whether it still matters. Certainly Woodstock has been co-opted as the definitive symbol of a generation’s passions, be they the more hedonistic pleasures of sex, drugs, and rock & roll or the more idealistic dreams of peace, love, and harmony in the face of the Viet Nam War and the draft. Interestingly, there isn’t complete agreement on the significance of Woodstock even among actual attendees. Some “treasured the festival as an adventure that changed their lives. Others found it nothing but a messy, dirty, disorganized debacle.” ^BWC

So what lasting effect can that “Aquarian Exposition” boast amidst debate over what it meant even then? In the USA Today article, writer Jerry Shriver asks if “Woodstock’s organic, peace-and-love-through-music legacy still resonates – and whether it’s relevant to young people living in a high-tech, marketing-driven era of splintered musical tastes, widely diverse political views and short attention spans.” ^JS

Festival co-founder Michael Lang asserts that “a lot of those seeds planted in the Woodstock era are beginning to flower…From the green movement to sustainable development and organic gardening, all these things seem to be coming back to us.” ^JS Sam Yasgur, whose father Max Yasgur offered up his farm as the festival grounds, says that Woodstock was about “the right to gather, the right to criticize, the right to dress funny, the right to listen to your own music.” ^JS That message resonates with the youth of any generation.

Max Yasgur

Then there’s the business model of Woodstock. As Lollapalooza founder Perry Farrell points out, “the staging of Woodstock, haphazard as it was, remains important because it influences every large concert and festival staged today.” ^JS The original festival treated its guests to a bevy of inadequate conditions including lack of shelter, food, water, bathroom facilities, and parking. Today’s festivals have largely heeded those lessons – even if the variety of festival options has spread the audience thin enough that today’s festival planners are unlikely to face gate crashing on the scale of Woodstock.

Here’s the thing – even if you dismiss Woodstock as a symbol of ‘60s counterculture and the “make love, not war” ethos or as the how-to-make-a-buck-at-a-festival-gone-haywire business model, it mattered. It wasn’t just what ABC News called “the most celebrated rock festival of all time” ^SDJ for those reasons – it was also about the music, stupid! As Justin Gage, founder of the music blog Aquarium Drunkard, asks, “Were people going to Woodstock for change or to party and listen to music? I think it’s more of the latter.” ^JS

Creem magazine editor Dave Marsh cynically states, “It wasn’t utopian…Utopian has plumbing. It wasn’t idyllic. Woodstock is important because it was big.” ^JS Oddly, what generates the least press is the festival’s astounding lineup – Jimi Hendrix; the Who; the Grateful Dead; Crosby, Stills & Nash; Creedence Clearwater Revival; Janis Joplin; Santana; Jefferson Airplane; Sly & the Family Stone; the Band; Joan Baez; Joe Cocker; Blood, Sweat & Tears and more. Oh sure, there were some “where are they now” performers thrown in the mix (the Keef Hartley Band? Quill? Bert Sommer?), but mostly the big names at Woodstock are still big names today.

So, in response to the question of whether or not Woodstock still matters, I can speak only from the perspective of a rock music fan who wasn’t among the throngs. I’ll be spending as much time as I can this weekend glued to my computer, downloading and listening to music while scouring the Internet for others’ reminiscing about the events of 40 years ago. Alas, there will be no mud or nudity involved in my exploit; I’ll be wearing a freshly-laundered tie-dye shirt.