My favorite MTV memory is Liquid Television. Weird cartoons like Aeon Flux and The Maxx and The Head
Those were all so good. Aeon Flux (even though it was American), Akira, and Ghost in the Shell got me into Anime.
That was also an incredible time for sketch comedy with The State!, Kids in The Hall, and Upright Citizens Brigade. You could just leave MTV on and always get something good.
Then they had to learn how much money they could make off reality tv with The Real World, and everything went to shit. It’s a damn shame.
Kids in The Hall
My favorite sketch show of all time, believe it or not. I’m squishing your head.
The Real World
Even the first Real World was a lot better than later years of MTV. I think one thing that MTV never gets credit for is helping to normalize homosexuality in US culture, which they did by always having a gay cast member in the show.
Mine is definitely Beavis and Butthead. That came much later, but I was just old enough to get beer and my friends and I would sit around, drinking beer watching Beavis and Butthead, and laughing our asses off. Yeah! Yeah! Cool.
I rewatched Beavis & Butthead Do America a few months back and laughed from start to finish. Mike Judge is a goddamn genius
Honestly kinda sad I missed the “golden years” of MTV. I didn’t grow up with cable or satellite TV; so my sister and I would watch the shit out of Nickelodeon, cartoon network, discovery and animal planet when we were on vacation or at our grandparents house. However, I grew up with my parents waxing poetic about how MTV used to have the best music and they would have (supposedly) gotten a cable or satellite connection if only MTV still showed music videos.
Looking back it was obvious bullshit and they wouldn’t have gotten a subscription even if MTV only played their favorite bands and music videos; but at the time it meant I was always hoping MTV would start showing music videos again so my parents would get cable and my sister and I could watch cartoons, science, nature, history and engineering shows.
Before Spotify I would find new music from MTV. Though back then I didn’t know I liked techno more than anything else and I would’ve never found out from watching MTV
How did you find out? I realized that I really like EDM when I started going to nightclubs.
When flying back home with my family from a trip. Airplanes didnt have individual screens and the movie that was on was terrible (on the shared tvs), so I kept checking every radio station available until I heard (not 100% sure on this) Heaven from DJ Sammy and suddenly I REALLY like music for the first time in my life.
So thankful someone took me to a Dirtybird show as a late-blooming electronic fan 🥰
Though back then I didn’t know I liked techno more than anything else and I would’ve never found out from watching MTV
MTV had the show called AMP that would play very late at night. Electronic music videos during the late 90s.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBXO-yEpu7qfeUQoFVHFsZuHdHAxOW6O8
Headbanger’s ball was the best. And many of the MTV unplugged concerts are now classics
I still prefer the MTV premier date as the line between Gen X and Millennials No specific date is going to be great at describing generations anyway, and its a fun landmark.
I remember the first time I saw MTV.
Back in spring of 1982, traveling down the Baja California peninsula with my parents and brothers, we stayed a night at the La Pinta hotel in Guerrero Negro, a coastal town right on the state border between Baja and Baja Sur.
During dinner, I asked the man in charge if there was any chance of putting MTV on the hotel atrium television. He enthusiastically said yes, but they had to look it up, they’d never gotten such a request before, didn’t know where to point the large dish out in the desert garden, which satellite MTV was in.
After dinner, I sat on the couch, a lone figure in the atrium, as hotel guests opted for the garden or their rooms. The VJs that night were JJ Jackson and Martha Quinn, played things like “Girls On Film” by Duran Duran, “China Girl” by David Bowie, “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” by Utopia, “Goodbye To You” by Scandal, “Escalator Of Life” by Robert Hazard, “Shock The Monkey” by Peter Gabriel, “Demolition Man” by The Police.
The ambiance created by this channel in this setting, was like an exciting shock of cool water, like being pulled from ancient times into a modern, more connected world. From my small-city, sheltered perspective.
This experience lasted for three or four hours, then at midnight it was lights out at the lobby and atrium, time to go to bed, and it was over.
I didn’t see MTV live again for years, although 6-hour VHS taped recordings of MTV made the rounds among friends, the way tapes of recorded KROQ from LA did, our main connection to a larger world of music.
It was perfect, just enough to get my juices flowing at that age, like Harry Haller in Herman Hesse’s “The Steppenwolf” - For Madmen Only, but for a teenager - but not enough for the rotation of videos to kick in and become repetitive. Right at that sweet spot that seared a mystique into my memory of the moment.
Back in spring of 1982
I think your memories are off a little date-wise. Bowie’s Let’s Dance was released in 1983 and Peter Gabriel’s Security was released in late 1982.
Martha Quinn
I’m still in love with her.
That’s true! It must have been “Ashes To Ashes” then, because I clearly remember Bowie that night.
“Shock The Monkey” must have been on the first recorded VHS tape of MTV I got my hands on, probably a year later.
