It is common knowledge that The Buggles track was the first blast off song featured on the opening of MTV as a video giant on 8/1/81. However, how many of you out there can name the second song and artist that was shown on that fateful day?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNfRl7XlLkw
The second one was Pat Benatar's You Better Run. I've known that for a good 30-something years now, because I remember the VJ's regularly pointed it out when they'd play it.
The third video, I believe, was Rod Stewart's She Won't Dance With Me, which makes his then-bassist, Phil Chen, the first non-Caucasian musician to appear on MTV.
The fourth video shown was the Buggles song again.
Just kidding! MTV's birth was perfectly times with the beginning of college for me, so that we could spend hours a day watching MTV. The Safety Dance must have come along pretty soon after this - the king of all music videos.
I don't know why I know this dren, but the fourth video was You Better You Bet by The Who. It was also the first video to be played twice on MTV.Originally Posted by JKL2000
Also appearing in the first day of MTV were The Specials, Rockpile w/Robert Plant, Rockestra, The Vapors, April Wine, The Pretenders, Rainbow, Robin Lane And The Chartbusters), PhD, Lee Ritenour (!), Lani Hall and Herb Alpert (!!), Juice Newton (!!!), Andrew Gold (!!!!), Cliff Richard (!!!!!), Leo Sayer (!!!!!!), Louise Goffin (Carol King's daughter, in case you didn't know), Iron Maiden, Kate Bush, Genesis, and REO Speedwagon.
You can find all the sordid details here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...s_aired_on_MTV
Looking over the list I see they played Gerry Rafferty (at least two songs) that first day as well. I remember seeing Lee Ritenour clips once or twice. They had some stuff for that early 80's yacht rock/fusion demographic before the Thriller and Duran Duran wave came in.
Also two David Bowie videos the first day ("Boys Keep Swinging" and "Fashion," both twice). They played a lot of his Lodger/Scary Monsters songs.
Did anybody else's city have a local tv station that patterned itself after MTV?
This lasted about a year and a half and then the owners sold the station to Home Shopping Network despite having fairly decent ratings.
I remember my boy-friend recorded a lot of videos from MTV. Actualy I did the same. Still have a whole collection of videotapes. Not only with MTV, but also with televised concerts and music from other channels.
Nowadays MTV isn't music anymore, just all kind of reality-shows, like TLC has as well. Perhaps they should change their names to RTV and TRC.
And more here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV
Because of my tendency to focus on the obscure, I know that "Little Suzi's on the Up" by Ph.D. was one of the first half-dozen videos they ever showed.
I also remember early MTV was so strapped for content in those early days, that they used to show this one Dean Martin video! It looked especially weird when surrounded by all that quirky new wave stuff they showed back then!
I knew MTV was over circa 1986, when Hollywood jumped on board. MTV went from free-form, anything goes craziness to 90% bland big-budget movie tie-in soundtrack numbers. The videos also suffered, going from experimental, sometimes surreal weirdness to "shot of the band, clip from the movie, shot of the band, clip from the movie, etc. etc. ad nauseam" for the most part.
Last edited by Progbear; 06-16-2023 at 01:05 AM.
Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883...
It's not surprising that Fashion got a lot of airplay. If you watch that video very carefully, you'll spot original MTV VJ Alan Hunter among the performers (which also include Khandi Alexander, John Lennon's former mistress May Pang, Hall & Oates guitarist GE Smith, and Bowie's longtime guitarist Carlos Alomar). Unfortunately, the video uses the single edit, which basically cuts out most of Chuckles' guitar solo.
But apart from that, I also remember seeing DJ, Look Back In Anger, Heroes, and Ashes To Ashes a lot. I don't remember seeing Boys Keep Swinging in the early days. I don't remember seeing that until they started doing this "Classic MTV" block in the late 80's, hosted by Martha Quinn. I always had the impression maybe MTV didn't play it, or maybe stopped playing it, because someone got upset about Bowie dragging it up at the end of the video. Or maybe someone got antsy about playing a song that ends with an one minute plus guitar solo, and specifically that guitar solo.
We didn't have a video station, but we did have a locally produced music video show. I think it aired on WAKC, the Akron, Ohio ABC affilliate (yes, for some reason, Akron had it's own ABC station...they had, and still have, their own PBS station too). The thing I remember about it was they played a lot of R&B stuff that you didn't see on MTV, and in particular, I remember seeing Stanley Clarke's version of Born In THe USA on their show (it wasn't pretty, though at the time I thought it was cool).
But there were a lot of shows that jumped on the MTV bandwagon. I remember TBS had an overnight show ont he weekends called Night Tracks. And I seem to recall that Ted Turner tried to followup the success of TBS and CNN with a music video channel (which tanked).
Is there a bigger shock than Lee Ritenour?
My buddy and I spent a lot of Saturday nights watching Headbangers Ball on MTV. There was a lot of crap played, but about every 4th or 5th video would be a good one.
Heh, I remember complaints about his solo on Peter Gabriel's "I Don't Remember" as well.
I haven't heard I Don't Remember in so long, I don't remember there being a guitar solo.
MTV's daytime programming stopped interesting me by the mid 80's but I watched 120 Minutes in the 90's (programmed the VCR to record it).
I did not get as much mileage out of 120 Minutes as I was more of a hard rocker, but they did play some interesting stuff.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks