Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just a few
Speaker 2: MTV generation babies hanging out talking about MTV on this
Speaker 2: MTV episode of Stuff You Should Know About MTV.
Speaker 3: D Dan Dan, Dan Dent, dan At, dann Nnett, dann Nnett.
Speaker 2: That's I'll be able to do that with my dying breath.
Speaker 2: It's so ingrained in my head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, how can you not picture Neil Armstrong
Speaker 1: jumping off onto that moon yep with an MTV flag.
Speaker 2: For sure, and like a multi changing MTV flag that's
Speaker 2: just drawing over the American flag. It's just iconic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But hey, people, uh, the answers to who wrote
Speaker 1: that song and who came up with that idea, they're
Speaker 1: all in this jam packed episode about MTV where we
Speaker 1: are surely going to wax nostalgic.
Speaker 2: I think it would be impossible not to. As a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, I challenge us to try not to
Speaker 2: be nostalgic in this episode.
Speaker 1: I've already ruined it. I just air guitar the MTV theme.
Speaker 2: We'll exclude that Okay, so we're talking about MTV. I
Speaker 2: don't think there's many people out there who don't know
Speaker 2: what MTV is. It's a global juggernaut, or it certainly
Speaker 2: was at one point in time. But for those who
Speaker 2: may not be familiar, MTV stood for Music Television, and
Speaker 2: it was what most people consider the first network dedicated
Speaker 2: to playing music videos. It's not true, but it's close
Speaker 2: enough that you might as well just say, fine, we'll
Speaker 2: go with that as the definition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And this was not the beginning of
Speaker 1: music videos music videos where MTV did not create the
Speaker 1: music videos. They just were the first channel. Well that's
Speaker 1: not even true either, so I'm just gonna shut up now.
Speaker 1: Some people point to the song Chantilly Lace from nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight from The Big Bopper as maybe the first
Speaker 1: music video because it was not just a film of
Speaker 1: a band playing their song, but there was some performative
Speaker 1: theatrics to it.
Speaker 2: I saw one earlier by sixteen years with Cab calloway
Speaker 2: doing Mini the Moocher.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, the Beatles are who people usually point to.
Speaker 1: It's kind of starting out the music video thing where
Speaker 1: they showed the band doing other things and they were
Speaker 1: a little more elaborate and had different scenes and you
Speaker 1: could see those on Top of the Pops on BBC
Speaker 1: or the Ed Sullivan Show. And then that Bohemian Rhapsody
Speaker 1: video from Queen from nineteen seventy five was one of
Speaker 1: the big ones, and they expressly did that so they
Speaker 1: didn't have to lip sync a performance on Top of
Speaker 1: the Pops.
Speaker 2: And that's a full eight years before MTV came out,
Speaker 2: so that was like a definitive music video that they
Speaker 2: played on MTV for like decades to come. It was
Speaker 2: just a great video, but it also kicked off something
Speaker 2: really important that led to MTV, which was it became
Speaker 2: kind of standard in the recording industry to create a
Speaker 2: music video for maybe the top single or something of
Speaker 2: a big album that a big act was coming out
Speaker 2: with to use as a marketing or promotional tool. So
Speaker 2: apparently Queen kicked that off with the Bohemian Rhapsody video.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, there were some countries had like, you know,
Speaker 1: music video shows. It would be on maybe late night
Speaker 1: or something on a weird station. New Zealand had a
Speaker 1: radio with pictures in nineteen seventy six on the nose
Speaker 1: the USA Network, And I do remember this. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight, they had a show called Video Concert Hall.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember. I didn't like sit there glued to it
Speaker 1: like I did MTV because I was still just seven
Speaker 1: years old, and I think it was a late night thing.
Speaker 1: But it was really you know, the MTV story goes
Speaker 1: and locks up with the story of cable television. By
Speaker 1: the way, big thanks to Olivia for this and little hint
Speaker 1: up coming on Thursday, we're gonna round it out with
Speaker 1: an episode on VH one. What Yes, you knew that?
Speaker 2: Real?
Speaker 1: You didn't know that? No? Yeah, I told you in
Speaker 1: an email, let's do MTVMBH one this week.
Speaker 2: I must have missed that.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, I'm glad we you're talking about MTV.
Speaker 1: We'd be in bad shape for real. But the rise
Speaker 1: of cable as like ten million subscribers in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: five to forty million in nineteen eighty five. That was
Speaker 1: really what grew MTV was cable being a thing and
Speaker 1: the US government saying, hey, cable, it's a little looser,
Speaker 1: you can kind of do a little more, and then
Speaker 1: cable company saying, hey, maybe we should start thinking about
Speaker 1: kind of different kinds of channels we've never had before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because there were a lot more channels that the
Speaker 2: FCC opened up on the bandwidth, where before it was
Speaker 2: just over the air channels, and those were full, so
Speaker 2: don't even ask shut up, the networks have those lockdown.
Speaker 2: When cable opened, it was like, what do you want
Speaker 2: to do. You want to make a channel off for kids, Great,
Speaker 2: let's found Pinwheel and then eventually call it Nickelodeon. You
Speaker 2: want to show reruns, We'll call it Nick ad Knight.
Speaker 2: You want to show little kids, even smaller kids programs, Great,
Speaker 2: we'll make a channel called Nick Junior. What else do
Speaker 2: you want? And people said, we got enough Nickelodeon, Let's
Speaker 2: think of something else. And one of the other things
Speaker 2: that was thought of was something called the Movie Channel.
Speaker 2: And there's a guy named Bob Pittman who was working
Speaker 2: on it, and he happens to be the CEO of
Speaker 2: iHeart Media, who we work for, and he's one of
Speaker 2: the big players with the founding of MTV. And it
Speaker 2: is usually the person that people will tell you who
Speaker 2: know about this kind of thing, who if you ask
Speaker 2: him who founded MTV, the answer will usually be Bob Pittman.
Speaker 2: And that is true to an extent, but he wasn't alone.
Speaker 2: One of the other founders, who is sometimes called the
Speaker 2: architect of MTV, was already a very famous person by
Speaker 2: the time MTV came out.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about Mike Nesmith?
Speaker 4: I am okay.
Speaker 1: This was in nineteen seventy five. Mike Nesmuth of the
Speaker 1: TV Show and the musical group The Monkeys. He made
Speaker 1: a pilot called pop Clips, which was backed by TV production,
Speaker 1: Legend and Juggernaut Norman Lear and it was, you know,
Speaker 1: it was basically prot MTV. They had comedians introducing music
Speaker 1: videos like promotional videos that these record companies were making, right,
Speaker 1: And there was a guy named John Lack. I don't
Speaker 1: think we mentioned that time. Warner Cable Corporation was one
Speaker 1: of the early cable companies that they launched Nickelodeon. They
Speaker 1: were kind of experimenting around, and in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: American Express bought half of that and that new company
Speaker 1: John Lack worked for. He was the COO and he
Speaker 1: ran Nickelodeon, and Nickelodeon did very well, and he eventually
Speaker 1: hooked up with Bob Pittman, who, like you said, was
Speaker 1: developing the Movie Channel, which I sorely missed. The Movie
Speaker 1: Channel was great.
Speaker 2: That was my favorite one too. I don't know why,
Speaker 2: but it was my favorite.
Speaker 1: Because it was only movies. Yeah, I guess that's actually
Speaker 1: that was it because for a kid, even though HBO
Speaker 1: was great, they had other stuff, and as a kid,
Speaker 1: you were like, I just want movies, and that's what
Speaker 1: the Movie channel was.
Speaker 2: So Bob want to see Outland? What's the problem?
Speaker 1: Oh man, you know you kidding. So Bob was running
Speaker 1: that lack John Lack came to Bob and said, hey,
Speaker 1: what do you think about doing something? If you're doing
Speaker 1: this movie only channel, what about a music only thing?
Speaker 1: And so Bob Pittman said, great, let's call it TV
Speaker 1: one and they went, oh, no, that's already a thing.
Speaker 1: And he went, all right, how about TVM like TV music?
Speaker 1: And everyone went, well, what about MTV. We think that
Speaker 1: sounds a little better, and he said all.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, And don't feel bad for Mike Nesmith. He
Speaker 2: wasn't like squeezed out or they didn't steal his idea.
Speaker 2: He was invited to be a part of the whole thing,
Speaker 2: and he was not interested. He has always considered himself
Speaker 2: an artiste and didn't run and get into the corporate
Speaker 2: nitty gritty of it. So he said, just buy me
Speaker 2: out and I'll go along my way. But he did
Speaker 2: essentially kind of come up with the concept in the format,
Speaker 2: and then Pittman and Lack took it over with a
Speaker 2: couple of other guys, Fred Siebert and Allen Goodman, whose
Speaker 2: experience I think up to that point had been working
Speaker 2: together at a Columbia University student radio station. So these
Speaker 2: people were all young, pretty hip. It's the early eighties.
Speaker 2: And again the idea that there are promotional music videos
Speaker 2: already in existence out there and that the record companies
Speaker 2: give them away for free was the basis of where
Speaker 2: MTV and all of the other like music video programs
Speaker 2: came from, because you could make this thing on the cheap,
Speaker 2: because again, record companies were giving these things away for
Speaker 2: free and saying, yes, play them via condios. It will
Speaker 2: only help us if you play these things on TV.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I remember when I met Bob for the first
Speaker 1: time in New York at the iHeart offices. Our boss
Speaker 1: Connell took me by. I think we had an official
Speaker 1: meeting with him, but I was like, oh, like, I
Speaker 1: gotta say something about MTB I said, is that for boten?
Speaker 1: Is that not the kind of thing. He's like, oh no, man,
Speaker 1: He's like, you should definitely say something. And I met
Speaker 1: Bob and I was like, mister Pittman, I said, I
Speaker 1: just want to let you know. I was like, I
Speaker 1: was the guy. I was that kid who sat there
Speaker 1: at ten years old, gulued to my television watching MTV
Speaker 1: as many hours as I was allowed to consume it.
Speaker 1: I was like, I was that kid. And he was like,
Speaker 1: you know, he said, we counted on you and everyone
Speaker 1: like you doing that same thing, otherwise it would not
Speaker 1: have been a success. So he thanked me, which I
Speaker 1: thought was very cool. Well, you have to finish the
Speaker 1: story all the way at at well what was the end?
Speaker 1: Around his desk with tears in his eyes and embraced
Speaker 1: you for a good minute.
Speaker 4: Connell said, no, no, no, no, he did not.
Speaker 1: But I think I touched him maybe a bit. I
Speaker 1: don't know. Who can tell. He sent me a ball
Speaker 1: of tequila one Christmas.
Speaker 2: No, I like that one of those two. Oh we'll see.
Speaker 1: I guess you didn't make him cry though.
Speaker 4: Did you?
Speaker 2: No? But I touched him.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 1: So he hires these kids from the radio station. Like
Speaker 1: you mentioned, they've got these videos, they need the other stuff.
Speaker 1: They need the logo, they need the theme song, they
Speaker 1: need the stuff in between the music videos, not only
Speaker 1: just a cast, which we're going to talk about, but
Speaker 1: you know, the like the bumper the video bumpers and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So they brought in again teams of
Speaker 1: friends to do this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a I guess a guy named Frank
Speaker 2: Olinsky who was a friend of Fred Sebert, remember, one
Speaker 2: of the Columbia radio station guys, and he was creating
Speaker 2: a design studio and he created the logo and apparently
Speaker 2: just got it right out of the gate like it was.
Speaker 2: There were not many iterations of it, like he just
Speaker 2: nailed it. And there are very few logos that are
Speaker 2: more recognizable than MTV. Yeah, in part because it spells
Speaker 2: out the name in the logo, so you kind of
Speaker 2: know exactly what the logo's for, but it's still pretty recognizable.
Speaker 2: It's a logo, it really is. And then the musical riffs,
Speaker 2: including the one that you did at the top of
Speaker 2: the podcast, those were created by a couple of guys
Speaker 2: named Scott Elliots and Jonathan Peterson, and they based it
Speaker 2: on the Kinks. You really got me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's you know, similar, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah it is. I mean, you can definitely tell
Speaker 2: when you hear that. But I never thought like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeahs rip off, you know yeah.
Speaker 1: And then that moon Man, the moon landing became as
Speaker 1: as sort of tied to MTV as anything else. And
Speaker 1: is it because they thought, hey, where also embarking on
Speaker 1: a journey not yet known? Sure? Is it because it
Speaker 1: was one small step for television and a giant leap
Speaker 1: for the music industry? Of course? Was it also because
Speaker 1: that stuff was public domain and rights free. Absolutely?
Speaker 2: Yeah. If the US government, which NASA is an agency
Speaker 2: of the US government, the US government owns something, you
Speaker 2: all own it too, as an American. It's in the
Speaker 2: public domain, buddy. One of the other reasons, though, that
Speaker 2: I saw, was that they were trying to basically say, like,
Speaker 2: this is as monumental a cultural event as landing on
Speaker 2: the Moon was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. They initially had a version with Neil Armstrong,
Speaker 1: and I could swear I remember hearing, you know, one
Speaker 1: small step for me, one giant leap for mankind, And
Speaker 1: I guess I watched the first few days. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know I did, so that must have leaked in there,
Speaker 1: because I definitely remember hearing that version. But Neil Armstrong
Speaker 1: came forward and he was like, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: like that may be in the public domain, but that's
Speaker 1: my voice. You can't use my voice. So John Lack
Speaker 1: said he replaced that by saying a recording of himself
Speaker 1: Ladies and Gentlemen rock and roll, and that was it.
Speaker 1: Apparently after the Challenge Disaster, that branding ended in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six. But yeah, I didn't know that. I know
Speaker 1: the moon Man is still the VMA Trophy, so maybe
Speaker 1: just parts of it continued on. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I could see them taking it off the air temporarily
Speaker 2: because I deftinitely remember seeing it too, I would guess
Speaker 2: after nineteen eighty six, but I thought so, yes, I
Speaker 2: could see the Challenge of Disaster happening, being like, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's just not do anything space related right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah? What about the taglines? He had a couple of
Speaker 1: those early on too, right.
Speaker 2: The idents you mean, oh the tagline sorry, yeah, apparently
Speaker 2: it was you'll never look at music the same way again?
Speaker 2: Pretty fun on cable in stereo. Yeah, yeah, they're okay.
Speaker 2: That and ladies and gentlemen rock and roll. They just
Speaker 2: sound like they're delivered by somebody wearing rainbow suspenders, just
Speaker 2: real like late seventies, early eighties kind of branding stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I could see that, But what about.
Speaker 2: The idents, the identifying I guess snippets. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: what the actual TV trade name is for them.
Speaker 1: I think I call them bumpers earlier. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: what the trade name is either, But I don't know
Speaker 1: what we're headed here, so take it away.
Speaker 2: Oh well, it's like station branding, showing you what network
Speaker 2: you're watching. And MTV became really famous for all sorts
Speaker 2: of weird and bizarre ways of showing like are you're
Speaker 2: watching MTV? Like one of the really famous ones that
Speaker 2: I remember was it was a guillotine suddenly coming down
Speaker 2: and you had no idea what was going on. It
Speaker 2: was just the whole thing started on shot of a
Speaker 2: guillotine blade falling and then all of a sudden, in
Speaker 2: the basket or on the floor of the gallows or wherever,
Speaker 2: a head fall down, and the head is in the
Speaker 2: shape of the M and there's two eyes and like
Speaker 2: a tongue sticking out and it's this really weird, unsettling
Speaker 2: claymation head. But it's the MTV logo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know we did. If anyone saw our short
Speaker 1: run of the Stuff You Should Know TV show, we
Speaker 1: had some very I think it was almost like an
Speaker 1: homage some very similar bumpers that came in and out
Speaker 1: of commercial break for our TV show that were animations
Speaker 1: done by our friend Russ Yeah, who did a phenomenal job.
Speaker 1: They're just like, it's one of the coolest things about
Speaker 1: that show still, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And also, if you want to see some MTV idents,
Speaker 2: there's something on YouTube titled Creepy MTV Ident and Logos
Speaker 2: Collection nineteen nineties and it's I think like twenty five
Speaker 2: minutes of these ten second clips.
Speaker 1: Amazing. I'll have to check that out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you definitely should. Sorry, didn't send it to you.
Speaker 2: That's okay, No, it's not Chuck, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: On August first, just after midnight nineteen eighty one, is
Speaker 1: when MTV formerly for Mulli premiered sort of. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it did formally appear, but unless you lived
Speaker 1: in just parts of New Jersey then you wouldn't see
Speaker 1: it because that was there was only one cable operator
Speaker 1: who even carried it at the time, and the cast
Speaker 1: even had to like pile in a rented school bus
Speaker 1: to drive to Fort Lee, New Jersey at a bar
Speaker 1: called the Loft because they knew that they would have
Speaker 1: it there. But the very first images that came on
Speaker 1: screen were the was the Columbia Space Shuttle launching, that
Speaker 1: moon landing that we spoke of, the MTV logo, and
Speaker 1: of course that musical riff all put together and what
Speaker 1: is now the most tired and obvious trivia question of
Speaker 1: all time, probably the very first video to play. And
Speaker 1: I'm not making fun of if you didn't know this,
Speaker 1: but it just feels like one of those It's like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, everybody knows that the Buggles video Killed
Speaker 1: the Radio Star was the first MTV video.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is appropriate video Kill the Radio Star, although
Speaker 2: it did it quite the opposite though. It actually made
Speaker 2: the Radio Star into even bigger stars, as we'll.
Speaker 1: See, unless you weren't good at videos.
Speaker 2: No, or you didn't want to make a video, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're basically making a massive career choice right then, in
Speaker 2: the eighties and nineties to just basically be like, no,
Speaker 2: I don't want to be that huge, So I'm not
Speaker 2: going to play MTV's game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the question now at Bart Truvia should
Speaker 1: be everybody knows that video Killed the Radio Star was
Speaker 1: the first music video played on MTV. What was the second?
Speaker 2: Oh do you know, because I don't, I don't have
Speaker 2: that list.
Speaker 1: It is it was Pat Benattar You Better Run. In
Speaker 1: that first twenty four hours, there were one hundred and
Speaker 1: sixteen unique videos for two hundred and nine total plays.
Speaker 1: So yes, there were plenty of repeats. The Pretender's Brass
Speaker 1: and Pocket the who You Better You Bet was the
Speaker 1: first one to be repeated. Rod Stewart had this is shocking.
Speaker 1: On the very first day of MTV. Rod Stewart had
Speaker 1: eleven not just videos playing, he had eleven different videos
Speaker 1: playing for sixteen total plays.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: And your boys Iron Maiden were in that first they
Speaker 1: were in the top twenty. Buddy number sixteen was the
Speaker 1: song Iron Maiden.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then later on they played Rathchild too, so
Speaker 2: they had two videos in the first twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I mean if you kind of put all
Speaker 1: those together, what you're seeing is a very very varied lineup.
Speaker 1: Even though they were replaying stuff like Phil Collins in
Speaker 1: the Air Tonight and Just Between You and Me by
Speaker 1: April Wine. Those were each played five times on the
Speaker 1: first day. But you know they had a to call
Speaker 1: when you don't have a lot of stuff in stock problem.
Speaker 4: I don't know, a supply problem.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, so yeah, it was so varied. I
Speaker 2: saw that they played the video for Andrew gold thank
Speaker 2: You for Being a Friend, which went on to become
Speaker 2: the Golden Girls theme. That was the fifty fourth video
Speaker 2: played on MTV ever, and they only played it once.
Speaker 1: But who was playing this vjays? They had to start
Speaker 1: out with an initial lineup of vjys. Bob Pittman very
Speaker 1: much had I think it was kind of Breakfast clubby.
Speaker 1: He wanted very specific archetypes of youngish people. He said,
Speaker 1: we need a black person, which was JJ Jackson forty
Speaker 1: one years old by the way, so he was sort
Speaker 1: of the the old guy for the ten year old
Speaker 1: that was watching.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: We need a girl next door, which was Martha Quinn
Speaker 1: twenty two years old. I think she was the youngest.
Speaker 1: We need a sexy little siren, clearly Nina Blackwood. We
Speaker 1: need a boy next door that would have been Alan Hunter.
Speaker 1: And then we need some hunky Italian looking guy with
Speaker 1: curly hair, and that was, of course Mark Goodman.
Speaker 2: And I think Mark Goodman was the first VJ on.
Speaker 1: Oh, I thought it was Alan Hunter.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure it was Mark Goodman. I watched, like,
Speaker 2: there are also videos of you know, the first hour,
Speaker 2: the first two hours, the first whatever hours of MTV,
Speaker 2: and I watched the first a little bit of it,
Speaker 2: and I'm pretty sure it was Mark Goodman who was first. Oh, okay,
Speaker 2: we'll we'll find out eventually. One day I did see that.
Speaker 2: I think VH one rebroadcast the first twenty four hours
Speaker 2: of MTV once not too many years ago.
Speaker 1: Oh well, that's fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just as like a hey guys, we like you
Speaker 2: over here.
Speaker 1: And also I'm a semi recent subscriber to Serious xm H.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I resisted for so many years.
Speaker 1: Maybe I just didn't know as much about it, but
Speaker 1: I love it. It's great. It's fun to have somebody
Speaker 1: curating music and not constantly for me at least be
Speaker 1: sitting around going like, oh god, I don't want to
Speaker 1: listen to I can't think of anything. What can I play?
Speaker 1: And it's great and they got great channels. This is
Speaker 1: not an ad for them, but I really really am
Speaker 1: enjoying it. And there are a few shows on a
Speaker 1: few stations from those VJs. I think Martha Quinn has
Speaker 1: a show.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, yeah, Alan.
Speaker 1: Hunter has one. Mark Goodman, I think Nina Blackwood used to.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if Martha good Quinn still does, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's cool to and I didn't even know, Like, I'll
Speaker 1: just be listening to a cool station and it's like
Speaker 1: Mark Goodman pops up. It's nice.
Speaker 2: I feel like they owe you at least a free
Speaker 2: month for a hat, a baseball cap.
Speaker 1: At least it happened a free year.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, so did you finally cave when the offer
Speaker 2: for how much it would cost you a month kept
Speaker 2: going down and it got into like the dollar fifty area.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's the sort of the ticket. You
Speaker 1: just wait for a good deal first twelve months or
Speaker 1: like five bucks or something.
Speaker 2: And they said, well, there it goes, your free year, chuck.
Speaker 1: A couple of comedians early on that went on to
Speaker 1: be noteworthy were rejected. Richard Belzer, which is hysterical to
Speaker 1: think of him as an EMPTVVJ.
Speaker 4: He's so cool though, oh of bells.
Speaker 1: And then Carol Leifer was a comedian who later went
Speaker 1: on to write for Seinfeld.
Speaker 2: Yes, she did pretty well for herself. Yeah, the thing
Speaker 2: is in retrospect today you're like, yeah, MTV is huge,
Speaker 2: not at first, like you said, basically, Fort Lee, New
Speaker 2: Jersey was the first and only place to have access
Speaker 2: to MTV, and like you said, New Jersey was the
Speaker 2: only place, just a few small parts of New Jersey
Speaker 2: was the only place where you could see MTV. So
Speaker 2: it wasn't out of the gate like a sure bet
Speaker 2: that MTV was going to become a huge cable juggernaut.
Speaker 2: And to kind of help spread the word that there
Speaker 2: was such a thing as MTV, an ad agency called
Speaker 2: the LPG Pond Agency very wisely came up with the
Speaker 2: I Want my MTV campaign, and I remember seeing those
Speaker 2: on MTV, but they were originally designed to play on
Speaker 2: other networks, to get people watching at home to call
Speaker 2: their cable operator and say, hey, man, I want my MTV.
Speaker 2: And it worked.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean basically, any musician that came through the MTV
Speaker 1: office and studio, I think they just had like a
Speaker 1: standing set where they could say just go in there
Speaker 1: and however you want to do it, say I want
Speaker 1: my MTV. And that's why they were also kind of
Speaker 1: fun and varied and clearly off the cuff, but it
Speaker 1: became part of their branding such that the one of
Speaker 1: my favorite groups, Dire Straits in nineteen eighty five immortalized
Speaker 1: it via Sting as a guest singer singing I want
Speaker 1: my MTV at the beginning of the song money for Nothing,
Speaker 1: which would also become a huge, huge music video.
Speaker 2: Uncredited guests I think.
Speaker 1: Even meaning that they didn't pay him, no, that.
Speaker 2: They didn't say and Sting ladies and gentlemen, well like
Speaker 2: in the song, Yeah, that's what I would have expected.
Speaker 1: Who does that? Like before Dolly Parton's verse in Islands
Speaker 1: in the Stream, Kenny Rogers just goes and now Dolly.
Speaker 2: Parton, I could totally see that he would pull it
Speaker 2: off too.
Speaker 1: He totally could have.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: One of the things that also helped the channel spread,
Speaker 2: especially by word of mouth among their target market, which
Speaker 2: was teens, especially teens who got fat allowances from their parents,
Speaker 2: is that some conservative places were like, we're not carrying
Speaker 2: this MTV, and they made the terrible mistake of actually
Speaker 2: publicizing that they weren't going to carry MTV, and they
Speaker 2: were like Christian organizations, the Parents Music Resource Center would
Speaker 2: kind of get in the craw of MTV but simultaneously
Speaker 2: give it really good press, because if your parents didn't
Speaker 2: want you watching it, you definitely wanted to watch MTV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And you know I mentioned that supply problem.
Speaker 1: I do have a number here thanks to Olivia. There
Speaker 1: were only two hundred and fifty videos at first, so
Speaker 1: if you look at the math, they played two hundred
Speaker 1: and nine videos on the first day, so they sort
Speaker 1: of spent their allowance almost fully on that first day.
Speaker 1: So for a long time you were seeing videos and
Speaker 1: repeated heavily and heavy rotation, and even once they had
Speaker 1: you know, it was sort of like the radio, like
Speaker 1: the ones that were hit got played more, even when
Speaker 1: they did have the supply.
Speaker 2: My friend did a little bit of math.
Speaker 1: Ooh how God is always my favorite part.
Speaker 2: At an average of three minutes per video I think
Speaker 2: is a good average, they would have to start over
Speaker 2: every twelve hours.
Speaker 1: Oh if they just didn't repeat ones and they just
Speaker 1: played their whole supply.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the whole wid Yeah. One thing though, there was this,
Speaker 2: there's a documentary out on Divo that's really good on Netflix.
Speaker 1: Oh I saw, haven't seen it.
Speaker 2: It's really good, I think, And they really kind of
Speaker 2: talk a lot about how Divo so Divo in the
Speaker 2: early days, they were an art collective as much as
Speaker 2: a band. Yeah, and so they made quirky, weird films
Speaker 2: for their songs. So they were making music videos before
Speaker 2: MTV and they didn't have anywhere to show them. And
Speaker 2: then MTV came along, and Divo helped make MTV. They
Speaker 2: gave them more really good like videos that people wanted
Speaker 2: to see. Yeah, and then as MTV got bigger and
Speaker 2: bigger and more and more commercial, Divo got left to
Speaker 2: the wayside, forgotten. You could say, it's actually kind of
Speaker 2: sad as things just kind of started to go downhill
Speaker 2: for the band. But that that was a big point
Speaker 2: that they made, and I think something overlooked that there
Speaker 2: were a lot of interesting pioneering groups oh yeah, that
Speaker 2: were making videos even before MTV came along. The MTV
Speaker 2: digested and fed itself on and grew big on and
Speaker 2: then they just got left because all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: Kip Winger was like, oh, if I took my shirt
Speaker 2: off and tease my hair out with it. Put a
Speaker 2: little aquinet in there. I can make a video too,
Speaker 2: and they're like, no, no, no, it's not quite that easy.
Speaker 2: We need to film it in black and white video
Speaker 2: and then you'll have a video. He's like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: let's do it, and.
Speaker 1: Kip Winger's like yeah, but like, don't you understand my
Speaker 1: song's about seventeen year old girls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is, there's no getting around it. The
Speaker 2: only one that's worse, they're more blatant than that, is
Speaker 2: Benny Madrones.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: His is Into the Night where he's like trying to
Speaker 2: spring like a middle schooler or something like that from
Speaker 2: her parents' house.
Speaker 1: Oh, I don't remember that.
Speaker 2: If I could fly, I pick you up, into you, into.
Speaker 1: The Oh I know that song?
Speaker 4: Yeah, show you.
Speaker 1: It's a good song, super creepy.
Speaker 2: You just can't stop and think about what he's saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Or watch the Linel Ritchie video for hello is
Speaker 1: it me You're looking for? Oh, he's kind of a
Speaker 1: sweet song, but in the video he's like a He's
Speaker 1: like a teacher that seemed seemingly stalking a blind student.
Speaker 2: Right and a sculpture sculptor, right, an art teacher.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so it was. It's one of those
Speaker 1: at the time you're like, oh that's sweet. Now you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, like fire fire that teacher.
Speaker 2: Right. There's a lot of eighties and nineties media that's
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One thing I did want to say when you
Speaker 1: were talking about Devo, like I can say for sure
Speaker 1: that ten year old Chuck would not have known about
Speaker 1: Devo or the Talking Head, right, or like do you
Speaker 1: remember the Art of Noise video?
Speaker 2: Oh, like the super cool like animation.
Speaker 1: Is like herky jerky stop motion. Yeah, like chit chainsawing mannequins.
Speaker 4: And what was the name of the song.
Speaker 1: I don't remember the name of the song, but the band.
Speaker 1: But like, there's no way I would have known, Like
Speaker 1: I was listening to the top forty radio and then
Speaker 1: in a couple of years my brother in law would
Speaker 1: start feeding me Southern rock and Leonard skinnerd and Almond
Speaker 1: Brothers and stuff like that, and like, there's no way
Speaker 1: I would have been listening to any artsy stuff like
Speaker 1: that because that didn't come along for me until I
Speaker 1: started listening to alternative music in like the ninth and
Speaker 1: tenth grade.
Speaker 2: You know, And I think a lot of people out
Speaker 2: there would be like, well, no, Chuck, you would have
Speaker 2: heard Divo on the radio, or you would.
Speaker 1: Have heard I doubt it, are maybe talking to the.
Speaker 2: Radio, maybe talking heads. Right. The point is is the
Speaker 2: reason you heard those on the radio is because of MTV.
Speaker 2: Because when it became clear that if you gave MTV
Speaker 2: promotional videos for free and played them, yeah, you were
Speaker 2: going to start selling records in that cable operators region.
Speaker 2: That's just what happened. It became very clear, very quantifiable,
Speaker 2: early on that where MTV played a song and it
Speaker 2: didn't matter if it was a well known band or
Speaker 2: someone you'd never heard of. Those records we're going to
Speaker 2: sell in local record stores. And from that point on,
Speaker 2: MTV is basically it had its its path set out
Speaker 2: for him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, Devo is so good. If your only experience
Speaker 1: with Devo is the satisfaction the Rolling Stones cover or
Speaker 1: the whip It, both of which are great songs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like do yourself a favor and just dive in. It's
Speaker 1: amazing music. I love Devot and shout out of course
Speaker 1: to Akron Akron Akron in Forrestone High School.
Speaker 2: Chuck We're thirty minutes in and we haven't taken an
Speaker 2: ad break yet.
Speaker 1: I thought we took one.
Speaker 2: No, I don't think so, did we. Let's ask Jerry
Speaker 2: to rule on this. Jerry, you have not okay?
Speaker 1: All right, Jerry verified, and hopefully we can leave that
Speaker 1: in there Jerry's voice. I don't know if she's going
Speaker 1: to be okay with it or not, but this one's
Speaker 1: clearly going to be super size. So maybe thirty minutes
Speaker 1: is about right.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we're going to cut to commercial break right now?
Speaker 2: Will you play us out with the music stinger? No?
Speaker 1: Oh oh me, I thought you met Jerry.
Speaker 3: You Dan Danna, Danna, Danna Dan Dan It bannan Internet
Speaker 3: bannet very nice.
Speaker 2: Okay. Check. So. One of the things I definitely associate
Speaker 2: with MTV is Michael Jackson's Thriller. I was into Thriller.
Speaker 2: I had the red Thriller jacket. My mom made me
Speaker 2: a white sequin glove for my first communion as a gift.
Speaker 2: I was super into Michael Jackson and I love Thriller
Speaker 2: so much that my family bought the making of the
Speaker 2: Thriller video on VHS and my sister watched it essentially
Speaker 2: until it broke. So I always associate MTV with Thriller.
Speaker 2: Anytime I knew it was coming on, I would go
Speaker 2: watch it. It was awesome. But it turns out like
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson and his record label had to basically fight
Speaker 2: to get on to MTV, which is mind boggling to
Speaker 2: me these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. This was nineteen eighty two when the
Speaker 1: Landmark album came out. There's a very funny Vincent Price
Speaker 1: story because Vincent Price, obviously the legendary spooky actor, was
Speaker 1: in the thirteen minute mini movie that accompanied as the video,
Speaker 1: and Vincent Price had an option apparently to either take
Speaker 1: a flat fee of like I don't even know how
Speaker 1: much it was, twenty grand or something. That's all I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, or get yeah, that sounds about right,
Speaker 1: or get points on the Thriller album. And he clearly
Speaker 1: opted for the flat fee oh wow, and would go
Speaker 1: on to regret that for many years, and apparently over
Speaker 1: the years called Michael Jackson a lot trying to sort
Speaker 1: of get back that deal, which his calls were never returned.
Speaker 1: And I will just let the listener look up the
Speaker 1: quote apparently that came out about Vincent Price when Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson settled with his alleged victims many years later. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to say it here, but you can go
Speaker 1: look it up if you want.
Speaker 2: Okay. One other thing about that album too, that was interesting.
Speaker 2: Billy Jean was on there. I know Beat It was
Speaker 2: on there. They both were, but Eddie van Halen played
Speaker 2: guitar and Beat It very famous like solo. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: And apparently at the time van Halen had like no
Speaker 2: outside work deal with one another. All they could do
Speaker 2: is focus on van Halen, and so Eddie van Halen
Speaker 2: had the opportunity. He's like, yeah, I don't think anybody'll
Speaker 2: hear this record. I'm just going to play on this
Speaker 2: dude's record and no one will know about it because
Speaker 2: it will be uncredited. And sure enough, it turns out
Speaker 2: that Beat It and Thriller became one of the biggest
Speaker 2: selling albums of all time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean well, people sort of like, how could
Speaker 1: Vincent Price have done that? But Michael Jackson wasn't that
Speaker 1: level until after Thriller, So, I mean, Off the Wall
Speaker 1: was out of course, and he was with the Jackson five,
Speaker 1: but no one knew it was going to be you know,
Speaker 1: one of the best selling, if not the best selling
Speaker 1: albums of all time.
Speaker 2: Man, poor Vincent Price. I didn't know that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also in regards to Thriller, it was a nine
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars budget for that video, directed by John Landis,
Speaker 1: and part of the funding came from Josh's parents because
Speaker 1: they ended up selling, you know, the making of on
Speaker 1: vhs like you mentioned, one hundred thousand copies of that
Speaker 1: in advance for twenty nine to ninety five. Showtime paid
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand dollars to see the documentary or I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: just to air the documentary, and MTV paid another quarter
Speaker 1: of a million dollars for the ultimate right, So.
Speaker 2: That's just the documentary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because the videos were free, yeah.
Speaker 2: For the making of Thriller the documentary, and it was good.
Speaker 2: It was like an hour and ten minutes long. I
Speaker 2: looked it up.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I watched it.
Speaker 2: So one of the reasons why Thriller was a big
Speaker 2: deal is because there weren't a lot of black performers
Speaker 2: or artists on MTV at the time, so much so
Speaker 2: that David Bowie very famously called MTV out.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: In an interview on MTV with Mark Goodman, and he
Speaker 2: basically just said, like, what's what's the deal here? I
Speaker 2: think his actually quote is what the holy heck is
Speaker 2: going on with use guys? And it was it was true.
Speaker 2: I mean like you just couldn't put it any other away.
Speaker 2: And MTV basically said, well, we play rock, and it's
Speaker 2: actually rock's fault because they're the ones who exclude black
Speaker 2: acts by calling them R and B and not rock.
Speaker 2: So blame blame the music industry, not us. And that
Speaker 2: didn't fly. That wasn't good enough. And there's a guy
Speaker 2: who's there's a hero in this story. It's him. His
Speaker 2: name is Walter Yetnikoff. I think he was the head
Speaker 2: of CBS Records at the time, and he said, if
Speaker 2: you don't start playing these singles, these videos off of
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson's Thriller album, we're pulling all of CBS Records artists.
Speaker 2: You're not going to get a single video form many
Speaker 2: of them. And that was significant because they made up
Speaker 2: about a quarter of the videos that were playing on
Speaker 2: MTV at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and part two of that and this is for real,
Speaker 1: he said, we will publicly accuse you of racism if
Speaker 1: you don't start playing these yeah, so I think that
Speaker 1: really hit home. Obviously, they got Billy Jean and beat
Speaker 1: it in the rotation fairly heavily at first, but Libya
Speaker 1: said she on that didn't last too long. I feel
Speaker 1: like I remember seeing those ad nauseum forever.
Speaker 2: Oh really, I remember not seeing them as often as
Speaker 2: I wanted.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you also had a Sequin White love on,
Speaker 1: so you might have wanted to hear more than me.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: I love those songs though. And I remember working a
Speaker 1: commercial job one time with my longtime production manager Andrea,
Speaker 1: and she it was very casually dropped that she was
Speaker 1: a production coordinator on the beat at video one time,
Speaker 1: and I was like, excuse me. One of the fun
Speaker 1: things about doing that stuff in LA is you would
Speaker 1: always meet people that like just worked on these legendary jobs.
Speaker 1: Every now and then it's like, yeah, yeah, I was
Speaker 1: the lighting guy for whatever for thriller.
Speaker 2: That's cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So by this time, we're talking mid eighties and MTV
Speaker 2: is now the place that is making the names of
Speaker 2: the artists who are making videos for their music, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And the more daring you were, the more Kip Winger
Speaker 2: ask you were you could make a really big name
Speaker 2: for yourself. It didn't matter all that much whether your
Speaker 2: music was particularly good. Sometimes it didn't matter whether your
Speaker 2: video was even particularly good. If you could get onto
Speaker 2: MTV and nail it in just the right way, they
Speaker 2: would play it a lot, and you would sell a
Speaker 2: lot of records and your your career would be made.
Speaker 2: And it's no overstatement to say that Madonna's career was made.
Speaker 2: Who else, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean people that already had good careers were
Speaker 1: launched into the stratosphere, like people like Billy Joel who
Speaker 1: was already a prominent artist. All of a sudden, he's
Speaker 1: putting out some like some of the buzz band, like
Speaker 1: groundbreaking videos like Pressure and then when he married or
Speaker 1: was dating at least Christy Brinkley, oh M video and
Speaker 1: like the video for Uptown Girl, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden that the biggest supermodel on planet Earth was on MTV.
Speaker 1: That was a big deal. They started the Top twenty
Speaker 1: video countdown in nineteen eighty four, So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: that is rivaling America in Top forty on radio. As
Speaker 1: far as like where the kids are going to see
Speaker 1: the top content, the VMA's a video. Music words started
Speaker 1: also in nineteen eighty four and had plenty of iconic moments,
Speaker 1: and very quickly. Like music video directors, it became sort
Speaker 1: of a farm league for people that would go on
Speaker 1: to be huge. Huge movie directors started out in music videos.
Speaker 2: Or it went the other way too. I saw that
Speaker 2: William Friedkin, who directed The Exorcist in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: also directed Laura brand Again's video for self Control in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty three. Yeah, you know, the one where she
Speaker 2: lives among the creatures of the night. Uh huh, she
Speaker 2: doesn't have the will to try and fight.
Speaker 1: I remember that. I love Laura brand Again.
Speaker 2: That's a great song. It beats the heck out of Gloria.
Speaker 2: If you ask me, I like Lauria. I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess you don't have to choose. But I still like
Speaker 2: self control more. But yeah, William Friedkin of The Exorcist
Speaker 2: directed that video.
Speaker 1: That's true. But far more often, to be fair, it
Speaker 1: went the other way and people started out music videos
Speaker 1: and went on to be very popular film directors. David
Speaker 1: Fincher directed Vogue from Madonna, The End of Anocence from
Speaker 1: Don Henley Janey's Got a gun from Aerosmith, not the
Speaker 1: Aerosmith videos that featured Lib Tyler and Alicia Silverstone that
Speaker 1: were also iconic. He also directed the George Michael Freedom
Speaker 1: ninety video, which talk about supermodels, like every supermodel under
Speaker 1: the sun was in that one.
Speaker 2: I was reading about George Michaels I Want Your Sex
Speaker 2: video and I was like, I guarantee that was as
Speaker 2: controversial as anything was when it came out, And so
Speaker 2: I went on to our beloved newspapers dot com and
Speaker 2: looked for some contemporaraneous articles on that, and dude, the
Speaker 2: stuff that they were saying, like like should videos should
Speaker 2: sexy videos be? Yeah, there are limits to artists' rights
Speaker 2: and all this just junk censorship, junk that today is like,
Speaker 2: this is what like you guys were amusing yourselves with
Speaker 2: in the mid to late eighties, and it absolutely was,
Speaker 2: and if you go back and look at the video,
Speaker 2: it is objectively sexy. But to ban anything because of
Speaker 2: this video, it's just mind bogglingly stupid. Today. In twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, another group of directors, Michel Gondry and
Speaker 1: Spike Jones, got their starts. If you want to talk
Speaker 1: about just sort of groundbreaking videos. Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty six. Yes, it was directed by Steven R. Johnson.
Speaker 1: That the amazing stop motion animation with the help of
Speaker 1: the Brothers Quay and Ardman Animations. That was a big one.
Speaker 1: And then of course the Aha Take on Me video
Speaker 1: was a huge, huge breakthrough video.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: Such a great song still, yeah, like the kind of
Speaker 2: song you can listen to on repeat. Still. I mean,
Speaker 2: think about how many times you've heard take on Me.
Speaker 1: I love the song.
Speaker 2: It's a really great song. Still. But yes, that video
Speaker 2: is amazing and plus, I mean it didn't hurt that
Speaker 2: the lead singer was about as dreamy as a person
Speaker 2: on MTV.
Speaker 1: D Yeah, they're all they're all hot, dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember my sister with her hands clasped under
Speaker 2: her chin, just like staring at the TV whenever that
Speaker 2: guy came on.
Speaker 1: We should mention just for Lyvia too, because Liba wrote
Speaker 1: this and she clearly has a soft spot in her
Speaker 1: heart for Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart video.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she pointed out that there is a literal version
Speaker 2: that they sing like. They changed the lyrics based on
Speaker 2: what's going on in the video. It's pretty hilarious. There's
Speaker 2: some other ones too that definitely made MTV because, as
Speaker 2: we talked about in Saturday Morning Cartoons, MTV provided a
Speaker 2: bardic function for American teenagers and eventually teenagers around the world.
Speaker 2: Like when you went and watched The Top twenty Countdown,
Speaker 2: you were seeing as all of your friends were seeing
Speaker 2: at the same time. What was cool that week? Right,
Speaker 2: or you talked about like have you seen the zz
Speaker 2: top video? Like zz Top had a trio of videos
Speaker 2: called the Eliminator Series for legs, sharp Dressed Man and
Speaker 2: give Me all Your Loving and it featured like that
Speaker 2: super cool like nineteen thirties car or whatever with the
Speaker 2: zz top keychain and like their guitar and their bass
Speaker 2: would spin on the axis. They could just twirl them,
Speaker 2: you remember that. And they were fuzzy. They were just
Speaker 2: really cool videos. And I remember just being like, Wow,
Speaker 2: I like these videos a lot because they were super sexy.
Speaker 2: But I recently read how like essentially a feminist defense
Speaker 2: of those videos, and they pointed out that the people
Speaker 2: who were the villains were people who are like sexually
Speaker 2: harassing the three women in the Eliminator series and they
Speaker 2: would always get their come up and and zz top
Speaker 2: was always cheering for these three I guess muses or
Speaker 2: Angels or whoever who would come out of the blue
Speaker 2: and save the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, angels and Fishnet hosts exactly. I don't know if
Speaker 1: there was ever a group that was less likely to
Speaker 1: be MTV stars than zz top was.
Speaker 2: They were saying that there was a quote where they
Speaker 2: were like, you know, we had basically had our run
Speaker 2: in rock.
Speaker 1: Not even rock and roll, Texas Blues band exactly.
Speaker 2: I think it was this in like Texas Monthly maybe magazine,
Speaker 2: because yeah, they're from Texas, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: because of these videos, because of MTV, they had a
Speaker 2: brand new career essentially. And I think Billy Gibbons was
Speaker 2: the one who was quoter who said, like, we got
Speaker 2: sixteen year old girls back as fans, you know, like so, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a really great point. They were extremely unlikely, and
Speaker 2: that demonstrates the power of what MTV could do. If
Speaker 2: you made a cool video people talked about, you could
Speaker 2: have a brand new career on your hands.
Speaker 1: I know, you want to shout out weird al somebody
Speaker 1: that I've never been that into, but I was an
Speaker 1: MTV kid, so I definitely saw and generally had a
Speaker 1: laugh with a lot of those videos.
Speaker 2: They were great. He apparently had ten specials on MTV
Speaker 2: over the years called ALTV. But yeah, that was another
Speaker 2: one too, like you'd be like, have you seen weird
Speaker 2: El's like a surgeon video? Or I lost on Jeopardy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Stuff. And then one other one too that was a
Speaker 2: really big video early on was the video for Fishheads
Speaker 2: from Barnes and barn Do you remember that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I don't remember that being a very
Speaker 1: big song or video at all. I thought it was
Speaker 1: just noteworthy because it was Bill Paxton or was that
Speaker 1: a big song?
Speaker 2: I think it was one of those ones that made
Speaker 2: people go watch MTV because it would come on sometimes. Okay,
Speaker 2: I don't think it was like a huge hit or
Speaker 2: anything like that, but it was one of those one
Speaker 2: of those early videos that drew you to MTV by
Speaker 2: word of mouth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of like mc scatcat.
Speaker 4: That's right, Paula abdul Yep, I remember that.
Speaker 2: Uh wait, wait, we're getting nostalgic. We failed.
Speaker 1: I know, I know that failed a long time ago,
Speaker 1: but we do have to mention the Hungry Like the
Speaker 1: Wolf video from Duran Duran, because that was it certainly
Speaker 1: wasn't the first, but that was maybe the best example
Speaker 1: of music video as like a very cinematic you know
Speaker 1: where where all of a sudden it was like the
Speaker 1: band was in a movie and it was like, it's
Speaker 1: not like they weren't a big band before, but Hungry
Speaker 1: Like the Wolf really put them over the top.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, and just change the way that people
Speaker 2: made videos too. They made a much more like it
Speaker 2: was a movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a pretty good one, I thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a good song too.
Speaker 1: Should we take our second break here at minute forty seven? Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll be right back because there's plenty more
Speaker 1: to talk about with MTV. So MTV was a pretty
Speaker 1: big success in the mid eighties, obviously, so much so
Speaker 1: that Turner Broadcasting TBS tried to compete with their cable
Speaker 1: music channel I think the Country Music I'm sorry, the
Speaker 1: cable Music channel CMC started around the same time. There
Speaker 1: were a lot of imitators, most of them fizzled out.
Speaker 1: I think the Turner one was bought out by MTV
Speaker 1: for about a million bucks. But in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: Viacom Inc. Bought MTV from Warner, and leadership said, hey,
Speaker 1: why don't we stop just playing random videos and start
Speaker 1: sort of bucketing this stuff, And all of a sudden
Speaker 1: they had thematic shows like one hundred and twenty Minutes
Speaker 1: and Headbanger's Ball and Yo MTV Raps and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yes, one hundred and twenty minutes always has a
Speaker 2: soft spot in my heart because you had to stay
Speaker 2: up on Sunday night. It started Sunday night at midnight,
Speaker 2: so technically it started Monday morning at midnight and ran
Speaker 2: for one hundred and twenty minutes till two am. It's
Speaker 2: like the worst time slot in the history of time slots,
Speaker 2: and yet that was the only place you could see
Speaker 2: like Asusie in the Banchees video, or like Jesus and
Speaker 2: Mary Chain or whoever. Like, that's the only place you
Speaker 2: could see those videos, and it was worth staying up for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the great Matt Pinfield shout out to him as
Speaker 1: host Club MTV in nineteen eighty seven with Downtown Julie Brown.
Speaker 1: That was their dance show, their their sort of soul
Speaker 1: trained American bandstand style show. I'd say just go listen
Speaker 1: to the heavy metal episodes if you want to hear
Speaker 1: more about head Banger's Ball, sure, but yo, MTV rap
Speaker 1: started in nineteen eighty eight, and that was like run
Speaker 1: DMC had been on thinking eighty four with rock Box.
Speaker 1: But you o, MTV raps cannot be under or overestimated.
Speaker 1: I guess as as what a role it played in
Speaker 1: bringing hip hop and rap to the mainstream.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and if you want a new trivia question to
Speaker 2: replace the Buggles video Killed the Radio Star, the first
Speaker 2: rap video played on your own TV raps was Shinehead's
Speaker 2: Chain Gang.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, do you remember that one?
Speaker 1: I don't not at all.
Speaker 2: Actually, do you you know the sound of the men
Speaker 2: working on the chain Gang?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I know.
Speaker 2: It's like a hip hop version of that. Oh okay,
Speaker 2: it's good, go listen to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They were also famous for banning some of these,
Speaker 1: and again, you're going to get more attention by doing
Speaker 1: something like that. So Inwa had some of their stuff banned.
Speaker 1: Public Enemy the Great Song By the Time I Get
Speaker 1: to Arizona was banned in nineteen ninety one, and then
Speaker 1: also one of my favorite shows was Unplugged, Oh, started
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine, where they did you know they
Speaker 1: had bands in studio, live in concert doing you know,
Speaker 1: acoustic numbers of their of their hits, and some of
Speaker 1: the unplugged albums became just sort of iconic, legendary vinyl
Speaker 1: LPs for those bands just because people had never heard
Speaker 1: them that way before, like Nirvana and Oasis and stuff
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, okay, yeah, I was like, I didn't really
Speaker 2: ever watch them TV unplugged. I wasn't very aware of it,
Speaker 2: now that you said that Rivana song, Yes, I remember now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ari EM's was awesome, and you know, they had
Speaker 1: some sort of obvious unplugged stuff like Bob Dylan and
Speaker 1: Neil Young, but I think it was when the rock
Speaker 1: bands did it, is when it got the most attention
Speaker 1: and was maybe at its best.
Speaker 2: For sure, or Depeche Mode. So. One other thing that
Speaker 2: was huge, just huge, that started out as just some
Speaker 2: small thing that they tried, was in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 2: Allen Hunter took everybody to Daytona Beach and they basically
Speaker 2: just covered spring Break. Yeah, and spring Break became an
Speaker 2: annual event on MTV for decades to come. It was
Speaker 2: just a huge deal. Every spring Break was covered and
Speaker 2: it was just people like doing shots or dancing or whatever,
Speaker 2: like on the beach, playing volleyball. It was just all
Speaker 2: lame and dumb, but it was exactly the kind of
Speaker 2: thing you wanted to see if it was like April
Speaker 2: in Northern Ohio, because it didn't look like that outside
Speaker 2: in April and Northern Ohio. So like it just brought
Speaker 2: you down to the beach with all these beautiful people
Speaker 2: and it was It was a great experience for sure.
Speaker 2: And then that also kind of gave birth to Beach
Speaker 2: MTV or MTV Beach House later on, which they would
Speaker 2: basically just rent a beach house and broadcast from there
Speaker 2: for the summer.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just made summer summer, you know what I'm saying, like.
Speaker 1: The official kickoff.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, or like even like in the middle of summer,
Speaker 2: just seeing that in the morning, you know, getting ready
Speaker 2: to go hang out with friends because school was out.
Speaker 2: It just it made it was like a punctuation mark
Speaker 2: for summer. It just made it more of a summer
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, I totally agree. MTV News was another
Speaker 1: non music show that's kind of where we're headed in
Speaker 1: this segment, and it was a very big deal. I
Speaker 1: remember that they had a very iconic intro to with
Speaker 1: the typewriter spelling out MTV News and that sound that
Speaker 1: it made. Yeah, do that louder, You just did it great, Well,
Speaker 1: your first try was better. Kurt Loader, though, was a
Speaker 1: veteran rock journalist and he was sort of the main
Speaker 1: face in nineteen eighty seven. But you know they also
Speaker 1: had like Chris Connolly ended up being the movie guy.
Speaker 1: He was the MTV news guy for a while. I
Speaker 1: had many many crushes via MTV News, like Tabitha Soren
Speaker 1: and Serena alt Schole, and even a little bit of Kennedy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Kennedy. Remember Duffy?
Speaker 1: Oh, I remember Duffy. She lived in a friend of
Speaker 1: mine's building in New York and the Greenwich Village in
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, and I saw in the elevator once
Speaker 1: and almost passed out.
Speaker 2: I'll bet I think the one who could top them
Speaker 2: all though, was Daisy Flinn Taste.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot about her, jay Zy Flints.
Speaker 2: Daisy Taste. So anyway, moving on, there was a game
Speaker 2: show on MTV for I think just like a year
Speaker 2: maybe called Remote Control came on in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: and if anyone asks you what MTV's first regular non
Speaker 2: music programming was it was Remote Control and I loved
Speaker 2: Remote Control me too.
Speaker 1: It had to be more than a year because ken
Speaker 1: Ober was the host, unless they just replaced the host midyear,
Speaker 1: which I don't remember because another crush Kry Wererer, took
Speaker 1: over for ken Ober at a certain point. But Remote
Speaker 1: Control was very funny and a great game show for
Speaker 1: people our age, and to me, it was most noteworthy
Speaker 1: as launching the careers of Colin Quinn, yes, who was
Speaker 1: the sidekick, and a young Adam Sandler and Dennis got
Speaker 1: their start there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were both writers and then Adam Sandler also
Speaker 2: played some early characters, one of which was stud Boy.
Speaker 2: But it was great. I had one of the all
Speaker 2: time best sets of not just any game show, but
Speaker 2: any TV show. It was set in Kenover's parents' basement
Speaker 2: and it was all about all the questions were about
Speaker 2: TV and TV history and stuff. It was really wonderful.
Speaker 2: Like the people the players played from recliners and if
Speaker 2: I remember correctly, if you were if you lost you
Speaker 2: like the recliner went sailing backwards through the woods. So
Speaker 2: that was a show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's funny. I haven't I didn't watch any clips,
Speaker 1: but in my brain it just popped into my head.
Speaker 1: The intro was something like, uh, I wasn't like the
Speaker 1: other kids or something like that.
Speaker 2: Okay, it was Kenny wasn't like the other kids. T mattered, nothing,
Speaker 2: nothing else that. The girls said yes, but he said no.
Speaker 2: Now he's got his own game show.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that or did you look that up?
Speaker 2: I remembered it. I did not look up a word
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 1: That's so funny.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: I knew there was something there about not being like
Speaker 1: the other kids.
Speaker 2: Because yeah, he just wanted to watch TV. So now
Speaker 2: he has a game show about TV.
Speaker 1: House of Style nineteen eighty nine fashion show hosted by
Speaker 1: Cindy Crawford was huge as far as comedy goes. It
Speaker 1: turns out beyond remote control being very funny, they launched
Speaker 1: like they were sneakily. One of the great comedy incubators
Speaker 1: of the eighties. I feel like yeah and nineties, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: into the nineties because The State the great To me,
Speaker 1: the best sketch show of all time was The State.
Speaker 1: Oh Yeah, from ninety four to ninety five on MTV.
Speaker 1: The Ben Stiller Show in nineteen ninety was amazing and
Speaker 1: very Underseen and Underrated?
Speaker 2: Did you watch that when it was on?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I did not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was into all of that.
Speaker 2: I went So that launched Jane Garoffalo, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross,
Speaker 2: Judd Apatow, Andy Dick for Better or Worse, Ben Stiller
Speaker 2: obviously because before that he was just Jerry Stiller's kid. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and this was where he introduced himself to the world.
Speaker 2: And we have Severance thanks to the show, So thanks
Speaker 2: a lot, MTV. But it also brought together Bob Odenkirk
Speaker 2: and David Cross, yeah, with Dinos Demettopoulos, who was also
Speaker 2: a writer on the show, with them, and they went
Speaker 2: on to make a mister Show.
Speaker 1: Now that actually might be my favorite sketch show.
Speaker 2: I think so too. But there I went back, so
Speaker 2: I was like, I haven't seen a second of this show,
Speaker 2: and I found a great sketch with Bob Odenkirk as
Speaker 2: Charles Manson. Yeah, yeah, but Charles Manson is Lassie. It's
Speaker 2: like a black and white parody of Lassie, but rather
Speaker 2: than Lassie the dog, it's Charles Manson who's like the
Speaker 2: family dog, but he's just saying crazy stuff. And Bob
Speaker 2: Ogenkirk does a perfect Charles Manson.
Speaker 1: It's so good and that's where Ben Siler started doing
Speaker 1: the Tom Cruise impressions. And yeah, such a good show,
Speaker 1: even though I wasn't into it, we have to talk
Speaker 1: about totally Polly.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Polly's show ran for five year or so. It was
Speaker 1: actually a pretty big hit, The Oiz. Yeah, The Wiz
Speaker 1: and then one of my favorites, which got you know,
Speaker 1: NTB had such good programming for a while there with
Speaker 1: these other shows Liquid Television in nineteen ninety one, ten
Speaker 1: years at least before Adult Swim came on, you could
Speaker 1: be a kid that was watching this crazy, weird, experimental
Speaker 1: animation on television.
Speaker 2: Yeah, liquid television. Right, did you watch a Flux?
Speaker 1: I loved aon Flex. It was mind blowing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you've never seen am Flex, this is like
Speaker 2: a decade before Adult Swim came out. And this was
Speaker 2: not a time like there weren't such a thing as
Speaker 2: cartoons for adults. You had to basically watch heavy metal
Speaker 2: over and over again. Yeah, maybe Akira or something like that.
Speaker 2: This was like a cavalcade, a showcase of adult, weird, bizarre,
Speaker 2: hilarious cartoons. And it's actually where Beavis and butt Head
Speaker 2: got its start. Therefore, where Mike Judge got his start,
Speaker 2: A on Flex was super cool and in addition to
Speaker 2: just kind of launching some careers, it just laid the
Speaker 2: groundwork and showed that there's a huge appetite for people
Speaker 2: who are no longer in high school, who really love pot,
Speaker 2: maybe ascid a little bit and watch TV, are willing
Speaker 2: to stay up late to watch cartoons. This, this showed
Speaker 2: that they were out there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I didn't know until today that the animated show Daria
Speaker 1: was a spin off of Beavis and butt Head, that
Speaker 1: Daria was a character briefly on that show until you
Speaker 1: pointed that out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she was one of their classmates at high school.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Daria was big. We can't, you know, we're
Speaker 1: running so long, we can't like dive into all these
Speaker 1: but we have to at least mention shows like Jackass
Speaker 1: and Cribs. Yeah, and then the birth of reality TV
Speaker 1: eventually with stuff like The Osbourne's and Jersey Shore and Punked.
Speaker 1: But it all got started in nineteen ninety two with
Speaker 1: the Real World, which I mean clearly. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: there was the seventies PBS show and American Family, but
Speaker 1: as far as the teenagers watching stuff Reality TV. I
Speaker 1: feel like was birth with the real world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you can make a case. My hypothesis is
Speaker 2: that you could trace pretty much every problem that we
Speaker 2: have with the world today back to Reality TV, and
Speaker 2: ergo back to the real world.
Speaker 1: That show is really good for a while. I will
Speaker 1: I stand behind the real world. I don't remember what season.
Speaker 1: I feel like it really jumped the shark, but I
Speaker 1: know that there are a lot of people that say
Speaker 1: it was the year that they somebody got in the
Speaker 1: shower with somebody else and it became really just sort
Speaker 1: of like people were getting on there just because they
Speaker 1: knew they could be famous. But I feel like it
Speaker 1: had a more pure intent before that, as a kind
Speaker 1: of a weird social experiment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, it wasn't the show itself that was problematic.
Speaker 2: It was the foundation that it created, the legacy it created.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Because I mean, if you like reality TV, great, good
Speaker 2: on you. I'm glad that it's out there for you.
Speaker 2: But it wrecked TV until the streamers came along. Like,
Speaker 2: if you liked a written, scripted show, ts for you.
Speaker 2: Because everyone went all in on reality for years and
Speaker 2: years and years. You had to basically get a subscription
Speaker 2: to HBO to watch like a decent TV show for
Speaker 2: a long time because reality TV got so popular and
Speaker 2: it was so cheap to make.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, I don't want people to get mad
Speaker 1: if we don't mention Carson Daily and TRL. This was
Speaker 1: in the sort of days where I was fading out
Speaker 1: of MTV, so I wasn't as into it. But Carson
Speaker 1: Daily did a fine job on Total Request Live. And
Speaker 1: I'm also a big fan of the great Dave Holmes,
Speaker 1: who's a really good dude in real life and does
Speaker 1: some great things.
Speaker 2: He says, was he on Total Request Live?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know if he took over for Carson
Speaker 1: Daily or sort of pinch hitter or sometimes sometimes, but
Speaker 1: I know he was definitely one of the hosts.
Speaker 2: So a lot of people are like, what's this MTV
Speaker 2: you're talking about? And there's a good reason for that.
Speaker 2: And the reason why is because MTV just started to
Speaker 2: die a thousand deaths by new channels and networks coming on.
Speaker 3: Like that.
Speaker 2: It would made a big decision when it went to
Speaker 2: half hour shows or non music shows, even in part because,
Speaker 2: as was explained later, if you are watching MTV in
Speaker 2: its original form. You're like, you have no control whatsoever
Speaker 2: on what's going to come up next. And I remember
Speaker 2: doing this quite clearly. You'd be watching a perfectly good
Speaker 2: winger video and then all of a sudden comes, I
Speaker 2: don't know, some terrible video. I'm not going to call
Speaker 2: out anybody's favorite artists, and you would just immediately turn
Speaker 2: the channel because you knew you could turn back in
Speaker 2: three minutes and see what else was next. And they
Speaker 2: just got bled by that, and they found that half
Speaker 2: hour shows kept you in longer, and if those shows
Speaker 2: weren't made up of music videos but an actual narrative
Speaker 2: over the course of a half an hour, they lost
Speaker 2: less and less viewers. And so it just became sensible
Speaker 2: for them to get away from music. But fear not,
Speaker 2: because they said, if you still want music videos, don't worry,
Speaker 2: we will have you covered for the rest of your
Speaker 2: life with MTV two.
Speaker 1: That's right. MTV two launched in nineteen ninety six. It
Speaker 1: was like, Hey, it's just gonna be music videos. We
Speaker 1: Pinky swears. Less than ten years later, it was mostly
Speaker 1: reality shows and not music videos. YouTube really sealed the
Speaker 1: fate because you could just watch any music video ever
Speaker 1: by just typing it in your search bar on YouTube
Speaker 1: like don Style. Yeah, and yeah, I mean I watch
Speaker 1: music videos. There's still a show I can't remember what
Speaker 1: it's called that I see on Hulu that just runs
Speaker 1: music videos. So I'll put that on sometimes if I'm
Speaker 1: like folding laundry, hmm, okay, for nostalgia. It's kind of nice.
Speaker 2: If you go on MTV still around I believe MTV
Speaker 2: two is still around two, there is a ninety eight
Speaker 2: point seven five percent chance that you will find an
Speaker 2: episode of Ridiculousness playing. Yeah, it's been It carries MTV
Speaker 2: almost single handedly. It's a it's a show where they
Speaker 2: just basically put together hilarious clips. It's like it's like
Speaker 2: America's funniest home videos for nihilists and skateboarders basically, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's a good little show. You remember our friend
Speaker 2: Hampton Yaut who was in one of our variety shows.
Speaker 1: In LA That's the only reason I know about Ridiculousness.
Speaker 2: Yep, he was one of the writers on ridiculous This
Speaker 2: is a cute little show, but it has propped up
Speaker 2: MTV so much that it's been on for fourteen years.
Speaker 2: Since twenty eleven, yet somehow it is in season forty five. Wow,
Speaker 2: that's how many episodes they crank out to keep MTV going.
Speaker 2: So hats off to Rob dry Deck.
Speaker 1: It's the House Hunters of a TV.
Speaker 2: Yeah, essentially for sure.
Speaker 1: Well, before we leave, I do want to quickly kind
Speaker 1: of mention the MTV contests. If you were a kid
Speaker 1: in the eighties, they had these crazy, crazy contests that
Speaker 1: you could enter and they always seem to kind of
Speaker 1: want to one up the last as far as what
Speaker 1: they would do. Yeah, and they were I mean it
Speaker 1: was like, you know, you can win bon Jovi's childhood home,
Speaker 1: you can win a pink house from John Mellencamp or
Speaker 1: John Cougar at the time in his small town or whatever.
Speaker 1: But they were crazy. There was one very famous story
Speaker 1: of the party with Van Halen for two days, and
Speaker 1: this was in nineteen eighty four, and this I was
Speaker 1: about to say, poor guy, it's probably the best thing
Speaker 1: that ever happened to him. This guy named Kurt Jeffries
Speaker 1: has a legendary story of basically like they took it seriously.
Speaker 1: They weren't like, hey, let's just kind of get this
Speaker 1: kid in here and whatever. Signed something like they partied
Speaker 1: with them. They got him drunk and gave him cocaine
Speaker 1: and got a groupie to have sex with him in
Speaker 1: a bathroom, and like he did the whole rock star thing.
Speaker 1: Van Halen was very intent, Like apparently he woke up
Speaker 1: on day two and was like, I can't I've got
Speaker 1: to go home. And Alex van Halen was like shoving
Speaker 1: a beer in a space and was like, you've got
Speaker 1: to do this, dude.
Speaker 2: He said, you can't leave the spot until you drink
Speaker 2: that beer. And it was this it was a tall boy. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, after you rattle all that off,
Speaker 2: that that was just day one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was day one. There was a day two
Speaker 1: and this was.
Speaker 2: This was a sponsored contest by MTV.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's no way you could do that so these
Speaker 1: days obviously, but they had a bunch of those, like,
Speaker 1: you know, party with the band. I know that the
Speaker 1: police had a sort of a disaster of a contest
Speaker 1: where they were supposed to fly on their private jet
Speaker 1: with the band, and I think that went all pear shaped.
Speaker 1: I remember very clearly Madonna had a contest that you
Speaker 1: at home could make the video for True Blue, and
Speaker 1: I just remember seeing like bad homemade video after a
Speaker 1: bad homemade video of True Blue, over and over and
Speaker 1: over again, just so I could vote via phone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the contests, those are a lot of fun. There are
Speaker 1: a lot more kind of fun ones. There's a kind
Speaker 1: of a cool page six article that covers some of
Speaker 1: the wackier contests they had.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is definitely worth three And thanks for sending
Speaker 2: that to me. Oh, chuck, you got anything else?
Speaker 1: No, I mean we missed a ton, So it's just
Speaker 1: kind of one of those episodes you tried to stuff
Speaker 1: as much as we could in here.
Speaker 2: Yep, and keep an ero for VH one, which should
Speaker 2: be following this one right after right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I said we skip listener mail even it's been
Speaker 1: so long, and just say go with God, go watch
Speaker 1: some music videos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody's tired. Tick the day off, everybody exactly. If
Speaker 2: you want to send us an email, you can send
Speaker 2: it off to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff
Speaker 2: you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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