MTV after 30 years: On why we don’t talk with it anymore

During my teenage years in the late 90’s, when I started learning about MTV’s origins, I always dreamed of watching the channel’s first hour. When it happened, I wasn’t even alive (I got here three years later, while Madonna was proclaiming she felt “like a virgin”). I wondered all the time what it might’ve felt to witness that historic moment back in August 1^st, 1981 not only because of its importance, but because I’m an 80’s fan. That's why I would do anything to hop in a time machine and go back to that decade, and then visit the roaring 20’s.

A couple of nights ago, my dream came true, but without any travel arrangements or DeLoreans. Last weekend, VH1 Classic showed MTV30, which consisted of good old MTV programming (you know, back in the days when you didn’t need to be a pregnant teenager or a drunk jerk to be on MTV) to celebrate the channel’s 30^th birthday. Should I repeat that this was shown on VH1 Classic and not on MTV? I guess someone doesn’t want to remember a birthday (or “lose” advertisers and young, brainwashed viewers). It was great to re-watch, or even watch for the first time, some classic MTV moments. Sadly, only 12 hours were programmed and repeated over and over for three days, because 30 years of great stuff (make it 20, because the last 10 years have been awful) can be summed up in 12 hours. Right.

At least I was able to watch on TV and not on YouTube some great Michael Jackson and Madonna moments (two of my musical gods). Also, I got to re-watch the last part of TRL’s finale show (originally aired in November 2008), which was truly the end of an era for me (even though I stopped watching the show around the time I started college six years before). TRL was important for me, since it my after-school distraction and home to my teenage obsession: the Backstreet Boys.

Some other re-watches were Beavis and Butthead, my beloved Daria, Fashionably Loud, Britney Spears on the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) performing and dancing like she actually enjoyed it, and Chris Rock’s classic opening monologue for the 1999 VMA’s (which, in today’s different pop culture context, was very surreal to watch). 

I also enjoyed some classic moments that I’d never seen before: the first scene for the first season of The Real World (a show that completely lost its point years ago), Fab 5 Freddy on Yo! MTV Raps giving a priceless explanation of what is an e-mail, Control Remote (featuring Adam Sandler and Colin Quinn pre-Saturday Night Live), MTV promos for contests featuring artists (the last time I remember seeing an MTV contest promo following that style featured N’Sync), the Beastie Boys walking and rapping around New York streets, among others. But nothing prepared me for MTV’s first hour.

“E-mail, for those who don’t know, is electronic mail and it’s something that goes from computah to computah.”

On August 1, at midnight, VH1 Classic showed the full hour, including its technical difficulties and ads (seeing the Superman II trailer was rather interesting, when right now a reboot is being produced by my cinematic hero and Batman savior, Christopher Nolan). The 10-minute countdown footage of the first launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia was a little painful, yet filled with suspense. Then, the magic spell was cast: “Ladies and gentlemen: rock ‘n roll”. I must confess that I started applauding and cheering, like it was something new and suddenly I was in 1981 instead of 2011. The first video was The Buggles’ classic Video Killed the Radio Star, which I love and coincidentally features my favorite soundtrack composer Hans Zimmer (another Batman connection!) on keyboards. Then there were some abruptly edited interventions by former VJ Mark Goodman, who promised us that if we wrote to their address, we would get a “MTV Dial Sticker” (If anyone still has it, please send me a pic!). We also saw a glimpse of the other four original VJ’s: Nina Blackwood (whose style I want when I grow up), J.J. Jackson (R.I.P.), and Alan Hunter.  Artists like Pat Benatar, The Pretenders, and the amazing The Who were also part of that initial hour, but I was shocked by a man I’ve never seen in my life: Cliff Richard.

Cliff’s video for his 1979 hit “We Don’t Talk Anymore” was the sixth video played on MTV. In it, we see Cliff singing in front of a black background, and his feet are covered in dry ice that looks like clouds. It seems like Cliff and his band are in heaven, where there are only black walls and clouds with shiny lights (where are the so promised cherubs?). “Cheesy!”, I thought. Boy, was I wrong! Now this is cheesy, but mostly awkward:

Holy rubik cube! What is this? A floating head?! It seems like poor Cliff was decapitated and sent to shiny-lights-with-black-walls heaven or something. I don’t quite know. The thing is that I haven’t been able to take that image away from me. It has been haunting me these last few days. The next day when I got back home from work, that first hour was shown again, and there he was: Cliff bitching about that we don’t talk anymore.

And then other bad videos from some bands that I’ve never heard of were shown. Before watching that initial hour, I was under the impression that it was saturated with perfection and that cooler videos were shown (besides the ones I liked) during that first hour. But, then I realized something: MTV had its awkward moments while growing up, just like we did when we were growing up and watching MTV. Then, we got older and wiser, and that the music shown on MTV during our awkward years made everything cooler and became part of who we are nowadays. I just hope we won’t end up losing our essence and original purpose, just like MTV did in these last years.

Maybe that’s why Cliff and his floating head insist on saying that “it’s so funny that we don’t talk anymore”, because current generations don’t have that musical conversation we were able to have with MTV. New trends and marketing research shut it down and paved the way for things that have no musical conversation at all. The artists that had something to say were set aside to give room to creatures that have nothing to say at all.

Cliff Richard may not be the best or hippest artist on the face of the earth, but at least he got played on MTV because he was making music. All right, Cliff, let’s talk. I’ll hear you. Let’s talk somewhere else, like YouTube, because it looks like a stranger invaded our place. But first, put back your floating head on.