mjollnir

MTV

To me MTV and music videos degrade the development of rock music. The emphasis is tipped too far toward imagery and away from the sounds and lyrics. Poor music is masked by flashy images. The imagery is not created nor inspired by the musicians, but reflects marketeers more than anything else. Videos help posers, not composers.

MTV

I agree with what you're saying, JD, which is why I was talking about MTV in its infancy, before corporate greed took over.  Your post exemplifies what I was trying to get at.  Maybe I didn't make my point very well.  Back in the early days, before record companies and MTV figured out that MTV was just one big commercial, they played good music, and more arcane music.  I guess that The Buggles song "Video Killed the Radio Star" was more of a harbinger than any of us really knew...

MTV

From somone that watched MTV from the day it started (yes, I saw the first airing of the Buggle's video, and it was an ironic premonition), I remember remarking to my friend that the Real Life would be the beginning of the downfall of MTV as a station to watch. That was the beginning of the slide into the crap that is now broadcasted on the channel 24/7.  I remember when the station was about the music, then the channel became a place where the music did not matter, it was only how "good" you looked in your videos. I cannot tell you how many groups have been commercially shut down due to the fact that they did not meet the criteria of being good to look at while they sang - one in the forefront of my memory is the group Heart.

In actuality, MTV became the bane of any serious musician. It is all about how much skin you can show during a 4 minute promo of your song, and nothing about the music that supplies what is now just a backdrop to the debauchery on film. It pains me to think of what the station could have been - so much that I cannot even look at the channel anymore. Its sickening that you have to order their sister stations (MTV 2 and 3) in order to actually see any videos at all.

MTV has become the radio sation of the new generation - just a channel on TV to spoon feed youth into watching and hearing what other people want them to, talking like they do, and dressing like it also. It has killed any spark of origionality in music, and keeps children from actually looking for true alternatives to the pop culture.

MTV

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Killed_The_Radio_Star

MTV

MTV has become the radio sation of the new generation - just a channel on TV to spoon feed youth into watching and hearing what other people want them to, talking like they do, and dressing like it also. It has killed any spark of origionality in music, and keeps children from actually looking for true alternatives to the pop culture.

MTV

Well said, Patz.  It's funny to see some of the conceptual videos from the early eighties.  By todays standards, they are very amateurish, but I remember marveling at the technical innovations at the time.  It's sadly true that MTV has spawned a lot of artists that are more style than substance.  Artists like Janis Joplin and "Mama" Cass Elliot would surely have wallowed in obscurity had they been coming of age in the MTV era.

Sherm, I've never watched "King of the Hill", but "Beavis and Butthead came along when I was no longer really watching MTV, the few times I saw it, I wasn't impressed.  Was Mike Judge making a social commentary with that cartoon, or merely playing to the MTV audience?

MTV

Well mj, here I was going to toss in my two cents (er, two yen, I guess I oughtta say...), but patz came along and stole me thunder.  I fear I would  wind up paraphrasing what he just said very well...

But here goes anyway...  Like you, I didn't get MTV when the music videos first came out, either.  But we did have a local hour long production called "Friday Night Videos" that aired at midnight Friday that showed the latest & included requests and so on.  I used to actually look forward to it.  Some were just plain silly (think Twisted Sister "I Wanna Rock"), but others were genuinely creative (think Peter Gabriel's "Sledge Hammer", or Herbie Hancock's "Rockit").  In any case, all in all it was good fun.

But you know, image has been a part of marketing since marketing began, and popular music has always, to some extent, been about marketing and sales.  Even the women scrubbing away that were painted in the prints and magazine ads a hundred years ago advertizing "Bon Ami" or something were pretty.  Fast forward 40 years, and you have Frank Sinatra.  Great talent, but not a bad looking guy, either.  Jump to the 50's, and ditto for Elvis.  The great thing about much of the popular music of the 60's to early-mid 70's was that whether or not it was original music played with skill and sincerity actually counted for something among the music buying general public, and therefore meant something to the record companies as well. 

I think that that began to change in the late 70's early 80's, and in that sense, videos arrived just in time...  What I think has happened now, however, is that with the coming of videos (and particularly music companies realizing and then exploiting the marketing potential) is that the videos/imagery have become at least as important as the songs that they are supposidly expressing.  That's not to say that there aren't some interesting and original videos out there, but in the absence of a generally discerning public taste, it has all too often become imagery without substance-  whatever is catchy, and will sell, will do just fine...

Before TV dramas, there were radio dramas.  You actually had to pay attention, apply listening skills, and use your imagination (and before radio dramas, books, by golly).  Along comes television, and where are the radio dramas now?  Maybe a few, like "The Shadow" are kicking around somewhere in the Library Of Congress, and that is just about it.  You mentioned, mj, "Video Killed The Radio Star".   It could also be said that similarly, TV drama had previously killed the radio drama star.  Video imagery spoon feeds in the same sense-  All to often to the detriment of the actual music involved...  I am afraid to say it, but it has been a pretty logical and predictable sequence of events stemming from the fact that for most of us, sight is the primary sense.   I think that  Marshall McLuhan put it well when he famously said "The medium is the message"...

So I guess that I managed my "two yen worth" after all, here...

BTW, Sherm, "spoon feeding" or not, I do like "King Of The Hill".  Very good show... 

MTV

Da Fan, I remeber the Friday Night Videos, back when there was still music on the tv!!

MTV to me nowadays is a joke, I bet I haven't watched for than a few minutes of it in the last 10 years.  It seems everytime I surf past MTV its just some crap, do they ever play music videos anymore??

MTV

Good post DFIJ, you make some very salient points.  Yes image is part of advertising, but what is even more insidious is the underlying theme, "If you don't use our product, you will be a loser."  Does anyone remember the old Whisk commercials?  You've got Ring Around The Collar!!!  Has any of you actually looked at a persons shirt looking for ring around the collar?  But if you don't use Whisk, you are a failure as a mother and wife.

The seventies were definitely an interesting time for pop music.  It was the era of the singer/songwriter as well as the stadium band.  It was the era of the sappy love song as well the the super anthem.  Style truly began to overtake substance in the seventies, and big money was the driving force, as it is in all things.  Kiss was one of the first to realize this, and they made millions upon millions of dollars unabashedly marketing themselves.  Action figures, lunchboxes, movies, cartoons, you name it.  They were not so much a band, as a brand.  I suspect if you said this to Gene Simmons, he would not disagree (no offense intended to any Kiss fans).

Radio killed the novel, TV killed the radio serial, what will kill TV?  I guess a strong argument could be made for the medium we are using right now.  I know I spend more time in front of my PC than in front of my TV, with the exception of Sundays during football season.

Herd, I remeber Friday Night Videos, if I'm not mistaken, the first video I saw on it was "Queen of Hearts" by Juice Newton.

MTV

Thank you very much for the compliment, mj, much appreciated.  Most of the comments I made were off the cuff, although I found myself responding like I would as if it were a question on a university exam...  Old habits die hard, as the old saying goes, I guess..

And yeah, peer pressure was something recognized very early by advertizers-  It is a very compelling psychological angle to pursue, and of course they will exploit it...  The bottom line is the bottom line...  And yes, we can unfortunately expect for advertising  to become evermore increasingly psychological in nature.  Where ever an edge can be found over a competitor, it will be exploited...