[HN Gopher] The first two hours of MTV (1981) [video]
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The first two hours of MTV (1981) [video]
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-08-08 11:41 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| aaron695 wrote:
| MTV is a great example of the ability to adapt as a company. They
| changed with the market.
|
| Also a great example of "old man yells at cloud"
|
| Wiki Trivia - "A shortened version of the shuttle launch ID ran
| at the top of every hour in different forms, from MTV's first day
| until it was pulled in early 1986 in the wake of the Challenger
| disaster"
| andrew_ wrote:
| They're a great example of selling an audience a fast drip of
| Morphine. The original idea - music - was viable. This [1] is a
| fascinating study of how the switch happened.
|
| [1]
| https://www.dukeupress.edu/Assets/PubMaterials/978-1-4780-11...
| fullshark wrote:
| And the market now demands ridiculousness
|
| https://twitter.com/MTVSchedule/status/1422934028253081603
| ToFab123 wrote:
| From a time where music television actually played music
| sixothree wrote:
| Now YouTube is where you watch music.
| rcpt wrote:
| Anyone got the first two hours of YouTube?
| BuildTheRobots wrote:
| I thought youtube started out at online video-dating?
|
| edit: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/16/yo
| utube-p...
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| here it is in all its glory https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ
| tpmx wrote:
| My main MTV memory besides the daytime music programming:
|
| MTV Europe's Most Wanted, hosted _live_ four evenings a week by
| Ray Cokes, 1992-1995. I think each broadcast lasted quite some
| time too, like 1.5 hours at least. Saw it via the Astra 19.2E
| satellite feed when I was a teen. I caught a majority of the
| broadcasts. It really felt quite special that young people from
| all over Europe were watching this silly thing, _live_ ,
| together. He was sort of like a European Conan O'Brian.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Cokes
|
| Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LLnfR9BwWY
| tomhoward wrote:
| Strangely enough, Australian artists were uniquely well-prepared
| for the emergence of MTV.
|
| There was a national Saturday night pop music show called
| Countdown [1], that ran from 1974, featuring live performances
| and music videos, so Australian bands had nearly a decade head
| start to develop the art of music video.
|
| This was a major factor in the USA success of INXS, Men at Work,
| AC/DC and Olivia Newton-John, as they'd started out in the late
| 70s, and when MTV started, they already had great music videos in
| the can and were well placed to make more.
|
| When most videos were just of the group on a studio stage
| performing the song (e.g., Dire Straits' Sultans of Swing [2]),
| INXS and other bands of the time had arthouse filmmakers like
| Richard Lowenstein [3] doing much more creative work.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(Australian_TV_progr...
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_7qkRwcMFc
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lowenstein
| listenallyall wrote:
| This is a pretty hot take. INXS had no MTV visibility until
| around 4 or 5 years after the channel started, by which time,
| _plenty_ of artists had done "creative work". AC/DC was
| popular, but they pretty much ONLY released straight
| performance videos. Contrast them with Van Halen, who also
| initially released concert videos, although they recognized the
| power of the medium and focused on David Lee Roth's crazy leg
| kicks and Eddie's solos to make extremely watchable videos...
| and later pivoted to classic studio videos like Hot For
| Teacher. Olivia Newton-John's enormous popularity was due to
| Grease, not MTV. If anything, despite her one big hit
| (Physical), her career under-performed, compared to other
| female solo acts of her era (Madonna, Cyndi Lauper).
|
| And then you top it off by naming Dire Straits as an example of
| "just performing the song" when ultimately, that exact band
| released perhaps the most iconic and unforgettable video of all
| time.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Younger HN readers won't be able to understand this, but these
| were some good times, when we had MTV playing music videos all
| the time without all the silly reality shows and when the
| majority of the music video clips had a meaning, were relevant to
| the song and were well directed.
| DashAnimal wrote:
| Younger and international MTV viewers*. Sorry just doing my
| part to make the English web less US-centric.
| andrew_ wrote:
| I remember when The Real World first dropped, and after a few
| weeks VJs spent more time talking about what happened rather
| than new music. I knew that was the beginning of the end.
| aazaa wrote:
| This bit from Wikipedia is kind of amusing and suggests MTV may
| have been an MVP:
|
| > ... Occasionally the screen went black when an employee at MTV
| inserted a tape into a VCR.[20] MTV's lower third graphics near
| the beginnings and ends of videos eventually used the
| recognizable Kabel typeface for about 25 years; but they varied
| on MTV's first day, speaking in a different typeface, and
| including details such as the song's year and record label.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV#Official_launch
|
| None of that mattered though:
|
| > MTV's effect was immediate. Within two months, record stores
| where MTV was available were selling music local radio stations
| were not playing, such as Men at Work, Bow Wow Wow and the Human
| League.[27] MTV also sparked the Second British Invasion,
| featuring existing videos by UK acts who had used the format for
| several years (for example, on BBC's Top of the Pops).
| MilnerRoute wrote:
| It's nice to see that the very first music video they played was
| "Video killed the radio star."
|
| 40+ years, and I've never actually seen the music video for that
| song...
| wyldfire wrote:
| Hans Zimmer was a member and is in the video. In the decades
| that follow, he would go on to compose of "No time for
| caution", "Dream is collapsing" and many other film score
| tracks.
|
| https://www.thescottclan.org/jason/2019/11/26/my-cosmic-conn...
| mdp2021 wrote:
| ...Rain Man, the Dark Knight trilogy... Forthcoming Dune...
| 5555624 wrote:
| And on 27 February 2000, it became the one-millionth video they
| played.
| khazhoux wrote:
| There's quite a variety of music there! Surprising.
| latchkey wrote:
| It is fascinating how copyright holders are forcing the removal
| of some of the history. "EDIT: Had to remove
| about 3.5 mins of this due to a claim by "April Wine"...I really
| tried to get them to understand that this was an historical
| archive, *not* an attempt to steal money from their band....They
| didn't want to hear it...All the other artist were totally ok
| with this but "April Wine" said FU. Go Figure : / EDIT: EDIT:
| Video was taken down again because Cliff Richard suddenly decided
| that I was ripping him off and shut down the video...I wrote back
| trying to get him to change his mind but no deal, had to chop
| Cliff out of the video for it to be posted again. Sorry
| everyone."
| andrew_ wrote:
| Imagine being _this persnickety_ about any use of a song that
| was relevant more than 30 years ago, and hasn 't really been
| since.
| netr0ute wrote:
| That's why you don't use YouTube and instead use a
| decentralized platform.
| luke2m wrote:
| The very first song was "Video killed the Radio Star". How
| amusing. I'm sure, however, that today much more people listen to
| the radio than watch MTV.
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(page generated 2021-08-08 23:00 UTC)