Post #246226 by Sabu The Coconut Boy on Wed, Aug 2, 2006 12:19 AM

Yeah, I guess that makes me pretty old as well. Sigh.

My memories of MTV tend to revolve around the precursors of that famous video show and how it all seemed to build and happen in an instant in those few years near the end of high school. Sure, back in the 1970s, you could walk into any stereo and television store and see ABBA videos showing on every screen - advertising for both ABBA's new record and the sound and picture quality of the TVs in the store. Even though they were boring, just showing closeups of the girls singing, they still held me captivated as they played over and over.

But it was 1979 that sticks in my mind. I had my own small television in my bedroom, which I had redeemed for coupons earned by talking people into subscribing to the Daily Breeze newspaper. Late at night, when I couldn't sleep I would turn on the TV and there, on some obscure midnight show, would be David Bowie's "I Am A DJ" video with the shocking (to me) scene of Bowie kissing some guy on the lips that he passed on the street. I was amazed and hooked on the music video format from then on. David Bowie made it easy with otherworldly videos like the 1980 Ashes to Ashes, which was so creative and hallucinatory to me at the time, that it inevitably spoiled me for the repetive pap that MTV became only a year or two after its premiere.

By 1980 I was a Senior in High School and full-bore into New Wave and listening to budding L.A. music station KROQ. DJ Richard Blade started his own syndicated video show called MV3 at least six months before MTV and it was on regular non-cable TV, so I could watch it every afternoon after school. Blade played a lot of videos of KROQ favorites like Translator's "You're Everywhere That I'm Not", and Barnes & Barnes "Sponge For Your Love" which I never saw later on MTV.

I remember riding my bike to my friend's apartment to see the opening moments of MTV's first show, then riding over after work almost every day for a year to watch an hour or so for the first year. There was just nothing like it on TV. It was new and fresh and addicting. This friend from work was named Danny Chavez and he was handsome and worldly and independant at age 18. He went to clubs at night, which I was not allowed to do, so we would watch MTV and he would teach me to dance the New Wave Twist and the various Mod and Ska dances he learned at the clubs.

Later in 1981 I got a job as a computer programmer in Long Beach and I would call in to KROQ during the day when most of the listeners where still in school and would win concert tickets almost every week. That's how I got to see Echo & The Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, China Crisis, Pere Ubu, and numerous other bands. Over half the DJ's on KROQ were female in the 1980s - A trend mirrored on MTV that I thought would continue on L.A. radio, but sadly died off. There was a comic book store in Hermosa Beach and the owner worked in the record industry in Hollywood. He would get all the Promo lps in that you weren't allowed to sell, but he sold anyway in his comic book store. I would buy them and call the DJs on KROQ and they would have me drive in to the old station in Pasadena late at night and I would sit with DJs Jedd The Fish and The Swedish Eagle and we would play tracks live off these promos as "exclusives" that no other station had at the time. It was really heady stuff for an 19-year-old kid: sitting with my favorite DJs and talking live on air and having them sign all my albums. But my interest in MTV waned as it became more and more Pop and more and more repetitive.

It wasn't till the late 80s, early 90s that I became interested in music videos again, when a late night Los Angeles music video show called "Are Oh Vee" brought back all those memories of watching Bowie in my bedroom on my little 8-inch TV. Are Oh Vee played these raw and obscure Punk, Independent, Industrial, Rockabilly and whatever videos you would never see on MTV, but had ten times the soul and authenticity. I would tape that show religiously and invite my friends over to watch it later. I wish there was still something like that on normal TV nowadays.

Sabu