MTV's 20th Birthday

July 29, 2001

BY JIM DEROGATIS pop music critic

I want my MTV--not! Generally lost in the self-congratulatory cacophony marking the cable music station's two-decade anniversary is the hard-to-dispute dissenting notion that holds that no other force in the 50-year history of rock has had such an insidious effect on the music.

''You talk to kids now, and rather than being an adjunct to the song, the video is the song--that's the damage that MTV has done,'' says Los Angeles critic Marc Weingarten, author of Station to Station: The History of Rock 'n' Roll on Television.

''The people that created MTV were not exactly musicians, they were marketers,'' Weingarten says. ''So the fact that it would turn music into a commodity was an inevitability. MTV is the end of rock history--or at least the end of rock on television--because TV does not allow for maverick voices. It's wholly corporatized.''

I'll confess: I didn't always feel this way. I was about to enter my senior year in high school when the network premiered 20 years ago on Wednesday. At the time, the concept of music-on-television, 24 hours a day, seven days a week seemed like a ravenous young rock fan's dream come true.

FM radio had already started its long and sorry downward spiral toward increasingly narrow genre boundaries and restrictive playlists. Post-punk and pre-hip-hop, the mainstream music scene was in one of its periodic artistic lulls--a time very much like today--when MTV flickered onto the screens of a mere 1 million cable TV subscribers at the stroke of midnight on Aug. 1, 1981.

Today, MTV is the No. 1 cable network for the influential age group of 12- to 24-year-olds, and it's viewed in 342 million households worldwide. But back in the day, a group of us had to gather at the house of the one lucky friend who had cable. We'd watch MTV for hours, even though we hated 90 percent of the music it played, simply because we loved the idea of it, and there was always the hope that a good video might be coming up next.

In retrospect, this sounds like my grandparents talking about standing in front of the appliance store to watch television shortly after its inception, or my parents gawking over the wonders of color TV a generation later. Soon enough, we all realized that we were just being sold the same old crap in a bright, shiny new package.

With MTV, my friends and I quickly realized that what seemed like a radical new medium--this revolution would be televised!--was in fact a carefully crafted facade, the brainchild of a group of marketing pros who built on the AM-radio model of creating hits through saturation airplay (MTV's vice-tight roster makes Top 40 seem expansive) while pioneering the vaguely sinister concept of ''cross-promotional synergy'' (wherein MTV gives constant airplay to a video that features Sting and Dire Straits plugging MTV, to mention just the first of a thousand examples since).

The ingenious twist that founders Bob Pittman and John Lack built into MTV was the illusion of constant change and evolution. A lot of focus is being spent in the 20th anniversary hype on the ever-rotating cast of well-coiffed VJs (is there anything sadder than ''Where Are They Now?'' profiles of Kennedy, Adam Curry and Julie Brown?), as well as on the station's periodic reinventions, from all-Madonna and Michael Jackson, all the time; to hair metal, alternative, and hip-hop, to all-'N Sync and Britney Spears, all the time.

Through it all, the essential product of MTV has never changed: MTV is designed to sell MTV. Via its ability to become an indispensable part of young viewers' lives, it can sell almost anything else--from zit cream and tennis shoes, to the idea of rocking the vote, to the latest mediocre creation of the corporate music machine.

''Ladies and gentlemen, rock 'n' roll!'' Lack intoned during the station's first few seconds on the air. But MTV has always been more about ''pop'' (as in mass popularity, massive sales, and catering to mainstream tastes) than ''rock'' (traditionally the music of excitement, rebellion, and individualism).

Just look at the list of signature artists that the station takes pride in breaking--from the Gloved One and Ms. Ciccone, through Milli Vanilli and George Michael, into the present era of boy bands, Lolitaesque divas, and ''Total Request Live.''

Now, ask yourself: How many of these qualify as great rock 'n' roll and/or enduring art, and how many linger in our consciousness along the same lines as the pet rock, streaking, the Lambada, the California Raisins, name your favorite fad of the 15 minutes just passed?

Lack's introductory boast was famously followed by the network's first video, the Buggles' ''Video Killed the Radio Star.'' The clip was already two years old when MTV started playing it, though before, it had been only been viewed on Britain's ''Top of the Pops'' and at a handful of hip dance clubs. MTV propelled the single to sales of 5 million copies.

Forget for a moment that the Buggles' song is bemoaning, not celebrating, the death of the radio star--note the melancholy emotion in Trevor Horn's vocals, which are treated to sound as if they're coming from a tinny transistor radio, as he sings, ''We can't rewind, we've gone too far.'' There's also the fact that at the end of the video, the band blows up a television set.

The group is clearly saying that music matters more than image. But through the contorted looking glass of MTV, the video came to mean exactly the opposite. Bye-bye radio and music, hello video. And image uber alles. Whoo-hoo!

The network has operated in this black-is-white Orwellian fashion ever since, proudly boasting that it is the epitome of the musical cutting edge while operating in a fashion that is as reactionary, conservative, and self-serving as any other global mega-corporation.

According to Newsweek, MTV's revenues topped $3 billion last year--almost triple what it earned in 1995. Owned by an even bigger media giant, Viacom, MTV Networks controls the more music-intensive MTV2 (which recently took over the Box), Baby-Boomer-oriented VH1 and country-themed CMT.

With the exception of the African-American-focused BET, there is no other national cable alternative for music on television. MTV is the 800-pound gorilla, and as with Ticketmaster and the radio and concert giant Clear Channel Communications (formerly SFX Entertainment), artists and record companies have to deal with it because there's nowhere else to turn.

Meanwhile, fans can either buy what MTV is selling, dig deep into the underground in search of an alternative, or tune out entirely.

Some music lovers think that the network is a tragic lost opportunity--that a station which actually practiced everything that MTV preaches could be a dynamic and unifying force in rock, similar to free-form FM radio in the '70s. Why can't there be programming that mixes vintage footage of great '60s and '70s rockers with the most inventive new videos, giving us everything from James Brown live at the Apollo to coverage of the Roots on Moby's Area: One festival, and broadcasting to America's hippest cities as well as the heart of North Dakota?

This is a nice idea, in theory. But it ignores several problems inherent with the entire concept of rock on television.

The debate continues between academics and critics on one side and the industry on the other over whether television is our-lowest-common-denominator mass anesthetic or the ultimate democratic entertainment medium. I'll stay out of the fray on that one, except to note that the very ubiquity and accessibility of the images in our living room has a tendency to devalue them as art.

Is a movie ever as good on television as it was in the theaters? And think of how cartoons seemed so much more important to those of us who lived to watch them every Saturday morning, in contrast to kids today, who get them on demand whenever they want via videos, Nickelodeon, and TV Land (two more Viacom/MTV properties).

It's the same with rock on television. Having it all the time somehow cheapens it--even though MTV has dramatically shifted its primary focus in recent years from music videos to programming ranging from the laughably awful ''real-life'' soap opera, ''The Real World,'' to the laughably awful fictional soap opera, ''Undressed.''

Rock has always been most effective when it has appeared on the tube unexpectedly, in a setting that has underscored its anything-can-happen, live-in-the-moment immediacy. In Station to Station, Weingarten recounts an impressive list of galvanizing rock-on-TV moments: the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on ''The Ed Sullivan Show,'' Elvis Presley's '68 comeback special, Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon on ''The Dick Cavett Show,'' Elvis Costello, Devo and Sinead O'Connor on ''Saturday Night Live,'' Nirvana on ''MTV Unplugged,'' and so on.

In every instance, the artist shocked, surprised or thrilled us while performing live, as opposed to acting and lip-synching in some methodically plotted mini-movie that cost upwards of a half a million dollars to make. It's important to remember that the average video is really just a commercial, something designed to sell the artist, his or her single and album, and any number of ancillary products, from a related movie, to the featured fashions, to the beverage that the star is seen slurping.

In many cases, the video isn't even remotely connected to the music or lyrics. And even when it is, it doesn't mean that the musicians had anything to do with it.

Nirvana's ''Smells Like Teen Spirit'' is the rare example of a good rock video, one that matches the basic emotion of the music with memorable images. But the band hated director Sam Bayer--they nicknamed him ''Jethro Napoleon,'' according to Michael Azerrad's biography, Come As You Are--resenting the way he hijacked their vision of a spoof of the Ramones' ''Rock and Roll High School,'' dumbed it down, prettied it up (Nirvana wanted cheerleaders, but really ugly ones), and made it all palatable for MTV.

Yes, the final video was entertaining, and even powerful in its own way. But the song was infinitely more potent and complex than the simplistic film clip, simultaneously calling for and rejecting anarchic action/rock 'n' roll rebellion (''a denial!'') while wondering how the whole idea even fits in an era where marketing is inescapable (the tune was named for Teen Spirit brand deodorant) and everything is reduced to just another pleasant diversion (''Here we are now, entertain us!'').

Even before Elvis' famous not-seen-on-TV pelvis, rock has been in part about powerful visual images. But MTV makes the images everything.

Whenever I'm listening to an album that I really love or losing myself in the midst of a great live performance, I like to sit down and close my eyes--the better to block out everything but the music and the emotions it stirs in me. MTV seeks to burn its chosen images on the video screens of our minds at the expense of the far more poignant movies that we can create for ourselves.

I pity any music lover who has lost that ability.

As Weingarten says, ''MTV is the death of the imagination. It has impoverished kids' critical faculties and blunted their abilities to interpret music in a meaningful way for themselves.''

For that alone, it is the enemy of great rock 'n' roll, and the exact opposite of everything that it has ever claimed to be. Happy birthday, MTV--and good riddance.

JBTV airs another view of rock video

July 29, 2001

Yes, Virginia, there is an alternative: Meet the ''JB'' of JBTV.

Jerry Bryant is the Bizarro World version of Carson Daly. If you've ever spent any time channel-surfing Chicago-area television, you've encountered the hyperactive Jerry Garcia lookalike as he enthusiastically thrusts his boom mike in the face of some hapless young rocker. And you've probably lingered on JBTV long enough to see some cool video that would never be played anywhere else.

Bryant's hourlong music video show airs every Wednesday at 11 p.m. on WJYS-Ch. 52, as well as at various other times on several local cable systems. Humble though its resources may be, for lovers of quality rock, there is simply no contest: JBTV beats MTV every time, hands down.

I spoke with Bryant and his producer, Armando Zapata, to get their reactions to MTV's 20th birthday hoopla.

Q. Do you see JBTV as an alternative to the MTV monolith? With too few exceptions, if you want music on TV, you have to go to one of the stations they control.

Zapata: I think the record labels like and appreciate what we do, but we're never going to be able to have the millions of viewers that MTV has. So it's not like every day, they're the enemy and we're trying to knock them down. But I know that what Jerry does, he thinks that JBTV is like a great radio station, and he picks the songs not because they've been researched or anything else, but because they're great music and he wants to play something that you're not going to hear anywhere else.

Bryant: Remember FM radio when it first came on? A new piece of music would come in that day and they'd get it on the air--not one cut but maybe a couple of cuts--because it meant something to the audience. Now, the average program director is too afraid of losing their job in these corporate companies to make any kind of decisions.

The problem with television now is that if you just play music videos, you get not the greatest ratings. Even my show, if I do a show that's got a lot of talk and not much music, it will get a better rating than a show that's 99 percent music. My show is all about the music, and I refuse to change that. But we just re-ran the show with Joey Ramone, and he talked for like 30 minutes straight. More people have told me over the last week that they liked that show, but it had maybe six songs over the course of the whole hour, and normally I like to do 12 to 15 songs.

Q. Do you ever have a hard time getting videos from the music industry because it wants to avoid ticking off MTV?

Bryant: I haven't found any problems with that. But a good example of something else is Incubus. They had the song ''Certain Shade of Green,'' their first video, and MTV didn't really play it, but we did. The second video that came out, MTV got it first, despite [our support]. Or the Moby song, ''That's When I Reach for My Revolver''--MTV demanded that he re-record that and change the lyrics. He came on our show and was complaining about it, and within a week, MTV had him on all the time.

Zapata: We just think it's funny that they don't touch certain artists, and all the sudden it's like they've discovered them after we've been playing them for months and months. We find it amusing.

Q. Do you think that MTV is a monopolistic force in the music world?

Bryant: It's just like radio stations now--like Clear Channel owns venues and concert promotions and stuff like that. It's all part of the corporate thing, and it's what America has turned into. But I think the individual shows, the individual people throughout the country are going to still make it happen. There are plenty of local shows in this city and throughout the whole country.

Zapata: Another thing we find amusing, though, is that people who do have access shows still play the mainstream stuff--the same stuff that MTV is playing.

Bryant: We've even seen some access shows copy our playlist. I'm going, ''Why don't they play other stuff? There's plenty out there!'' We get like 50 or 60 videos a week here sometimes.

Q. How do you choose what you play?

Bryant: First, I take away the boy groups and the pop stuff, and I try to play the bands that are alternative, modern-rock, in the middle there. Sometimes I'll play something like the new Cowboy Junkies video because [singer] Margot [Timmons] is a good friend of ours, and though it's a little slower and a little out of our format now, she's an artist that deserves airplay, and I don't know if VH1 or any of the other stations are going to bother with it.

Q. It seems to me that the whole concept of rock videos is flawed--that these three-minute commercials have taken away something powerful in rock. The stuff that I like best on JBTV tends to be the concert footage that you shoot live. Would you agree?

Bryant: Absolutely! Most bands aren't crazy about making videos to begin with, but the spontaneity of the live thing. What's nice about a live concert is that things happen in concerts. They're not technically perfect, and those little things that happen are what makes them magic. Again, it gets down to the music.

Zapata: A lot of it too is that the record companies hire directors who they know will get on MTV, whether it's Wayne Isham or someone like that. You're hiring someone who isn't a musician, someone who isn't totally into the scene, someone who's trying to win an award instead of going for the gut. All those live things--I was watching the Beatles' ''Anthology'' tape over the weekend, and all that stuff back then was live and raw, it came from the gut, which is where music should come from.

Bryant: I think bands could do songs that have six different videos, but a lot of times they spend so much money that they're afraid to experiment. I don't think videos have to cost that much. It's funny, we just shot for MTV's 20th anniversary celebration the Blink-182 concert at the Tweeter Center. We had six cameras and it was Chicago's first HDTV video shoot, and it still cost a fraction of the average MTV video. I was doing that for the record company, though, so it wasn't like working for the competition.

Q. What if MTV came to you and said, ''Jerry, we want you to be the next Matt Pinfield!''?

Bryant: No way! And what happened to Matt Pinfield, anyway? He was one of the few people who had integrity, who knew music, and who really cared. It's just hard to do that kind of stuff in these narrow formats.

Jim DeRogatis

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