Kabul Collapse Cafe: I Want My MTV Edition

Cat gets caught preparing to pounce on a parrot, then plays it off.

No big deal, just all of your cats having a secret meeting in your bookshelves.

Whale enjoying a swim.

Rescue pittie and rescue calf work out a way to play with each other, even though their instinctual play styles are completely different. The calf just wants to stand in place and head butt; the dog obviously wants to run and pursue. But the calf just turns in place. But they work it out.

There are a thousand videos like this, but I still like them: A tiny cat takes up most of a dog's bed, so the dog gingerly deposits itself in the part of the bed the cat's not on. And partly on the floor.

Rescuing a baby cygnet stuck in a fence while its mother swats and pecks at the rescuer, thinking he's harming the baby.

Wombats are like humans -- so sweet and loving as children, and then so naughty and problem-making as teenagers.

Nipper the long-eared bat.

Soyboy discovers that all that soy has given him a glass chin.

Anything to go viral.

Cops have to arrest an alligator. He resists arrest.

Beating the hell out of a would-be antifa-looking car thief.

This guy picked the wrong neighborhood to steal a purse in.

I wish America was like this.

The first two hours of MTV's broadcast history, starting August 1, 1981.

Exactly forty years ago today.

Well, exactly forty years and twenty six days ago today. If we're being all literal about the word "exact."

It's fitting the execs chose as their first selection The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star." Visuals were not just going to be an adjunct to the music, they were going to become inextricably linked. Either MTV was prescient about the visual decade to come or they in fact caused it to happen....

After a Pat Benatar video, the VJs introduce themselves -- Mark Goodman, Nina Blackwood, J.J. Jackson, Alan Hunter, and Martha Quinn (all soon to be household names and crushes)--- and then straight into a block of commercials: school binders, Superman II, and Dolby Noise Reduction. A strange group of advertisers, to be sure...

In the first two hours we get two Rod Stewart songs, two by the Pretenders, two by Split Ends, another Pat Benatar video, two from Styx, and two from the concert film for the People of Kampuchea. We also get completely obscure videos: PH.D. "Little Susie’s on the Up", Robin Lane and the Chartbusters "When Things Go Wrong", Michael Johnson "Bluer Than Blue". This is D-list stuff. No wonder MTV premiered at midnight.

From these humble beginning the channel would soon find its groove and two years later it would become ubiquitous in American households.

If you skip through the lame songs -- which is, frankly, most of them -- you can get through this in an acceptable amount of time.

I didn't have MTV for a long time. The "I Want My MTV Campaign," which I guess was supposed to pressure cable providers to buy the service, didn't work 'round my points. So this is kinda new to me. I mean, I did see MTV later. But not in its early years.

At 14:35 is one of my all-time favorite Who songs, You Better You Bet. I play that most mornings (it's on the wake-up playlist). I had no idea they had a music video for it.

I also don't think I've ever seen the Pretenders Brass in Pocket video (at 23:15). Though I probably must have.

Outstanding commercial here, which is so cheesy it plays as a parody of the 80s rather than as a genuine relic from that exalted age.

Before MTV was available in my area, I remember seeing these things called "music videos" on HBO. I think they had a half hour show of music videos. I remember really lame videos like Ringo Starr's "Rack My Brain."

Not having MTV, I got my music video fix by watching the Kenny Everett Video Show on syndication, and seeing lame videos like David Essex's Silver Dream Machine.

I kept watching, though, because the show featured a cartoon with girls with ginormous boobs.

I also watched USA's Night Flight video show. Whatever that was.

Of course, there were some good songs from this era, too.

The biggest songs of every month of the 1980s, in order. I think this list is compiled from the British charts, because some songs make me go "Whuh...?," but 90% of them are the songs you'd expect.

Peekaboo cockatoo.

Okay it's not a cockatoo but whatever, guys. Don't be so literal.

Now is the time for bounding and frolicking:

posted by Ace at 07:41 PM

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