i want my mtv

I find it sad and slightly unsurprising that MTV worked hard to avoid acknowledging its 30th birthday this month. Proof that even concepts don't always take aging gracefully I suppose.

When I was a child, I recall my mother getting angry at me for watching MTV one Saturday. The video on screen was for The Black Crowes and for years I labored under the delusion that the band was a lot more edgy and interesting than they actually were because of my mother's over-reaction. I suspect now that the real reason she didn't want me listening to them or watching MTV was that she didn't want me to realize that my parents were using the same drugs. (My realization of my parents' marijuana use happened some years later in a humiliating fashion.)

Eventually though, my parents stopped caring or noticing what I was watching in the same way they stopped caring about what I was reading. So before school, I would flip between MTV news at 7am with Kurt Loder and Headline News with Don Harrison. My morning routine of MTV and news lasted all the way through high school. I would turn the television up as loud as I dared to sing along, standing too close to the screen.

I watched it at the house of my best friend on the weekends when all we had to do was move the switch from channel 20 to channel 21 to flip between MTV and VH1. For months I watched the countdown of requested videos at night before bed, when I was guaranteed to see "Stay" by Shakespeare's Sister, "Friday I'm in Love" by the Cure and "November Rain" by Guns N Roses. At night there was Headbanger's Ball and I remember the first time I heard "Thunder Kiss '65" by White Zombie. I loved the video for "Losing My Religion" by REM. I bought my first cassette tape with my allowance because I heard Alice in Chains late at night. The crazy years of grunge rock came and with them were strange, colorful videos. Soul Asylum ran "Runaway Train" full of lost of children and it always made me sad. MTV Unplugged made me love Eric Clapton's acoustic rendition of "Layla." There was the first Real World and the short pieces of Liquid Television that haunted my memories for years and years.

Though I've forgotten a lot of things, I won't ever forget the night we found out Kurt Cobain was dead. I spent most of that night up watching MTV, while they plated Nirvana and Kurt Loder talked with David Fricke who called Cobain my generation's John Lennon. I remember him looking at the camera, late in the evening and telling us not to do it, not to kill ourselves too. It was emotional and I don't think it was a scripted moment. We were all thinking about it though.

I watched MTV for years even as music changed and it wasn't really as much of the things I liked anymore. VH1 stopped being all Phil Collins/Kenny G easy listening all the time. There were more Real Worlds but I couldn't bring myself to care much about them. When I lived on my own, I didn't have cable and my morning ritual of news and music went away. Now they don't even play music videos on the channel so far as I can tell.

For a long time, the money Guns N Roses spent on making the videos to "Don't Cry," "November Rain," and "Estranged" was the largest amount of money anyone had ever spent on the bastard child of marketing and art. There was a whole strange story in there. Thank heavens for the internet, and the vidding communities of fandom, for at least keeping that alive. I've always loved music videos, because I grew up with them and when I listened to tapes on my Walkman I would script videos to all my favorite songs. When I find a new song to love, I am always still thinking of the video I would make to go with it. I love finding a good fanvid that brings the story and the song together.

Happy birthday MTV. I survived my 30th birthday with some dignity, so you can too.