Today we mark the 40th anniversary of one of the darkest days in the history of music, the “birth” of MTV.In reality, it was never about the music, the founders have come fourth on several occasions to admit that it was always about the money alone.
This weekend, the vapid and talentless VJ’s have been spouting their nonsense just as they did four decades ago, pretending to be the celebrities that they never will be. Sirius XM would do the world a favor by flushing all of the “MTV VJs” and giving us real Rock N Roll DJ’s, and adding Casey Kasum’s American Top 40 each week.
Since the invention of MTV we’ve also seen the obesity rate in the
United States SOAR. Before this musical disaster, kids played outside after school, they were active, but MTV gave them reason to lay around and vegetate on the television after they had outgrown after school cartoons. The cartoon show has it’s dates wrong, it began not in 1990 but on August 1st 1981.The Radio Star really was an important part of music, far more than most know now, it was defining to have good music, but look what’s happened to music since MTV, it’s gone downhill since, in almost every genre, it became about how you looked, not the music you made. The afterbirth of this was the “talent” shows of today, American Idol & The Voice, can you imagine The Rolling Stones or Johnny Cash having to get through that crap to become stars?
I’m happy to say that I never saw MTV until my freshman year in college, my musical life wasn’t ruined by that nonsense like it did to a lot of people my age… note, I didn’t say “ALL” others but “a lot”, it did some good for some people, but overall, it killed the music business in so many ways and it finally oozed into the Country Music industry and did a lot of damage there, but that was part of what they wanted… but that’s another story.
MTV made it seem that if you couldn’t do a “cool” music video, your music must not be good either, it allowed MTV to control who got airtime and who didn’t, what they played effected what was played on many radio stations, lots of great talent fell off because MTV didn’t give them time.
MTV also gave the false impression that if LA and New York didn’t like your music, you couldn’t be cool in any way. They furthered the lie that New York and Los Angeles are the center of the “coolness” universe, when in reality, it was just mega-cities that made it easier to hide lies and frauds. Most of the great music has come from the heart of America, Jazz in New Orleans, Country in Nashville, the Blues in Chicago and Rock & Roll from Memphis… I rest my case.
I’m forever anti-mtv and damn proud of it, I like GOOD music, made and produced for the heart and soul of music, not for money to people who had no creative input to the process (like the mtv vj’s and execs).
