When we did "Beat It," Michael came in the van with us to scout locations. I remember saying, "I'm hungry, let's stop for a pizza." Michael said, "Oh good, I've never had a pizza." This is a 25-year-old man who'd never had pizza. Now he wasn't accessible like that. He was a superstar, but then he became a deity.
I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution
is a hugely readable and fun new oral history of the first decade of MTV. Veteran music writers Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum interviewed many of the era's major players, putting a microscope on the biggest, weirdest, and most memorable videos of the time, and [Pitchfork is] thrilled to present the following excerpt.
posted by obscurator
on Oct 27, 2011 -
28 comments
Someone claiming to be an attorney is attempting to scrub the Internet of
"private, obscene, lewd and pornographic photographs" of Colton Haynes, the star of MTV's new series
Teen Wolf. Turns out, however, that the photos are neither private, nor obscene, nor porographic: they were part of a playful photo-spread published by
XY Magazine in March of 2006. Or as Queerty so elegantly puts it, "
XY Boytoy All Grown Up & Having Legal Regrets Now That He's On MTV." Markedly different, they point out, than when
Real World star Dustin Zito tried to
scrub out his gay porn past.
posted by hermitosis
on Sep 7, 2011 -
35 comments
Two and a half years ago, we explored
the early history of Cartoon Network... but it wasn't the only player in the youth television game.
As a matter of fact,
Fred Seibert -- the man responsible for the most inventive projects discussed in that post -- first stretched his creative legs at the network's
truly venerable forerunner:
Nickelodeon.
Founded as Pinwheel, a six-hour block on Warner Cable's innovative
QUBE system, this humble channel struggled for years before Seibert's innovative branding work transformed it into a national icon and capstone of a media empire.
Much has changed since then, from the mascots and game shows to
the versatile orange "splat." But starting tonight in response to popular demand, the network is
looking back with
a summer programming block dedicated to the greatest hits of the 1990s, including
Hey Arnold!, Rocko's Modern Life, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, The Ren & Stimpy Show, Double Dare, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Legends of the Hidden Temple, and
All That.
To celebrate, look inside for the complete story of the early days of the network that incensed the religious right, brought doo-wop to television, and slimed a million fans -- the golden age of Nickelodeon.
(warning: monster post inside) [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jul 25, 2011 -
116 comments
The incredibly influential and loved music show
120 Minutes returns, with Matt Pinfield returning as host. The MTV2 premiere happens later this year, while the web version
120 Seconds debuts today.
[more inside]
posted by naju
on Mar 18, 2011 -
63 comments
MTV's
Jersey Shore, a
Real World-style reality program centered around eight young Italian-Americans living together in a beach house, is garnering charges of
racism following their use of the allegedly pejorative terms
guido and the feminine counterpart
guidette in advertisements. But what exactly
is a guido?
[more inside]
posted by joechip
on Jan 3, 2010 -
232 comments
120 Minutes is a tumblr page put together by a fan of the long running MTV alt-rock show, with links to dozens (at least) of videos from the show's heyday. There's no search nor sort that I could find, but the site makes for fun browsing for fans of that particular musical era.
[more inside]
posted by jonson
on Sep 7, 2007 -
17 comments
In the Fall of 1991, MTV's 120 Minutes released two compilations (Amazon:
one,
two) of songs from the show. (Youtube:
one,
two)
posted by nervousfritz
on Jun 18, 2007 -
45 comments
In 1999, MTV aired 25 Lame, a show where retired 25 of their worst and most overplayed videos. Rob Van Winkle (aka Vanilla Ice) showed up to help them retire the video for "Ice Ice Baby." The result -
violence, hilarity, and broken mannequins (video, 30-second ad shows before video). Apparently unplanned,
nobody knows for sure if this outburst was the product of genuine anger, or if he was just playing around. An
unedited version (YouTube, lower quality) leads me to think that it was the former.
posted by Afroblanco
on Feb 1, 2007 -
33 comments
Merry Christmas, Metafilter! In the spirit of the holiday, my gift for the Radiohead fans among you is
this entire Radiohead concert (Google Vid), a non-bootleg produced for MTV originally recording from the OK Computer tour back in 1997. For the non-Radiohead fans, my gift is that I forgive you your imperfections. And finally, for those who don't celebrate Christmas, my gift is that I made you a cookie...
but then I eated it.
posted by jonson
on Dec 24, 2006 -
39 comments
I want my MTV. MTV is now mostly reality, titillation TV, rarely showing music videos anymore. YouTube fills the void somewhat, but sometimes you want to just sit back and let someone else take care of the programming. MusicPlusTV is sort of like the old MTV, but they stream to your computer instead of to your TV.
posted by caddis
on Dec 15, 2006 -
23 comments
MTV turns 25 today. Music Television, otherwise known as
MTV, was launched with its first broadcast on 1 August 1981, 25 years ago today. Famously, the first video broadcast was
the Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." Ironically, MTV evidently isn't going to acknowledge its anniversary on-air in any way, with a spokeswoman saying that "We made the decision when MTV was founded to always stay young and evolve with our audience. To do that, it has been important to serve our audience at that moment, not our audience of yesterday." This is about par for the course, though, since when was the last time that MTV actually
broadcast music videos? A broader question: does anybody who wasn't weaned on MTV (or anybody who was, for that matter)
care anymore?
posted by blucevalo
on Aug 1, 2006 -
121 comments
Aeon Flux, animated Series. This may kill all your time today. With the release of the new Aeon Flux Movie, they are releasing some of their animated shorts on their Overdrive application.
Unfortunately, I can't provide a direct link to it, since it goes through a flash interface.
You can get their by clicking on the '
movie' link on top.
Requires IE, Flash, and probably windows only.
posted by countzen
on Dec 2, 2005 -
50 comments
