I Want My MTV

It was in the locker room, before one of our late Saturday night hockey games, that my brother-in-law, Jack, threw out the offer: He was going to rent a house while he was going to grad school at Lehigh, and was looking for roommates. By the time the game was over, I was in. So were Tommy and Guy. Bobby (“Trains” to all of us) would move in later.

So it was that in January of 1982 I moved out of the only home I’d ever known, and into a half-double on Center Street in Bethlehem. It would become the Hockey House. The escapades and stories from that time are a constant source of discussion for those of us that lived there, and for the larger cast of characters who careened through its musty rooms.

But this story isn’t about the Hockey House. I’ve already written That One.

No, this story is about one small aspect of the Hockey House: the television. Or rather what channel the television was tuned to practically twenty-four hours a day. It turned out that our two short years at the Hockey House coincided with the birth and rapid rise of the pop-culture phenomenon of Music Television. MTV. 

It is difficult to describe how much MTV changed everything for us. We had vinyl albums and singles. We had 8-Tracks and cassettes. We had radio. That was it. CDs were still years away. iPods, satellite radio, streaming? They were the stuff of science fiction. 

In 1982 the playlist was a mix tape. And, brother, I made a bunch of them … spending entire afternoons sitting cross-legged in front of my Technics turntable and Denon cassette deck, albums strewn across the floor, selecting the perfect songs in the perfect order, recording them (in real time!) until I had an hour’s worth of music on that Memorex cassette tape. Half the time I didn’t even label the cassette. I knew each one by sight by the cassette’s nicks and scrapes. I listened to my mix tapes so much that even today when “Every Breath You Take” starts to fade out I expect “She Blinded Me With Science” to play next.

I’ve gotten off track. Focus, David. 

My memory of that time is this: Visual glimpses of our favorite performers and bands were rare. Bands were heard, not seen. Except for concerts (where I saw my musical heroes as specks from horrible seats in the upper deck of the Philly Spectrum or sitting on a blanket in the general admission lawn at the far end of the Mann Music Center) the only visual imagery of the bands I loved were album covers and photos in Rolling Stone, or the fleeting lip-synched performances on bad variety shows, or if I was lucky the thrill of a live performance on The Midnight Special or NBC’s Saturday Night (before they rebranded it Saturday Night Live).

MTV changed all that. Not that they were first. I vaguely remember shows called “Video Concert Hall” and “Night Flight” that showcased music videos. But it was MTV that gave it all to us constantly: An endless, looping stream of music videos of bands you loved, and bands you never heard of but would soon love. Split Enz, Devo, Cindi Lauper, Men Without Hats, Madonna, Eurythmics, Stray Cats, Wang Chung, Dire Straits, Madness. And then there were the bands you never heard of but would soon hate. For me, it was the endless supply of heavy-metal hair bands preening for the camera in sequined spandex.

It didn’t matter who was on, though, because at the Hockey House, from 1982 through 1984, if somebody was home it meant the TV was on and it was tuned to MTV. It was our constant companion. Background noise to compliment the chaos that came with our first taste of freedom.

The music video was a new world of expression for bands, filmmakers, and videographers, and MTV needed to fill airtime. Production values were all over the place. Experimentation was rampant, and those early experiments were broadcast for everyone to see. Over and over. Again and again. Concept videos, performance videos, story videos, concert videos. Some of those experiments succeeded; many were spectacular failures.

And let us not forget the VJs. Because the whole idea was that MTV was a visual radio station, so we needed cool hip hosts to guide us through our music video journey. Oh, Mark, Martha, Alan, Nina, and J.J., how we loved you … and how we hated you.

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The reason I’ve stepped into this little corner of let’s remember is because I stumbled upon a true treasure trove of MTV history on the internet. It contains hundreds of hours of original MTV content as it happened: Music videos, VJ interludes, music news, and … get ready … commercials. Commercials from 1982. Incredibly bad commercials. (I had forgotten the two big items that MTV was selling: 1.) Demanding that you call your cable company to give you television in stereo, and 2) A glorious career in the Armed Forces. Good lord, the Army saw an untapped pool of young people vegging out in from of their TV sets and they went after them hard with a marketing assault for the ages.)

(I got lucky, too, because—as it happens these days—it looks like somebody didn’t like something and now the entire site is gone. Oh well. It’s all out there in other forms and on other sites, waiting to be found again, I am sure.)

As I allowed myself to go down the rabbit hole of this MTV archive, I was stunned by the innocence of it all: So often, the poor musicians seemed to have been shoved in front of the camera with instructions to “act” in a “story” and appear “natural,” or “funny,” or “angst-ridden.” Most of the time they just looked embarrassed. Videos that, at the time, I thought were ground-breaking masterpieces or hilarious romps were revealed to be cringe-inducingly bad—like reading your personal journal from when you were in ninth grade. And the VJs? Mark Goodman’s hair should be in the 1980s Perm Hall of Fame. I swear Alan Hunter’s first appearance looks as if he was there to sell you insurance. Martha Quinn? Okay. Can’t think of anything negative to say about Martha Quinn. She was cute. 

Alas.… (Wait. Am I actually using the word “alas”? … I think I am!) 

Alas, like those of us at the Hockey House, MTV grew up. The production values rose, budgets skyrocketed, performers understood the medium, VJs tried to get hipper. Years flew by and MTV grew up so much that they stopped playing music videos all together. They shifted to reality TV: “The Real World” and “Jersey Shore.” Now, MTV appears to be nothing but non-stop episodes of a show called “Ridiculousness.” It should be called RTV.

I wish there was a channel like MTV today. Why not? Bands still make music videos and there are decades of old clips to show. But of course, that’s not the world today. I haven’t watched live TV in forever, just like I haven’t listened to an actual radio station for forever. Entertainment is no longer “When is it on?” it’s “Where can I find it?” It’s streaming, and playlists, and … as a matter of fact I don’t even need to make a playlist … I’ll have Spotify’s algorithm make a playlist for me.

Doesn’t mean I don’t miss it though … switching on the TV, and turning the channel to MTV. I might watch. Might just listen. That’s the way it was at the Hockey House. Today, when I hear a song from that era I am immediately transported to that half-double on Center Street, where the television was the hearth of our home, and videos on MTV kept the fire burning.