Seems I’m totally spacing on the music part of my site and life by not mentioning something from MTV that didn’t suck big time. It’s not a complete victory for good taste, the show will be appearing on MTV2 which tends to be extra with most cable packages. We’re not giving up our (TV) minimalism neither.
However, when MTV began its slide into the craptacular channel it completed by the late Eighties, 120 Minutes was the only reliable program to catch until Liquid Television and Beavis & Butt-Head; a precursor to what would become Adult Swim! During my brief stint as WMUR’s Summer program director (in plain English, it’s the director who picks the songs for a radio station), getting a friend to videotape the show for me to catch was mandatory viewing. Through 120 I got hooked on Sarah McLachlan (before she was liked by a larger audience), Primitives, S-Express, Rainmakers, Catherine Wheel and Alphaville. Wish I could remember more, I’m confident there were others. It was also the only opportunity to catch videos from Camper Van Beethoven, Siouxsie & the Banshees and Kate Bush.
Somedays…I do miss the world that existed before the (contemporary) Internet.