I Want My MTV (Back)

Once upon a time, in a land long ago, MTV (which stood for Music Television) played music videos.

featuring state-of-the-art video production 

No, seriously!

Many of these music videos have found new life on YouTube, as Mr. Ginley and I discovered one night. The refrain quickly became, "Remember this one?"

Unlike MTV, YouTube doesn't feature the name of the song and who performed it in the lower corner, so some Googling was required to discern who did what.

Following this night of nostalgia, I dug out my old recordings of MTV music videos. While many were familiar, there were a few I hadn't seen in years. I won't say how many years, suffice it to say, DVDs weren't even on the horizon then.

At some point in the proceedings (I believe mid-1980s, after Dire Straits did Money for Nothing, with the refrain, "I Want My MTV"), the cable channel became host to a series of wacky game shows and reality TV and music I didn't want to listen to, and VH-1 was born. VH-1 was touted as a more mainstream alternative to MTV, so if you wanted to see pop music or classic rock, that was the place to be. (Translation: They were catering to an older crowd. Like 25 to 30.)

Eventually, even VH-1 stopped showing videos and went away, along with the whole music video genre. Nowadays, new musicians have to compete for clicks online, as thousands of other artists are also trying to be heard.

As for me, I'm the Luddite who still listens to albums, tapes and CDs. I also play a curated iTunes list on my computer. I put the music in alphabetical order and hit "play" while I'm working. (Thank you, Tim Trusken, for compiling and sharing the playlist.)

I sometimes find myself wondering what the future of music will be. If we are at the mercy of cyberspace, will someone decide that we don't need to listen to old tunes anymore and stop making them available?

Lucky for me, I have a turntable. And a cassette tape player. And a CD player...