Nows and Forevers

One of my younger colleagues asked whether OG MTV really was as influential as we older folks say.

Yes, yes it was.

Not all the time, not by a long shot. But at its best, MTV married sound and video in a way that blew away Gen Xers like me. I don’t know about you, but I waded through a lot of videos I wasn’t interested in on the off chance there’d be an alternative or new wave song I did want to see. How much time did I waste waiting for The (English) Beat’s “Save It For Later” or XTC’s “Senses Working Overtime”?

Or this video by The Cars, a band that I didn’t really appreciate until I saw the video in 1984 of “Drive” and understood it wasn’t anything else like they did. “Drive” is one of the better pop songs of the ‘80s, and that’s saying a lot.

This video was the kind of thing that was new in the ‘80s thanks to MTV, back before it started falling into what George Michael would rail against in “Freedom ’90.”

(BTW, kudos to actor Timothy Hutton, who created and directed the video. It’s a work of art.)

I didn’t have MTV in ’82 or ’83 when I was living in California, but my father in Connecticut did have it and the three times a year I’d visit, I spent a lot of time watching MTV. Like the entire summer of ’83 with the exception of spending a week in Aroostook County, Maine, and the Canadian Maritimes.