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How MTV Defined a Generation’s Sound and Vision
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.
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Edward R. Murrow’s Powerful Buchenwald Broadcast
Eighty years ago this afternoon, legendary CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow delivered one of the most important broadcasts of the 20th century, a report on his visit three days earlier to the concentration camp at Buchenwald.
It took Murrow, as cool a journalist as they come, that long to process the horror. This 9-minute broadcast is probably the most famous description, but nowhere near the only, of what it was like to enter a newly liberated Nazi death camp. Nor did Murrow capture the full scope of the Holocaust. That would come later.
The years haven’t dimmed the power of Murrow’s words. It’s a harrowing listen. But it’s an important listen. At a time when so much history is being shoveled into the memory hole or denied outright, we need to remember.
In high school, I became interested in Murrow after meeting through my Dad a few of the people who had worked with him at CBS. I’ve heard this and a lot of Murrow’s broadcasts, from “This Is London” pieces to the “See It Now” broadcast that’s the basis of “Good Night and Good Luck” and “Harvest of Shame.” I even held a script Murrow held while I was doing research at Yale for a high school paper on Murrow. I just listened to this again now. It still burns. Murrow was, without any training, one of the best journalists and speakers who have ever lived. That leaps out at me again.
But above all, the sheer horror of this and all that was done during the Holocaust..
“I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald,” he said. “I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it, I have no words.”
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Why history (and translation) rock
If you read one thing today, then it should be this. It’s fascinating.
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FDR, Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, 80 years ago today
“Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”
Eleanor Roosevelt, after telling Harry S Truman that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was dead and that he was now president.
Eleanor Roosevelt, truth teller.
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A century of ‘Gatsby’
Today is the 100th anniversary of the first edition of “The Great Gatsby.”
Even though I am reasonably well read and had enough credits for an English major by the time I was through college, somehow missed “Gatsby” in both high school and undergrad. I don’t know why. I read lots of Hemingway, Faulkner, even some other Fitzgerald. Just stubborn, I guess.
It wasn’t until seeing a remaindered edition at the New England Mobile Book Fair two years or so after college, when I was visiting my family in Newton and I brought it with me to the beach.
I swallowed “Gatsby” whole, ignoring the sun and the waves and everyone. I can’t believe I was dopey enough to avoid it for 23 years. Says a lot about the past and also about 2025, too. And its devastating ending:
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
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‘Things will happen, but only if they’re meant to be.’
Also 40 years old this year is “Beat’s So Lonely.” I’ve never understood why Charlie Sexton wasn’t a big rock star. “Beat’s So Lonely” is his debut from 1985 and it rocks. Sexton cowrote this song, played lead guitar and sang it like a rocker twice his age.
Oh yeah, Charlie was 16.
He was a little less than a year younger than me in 1985. His lyrics were more vivid than mine then, tell you that.
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Pop Gems: Why ‘Lay Your Hands on Me’ Stands Out
Forty years ago this week, Thompson Twins proved they weren’t a one-hit wonder with their No. 6 Billboard Hot 100 hit, “Lay Your Hands on Me.” Take out the pure ‘80s-ness of the video — and yes, there’s a lot of it — it’s also a soulful song that steps ever so close the faith ‘80s pop music mostly avoided.
Tom Bailey, he’s singing about grace.
That’s pretty rare for a pop song. And like some good pop songs, it can be about two things at the same time. But Nile Rodgers inclusion of a gospel choir on one of the versions kinda says it all.
Contrast this with what topped the charts the same week: Starship’s “We Built This City.”
I’ve always felt Thompson Twins were underrated, even if “Hold Me Now” was a monster hit in ’84. I’m glad there was a moment when Tom Bailey, Alannah Currie and Joe Leeway were on top.
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NaNoWriMo: A Beloved Writing Tradition Ends
NaNoWriMo will soon be no more.
For many people who love to write, whether they want to write a book or not, National Novel Writing Month had been a cultural touchstone and a fun sprint of 50,000 words every November. But the site announced this past week that it would be shutting down after 26 years.
I’m sad about this, even though financial pressures and other challenges that have faced the site have made it impossible for the nonprofit to go on. I’ve been an on-again/off-again participant since 2009 and I “won” a handful of times. A few friends of mine have written and published books out of those 50,000-word sprints in November.
I’m told there are other alternatives. I’ll have to look into it. I love writing fast, and this was a fun way to challenge myself every fall.
But until then, RIP, NaNoWriMo.
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Why The Maltese Falcon Stands Out in Film History
I’m not one for mysteries and true crime, maybe because I used to cover and write about it for a living and I got a bellyful years ago. But I have always liked Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and Ross McDonald in print and pretty much everything I’ve seen of film noir. “The Maltese Falcon” is the defining celluloid (and one of the best of its kind of all time) and it’s a great flick: Bogart, Mary Astor, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre … all directed by John Huston in his first time.
Bogart, he’s a legend for this and for “Casablanca” (my mom’s favorite film and one of mine, too). A real life movie star at a time when there were a lot of them. But he’s not alone: Sidney Greenstreet (his first role, too, I think), Lorre and especially Mary Astor are at the top of their craft. This is only a small part of the film but I think you can see why with Bogart, Lorre and Astor and an assist from character actors Ward Bond and Barton MacLane, too. Mary Astor, wow, was she great in this.
To turn a phrase, “The Maltese Falcon” movie is the stuff dreams are made of.
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Seeing Val Kilmer
Maybe it’s something that, the older you get, the harder it seems to understand how someone who was so vital and so himself could ever pass away. I see Val Kilmer as Iceman and Jim Morrison, in the ’80s and early ’90s, and, thanks to this article, I see him as Val Kilmer.
This profile is from 2020 but it’s just a good an obit as you’ll find.
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About Me
Journalist and writer. Loves writing, storytelling, books, typewriters. Always trying to find my line. Oh, and here’s where I am now.
Nows and Forevers 
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