(current music: MIDIval Punditz)
I was gonna say that I'm a total sucker for VH1 Classics but that's not 100% correct. Most of their programming is highly ignorable. And even the shows I like tend to show too many of the same few videos over and over and over. And, given that the whole mission of the channel is nostalgia for the rapidly aging MTV generation, I'm surprised no one's thought of re-running entire programs, instead of simply videos. I, for one, would love to see some episodes of Yo! MTV Raps with Ed Lover and Dr. Dre. Or Pinfield-era 120 Minutes. Hell, VH1C has started running this show called the Alternative which might as well be 120 Minutes 20 years ago. Why not finish the job? But, again, I digress...
What keeps me coming back to VH1C is that, every once in a while, they'll drop in a video for a song I haven't heard, or thought about, since halfway to forever. Tonight's was "I Don't Know Why I Love You" by House of Love. Not great art maybe, but a nice slice of late 80s Creation Records pure pop. The video (which I'd never seen before) was quite wack. But it was fun to hear the song again. I shall resist mightily the temptation to play it on the air tomorrow morning.
...now if they'd just play the vid for "Sensoria"
Does VH1C ever play the old MTV garage tapes? I still have the lyrics of a couple ("Dog Police" and "Dancin'" in my head). "Dog Police" rocked.
Back ~1981, I used to get up early to watch the single video that Kasey Kasem would show at the end of his Saturday TV show. Prior to Tom Petty's "Woman In Love," Kasem announced, "this video was shot in black and white for effect, so don't try to adjust your TV set." Yow!
i don't remember either of those. but i didn't have MTV in the early 80s so only saw it at friends or other outside sources. my main source for video-viewing was those odd shows that ran late at night, like after Saturday Night Live. also, a year or two after MTV launched, this UHF station in the NYC area started showing videos 24/7. when they first went live they didn't have nearly enough vids (maybe 2-3 hours worth) so lotsa repeats. but they also didn't have access to all the "big stars" that were locked into exclusive deal with MTV so lotsa obscure stuff and genres that MTV wasn't touching then like hiphop and hardcore.
I was never a TV watcher (not having cable until 1991, and even then only so I could tape Get Smart on Nick at Nite, could have something to do with it), so if they didn't show it on the big screen at the Ritz, I didn't see it. But man, was that ever the way to see Sensoria.
I always thought I Don't Know Why I Love You could have been the great lost Mighty Lemon Drops track. But lots of Creation jangle-pop could have been, I suppose.