MTV Nostalgia

So I’m watching VH1′s best of the 90s and it is taking me back, way back, flashing my life, my memories, and my relationships before my eyes.  Seriously back.  Back to the days of MTV.  Of good MTV, before boy bands took over, and before continuous reality television.  Do you remember?  Really remember?  MTV used to be the place we went to to learn about new music, new genres, to see what our favorite bands looked like, to learn about music news, to relate, to celebrate and to grieve.  I watched the premier of Thriller on MTV, swooned over George Michael, and pretended to understand when Freedom hit.  We watched John Norris on MTV continuously when River Phoenix died in 1993.  And we mourned 6 months later by watching Kurt Loder on MTV when Kurt Cobain died.  I was a freshman in college.  I also was watching MTV years earlier with my brother when I first heard Nirvana  and their video for Smells Like Teen Spirit changed music forever.  Even earlier, I watched 120 minutes with Matt Pinfield, who told us about new alternative bands, and watched MTV Raps that got me dancing with early rap, before Eminem, Tupac, Coolio (remember him?), and Dr. Dre took over.  Kevin Seal, Adam Curry, Martha Quinn…they were early, funny, music smart, and influential.  The serendipity of videos and therefore music that you were introduced to was wide, strange, annoying and awesome.

When my dad had to go in for an emergency appendectomy when I was in elementary school,  we had an ever ending line of babysitters for three days solid, but one constant (much to my mother’s chagrin) during a hard time…MTV.  Just ask Andrew.  I won’t say it got us through a hard time, but it was there.

Pop music.  Huh.  It has shaped my generation, shaped my life.  And really, MTV was there for me though much of my adolescence up to about my sophomore year in high school.  The next generation, our kids, what will they call on for their music memories?  YouTube?  MySpace?  Do I lament, or do I celebrate the new media?  MTV and  Unplugged created some of the best music ever.  What is the impetus for groundbreaking music these days?  But maybe music these days is freed from the confines of MTV.

I’m sure I am not the only one to write about the nostalgia and demise of MTV, and surely not the best.  I admit that my music preferences aren’t the most sophisticated, and I understand and credit the critics that derided MTV as glamorizing music and focusing on everything else besides the music, even in the heyday of the mid 90s.  But to misunderstand the impact it had, is to underestimate.

Once upon a time I wrote about songs that reminded me of friends.  The list is endless, forever swirling memories of good times and bad…but mostly good.  My memories are tugged harder by music than they are by almost everything else, more than movies, more than tv.  Remember a good/bad time and think of the song that goes with it.  You know what I mean.  I hope you also think of me when you hear these songs. Here we are now, entertain us.