MTV - classic or dud?

rad

anyway, Lamp, come sit on Papa Whiney's lap and I'll tell you what 1991 was really like without the rose-colored bullshit myths about the so-called "alternative revolution"

http://www.youtube.com/v/OgZkMvTZo8Y&fs=1&hl=en

― ennui morricone (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, August 1, 2011 2:44 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

the williamsburg santa

Beard n all

j0rdan s do you also feel like ppl who got to go to college in the 90s had it made?

i dont know why i think this just seems like it woulda been p sweet

i think im older than j0rdan tho idk just seems like it was 'the right time' to be young

whiney im listening to 'the real ramona' how authentic is that as a '90s record'?

http://i.imgur.com/jteOB.png

anyway, Lamp, come sit on Papa Whiney's lap and I'll tell you what 1991 was really like without the rose-colored bullshit myths about the so-called "alternative revolution"

j0rdan s do you also feel like ppl who got to go to college in the 90s had it made?

i dont know why i think this just seems like it woulda been p sweet

i think im older than j0rdan tho idk just seems like it was 'the right time' to be young

whiney im listening to 'the real ramona' how authentic is that as a '90s record'?

― Magic (Lamp), Monday, August 1, 2011 2:57 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

you might be right, i can sorta feel you on that

college was pretty cool tho

Kinda surprised to learn that Whiney and I are the same age.
Watched all this at my parent's house, who happen to be out of town at the moment.
It's kind of eerie, like summer vacation memory reel.
I used to watch MTV all day just to catch L7 "pretend we're dead" or a Juliana Hatfield Three video or whatever.

someone should make a torrent of this shit

j0rdan s do you also feel like ppl who got to go to college in the 90s had it made?

I actually kinda feel you on this. I was junior high/high school during the whole "alternative" ish—1991 to 1996. And it was really life-affirming to like hone my tastes in an era where you didn't have to look to hard to see the Breeders or Ministry or Cypress Hill or Maggie Estep or whatever on TV.

However, while I was watching all the exciting alterna stuff go down, I was always too young to actually experience it first hand since I was sequestered in the deep suburbs (closest town was TAMPA, which was 90 minutes away). So I pretty much had to watch all the moments from a distance. I was 13 for Lollapalooza 93 and just read about it in mags. I was 14 for Woodstock 94 and just watched in on Pay Per View. By the time I was old enough to drive myself to Ybor City in 1996 and 1997 or whatever, I was catching bands on the decline--Ween, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, etc.

I grew up kind of believing college would finally be this hub of alternative thinking and by the time I attended in 1998 everything was just a disaster for my demographic. Music was like Wheatus and Eve6 and POD, movies were American Pie and Road Trip, TV shows were Undressed and Road Rules Challenge. I remember even being old enough to finally go to Woodstock 99 and just being crushed that within 5 years the lineup was a mooked-out rapefest.

Kinda surprised to learn that Whiney and I are the same age.
--Trip Maker

U think I was older or younger?

I always forget you were a Floridian, whiney.

I actually think that the musical college experience was impacted pretty negatively by the rise of the internet & the laptop computer (and the subsequent decrease in the importance/interest of television), two things that in many other ways have made it better (or: easier, or: more fun) to be a college student. I went to college '91-'95 and there was at that time a feeling of shared culture - people didn't all like the same shit but everybody seemed to know a little about what everybody else was into. Once the hub of TV was removed, everything got frayed: I don't think it particularly matters what's at the center of a discourse (a lot of the nineties music you guys get misty about is shit that I hate the living fuck out of, but I get nostalgic for when it was around all the same), but the absence of a discursive center just makes things boring

imo, I could be completely wrong about this

By the time I was old enough to drive myself to Ybor City in 1996 and 1997 or whatever

!!! whiney did you run into ppl from a hold steady song??

Whiney was people in a Hold Steady song.

Eh. I was in college '92 through '96, a victim of intense Anglophilia. I shared very little with musical culture. I looked for Visage and Bowie albums in used bins.

i liked college so much i went from 93 to 99 and didn't even finish my undergrad

Yeah, aero, I agree totally. That's a lot of what I talk about in my annoying speeches. Like I did a performance at a rock club in Greenpoint the other day where I asked how many people had heard "Rolling In The Deep," by Adele, then the number one song in the country. Maybe 1/3 of the crowd. But like go back to 1992 and ask about Boyz II Men, and it would be 100%, easy

but the absence of a discursive center just makes things boring

i really do not look forward to going to weddings in 2030, because at least now we can get nostalgic for weirdo outliers like "Groove Is In The Heart" or "Baby Got Back." The only monoculture we'll be able to share in our old age is Lady Gaga, Black Eyed Peas and "New York State Of Mind."

Eh. I was in college '92 through '96, a victim of intense Anglophilia. I shared very little with musical culture. I looked for Visage and Bowie albums in used bins.

― The Edge of Gloryhole (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, August 1, 2011 11:07 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you were aware of the "britpop" that MTV was playing all the time right?

That's what I was alluding to...? But Blur and Pulp had no impact outside college stations. They got played, what, a few times on 120 Minutes or whatever?

yeah I gotta say I had to buy a Pulp CD used in Chicago in '95 to find out what Pulp was all about. MTV's flirtation with Britpop was (mercifully imo, lol, after Pulp & some Suede you can pretty much keep that stuff) surface-level.

Oh god, I just watched that White Trash video and realized that the whole time I thought I was "skanking", what I really was doing was "skipping". Oh, god. Oh, god.

yeah to say MTV was playing Blur "all the time" isn't accurate...Oasis got played all the time..."common people" might have gotten played a bit

Oasis and Radiohead and Elastica were all over regular MTV rotation, Bowie did his Reznor thing and was all over it too. Blur and Ash and (ugh) Black Grape and Supergrass were on practically every episode 120 Minutes/Alt Nation.

I'm just saying that you probably shared more with 90s musical culture than you seem willing to admit

yeah to say MTV was playing Blur "all the time" isn't accurate

I must have watched way more than you (entirely possible), because I remember seeing "Boys & Girls" dozens of times

and MTV also ignored Tricky, PJ Harvey, and Massive Attack. "Down By The River" and ""50 Ft Queenie" got some play, I guess.

Yeah, I was in undergrad from 1994-1998, then grad school til 2000. It was quite an interesting time to be in college, thats for sure. My freshman class in 1994 was the first to be issued official school email addresses, of which like myself and four of my friends even bothered using. Of course we were the same ones actually hooking our computers up in our dorm rooms to get on IRC and read mailing lists.

I'm always glad that I was in college before cell phones got to the point where everyone had them. Some of my best memories from the time center around walking over to someone's house to meet someone, them not being there but hanging out with some new people waiting or just chilling somewhere waiting to meet up with someone. Sure it would have been infinitely more efficient to text and/or call to coordinate meeting times to maximize time on the couch before leaving my apartment, but a good 90% of the best interactions/times I had in college came randomly because I was waiting for someone else.

I watched MTV pretty consistently in the 90s up until the initial death of Beavis and Butt-head and the rise of TRL. I mostly watched when my mother was out of the house during the weekdays (She wasn't crazy about B&B or Real World) or on the second TV in the bedroom. I also watched VH1 but they tended to air niche stuff like the Divas thing that I didn't care for as much.

My freshman class in 1994 was the first to be issued official school email addresses, of which like myself and four of my friends even bothered using

yeah haha I remember thinking, "Why would I use THIS?"

i always got the sense that elastica was "britpop" for ppl that didn't really get into britpop cuz all the trV kVlt britpoppers i knew didn't seem to rate them

i would put blur at "moderate play" at least for boys & girls, but not heavy rotation...and no other blur songs i can remember until Song 2 got out of the 120 mins ghetto

I'm just saying that you probably shared more with 90s musical culture than you seem willing to admit

Just so we're clear: I didn't want to position myself as an outsider cuz who cares about them. I wanted to be part of the culture! The closest I came to consciously stepping away was when I stopped listening to pop and hip-hop between 1994 and 1996; I had to do a lot of catching up in the late nineties.

I omitted Oasis and Elastica from my original list cuz they actually shipped gold and platinum.

you know i really wonder how much of our impression that mtv was playing '90s indie/alt outliers "all the time" is down to endless beavis and butt-head repeats.

because the idea that i was gonna turn on mtv in the middle of a weekday and get helium and not, say, another viewing of "hey man, nice shot" doesn't square with my memories. at all.

I mean, I also watched Alternative Nation every night and 120 Minutes every Sunday. I'm just saying I distinctly remember them playing Blur in the middle of the day, no one is saying Daisy Chainsaw here

tbf there's only three of here who probably even remember who daisy chainsaw is

jesus christ Daisy Chainsaw!

I'm one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaZWCGs7tFw

*Raises hand*

btw i'm not at all denying mtv's entertainment value or its centrality to my daily life even once i became a total anti-radio snob for a few years in the mid '90s.

xposts okay well that's five of us then.

I was too nervous to buy a Daisy Chainsaw album because of their name.

i think Darlene went to a Daisy Chainsaw concert on an episode of Roseanne

I bought Eleventeen and took it back to the store because it was too far out for me. I RE-bought it a couple years later and fell in love with it.

xp yes, she did!

I bought Eleventeen and took it back to the store because it was too far out for me.

i did that with 36 Chambers :/

haha the only record i can remember buying that FREAKED ME OUT was "angel dust" but i persevered

also one of the few i ever had to hide from my parents because 1992 was the only year they seemed to give a shit about the parental advisory sticker

strongo - I thought my copy of angel dust was actually heatwarped or something so I exchanged it at musicland. Getting it home and hearing the exact same thing was pretty revelatory for me.

(note that these transactions involved a 30-minute bike ride each way to the mall in a Maryland summer.)

...I even have a Daisy Chainsaw shirt. Never actually saw 'em so it must have been from a friend who worked at A&M.

ned i kind of imagine your closet as being to band t-shirts what imelda marcos's was to shoes