Codell Rodriguez
Daily Egyptian
I remember back in the day when my parents got cable for the first time. The biggest argument was whether the kids got to watch MTV or if the parents got to watch the country music channel.
It was awesome. We saw nothing but our rock 'n' roll icons on TV all day, 24 hours a day. And the videos were great. My sister and I gasped and laughed at Steven Tyler's pants, stared in awe of Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" and it's state-of-the-art special effects and swayed along with Crowded House's "Don't Dream it's Over."
Yes sir, MTV was all I ever needed - with the exception of "You Can't Do That on Television" and "Turkey Television." Back then, "Remote Control" was about the only show that was not music-oriented. We saw MTV News with people that actually looked somewhat like journalists.
Oh, but those days are gone. No longer can we turn on MTV and be 90 percent sure to see videos. No more days of Cindy Lauper and her wrestler friends promoting "The Goonies" through even more videos.
No, those days have been replaced by a 2 percent chance of seeing videos. Now the images of spoiled 20-year-old kids living in a great apartment in the ritziest section of New York to experience the "Real World" fill up the time of Music Television. Now we have spoiled 20-year-old kids choosing between two other spoiled 20-year-old kids for whom they want to "dismiss" and with whom they want to spend the rest of the evening. Now we have a bunch of spoiled 20-year-old kids strapping cameras to their head and running through supposed haunted locations while screaming at the top of their lungs, "Oh my god, I'm going to die!" Now we have a soap opera starring a bunch of spoiled 20-year-old kids as they make life-altering decisions such as whether to use ribbed condoms or whether they should break up with their two-week boyfriends, because they didn't use ribbed condoms.
Yes, this is the crap people now have to endure just so high school kids can copy the latest fashion trends and call their friends to tell them all about the show, only to "hook up" later.
What happened to Nirvana premiering on "Headbanger's Ball" and Weezer's "Buddy Holly" making viewers exclaim, "Holy crap on a cracker! That's amazing!" Now, if we're willing to watch from midnight until about 7 a.m., we can say, "Hey, this is the fifth time they've played the Lil Bow Wow video. Where's the friggin Hives?"
I have to admit that MTV has improved somewhat in the past couple of months with shows such as "MTV Rocks," which plays late at night and actually shows rock videos, something that hasn't happened in a while.
I think the outcry started last year when MTV celebrated its 20th anniversary. The station showed a chronology of its history, letting fans see what MTV was like from the '80s up to the mid-'90s. Just out of curiosity, I decided to go onto the MTV message boards. Wouldn't you know it, the majority of threads were titled something like, "Wow, I can't believe how much MTV sucks now."
Then bands such as Sum 41 and Alien Ant Farm started breaking onto the scene and people were saying, "Well they're OK, but there's gotta be something better."
So then other videos started making their way to MTV's 2:45 a.m. slot. I started seeing The White Stripes, The Hives, Jimmy Eat World and Weezer - on a completely unrelated note, I encourage everyone to listen to Supergrass' album, "In it for the Money." Then move on to their other stuff. When you have a column like me, you can plug whatever you want and you get all the girls. OK, I'm lying about the latter, but I can dream can't I?
But even with the slight move back to the old days, they didn't come close to matching the quality of MTV2. It still has stupid crap such as "Sorority Life," and they still have "Dismissed" and "Undressed."
I hope that either MTV gets its act together, or they make MTV2 the standard. Until then, I encourage everyone to stand outside MTV studios and play the last few seconds of Money for nothing by the Dire Straits while weeping and holding up lighters.
Codell Rodriguez can be reached at crodriguez@dailyegyptian.com.
Published on 11/17/05; 12:24:44 PM
