The Clever Badger I'm not dead yet!

I Want My MTV!

In the 1980(ish) when my family got cable TV, there weren't really that many channels - WTBS from Atlanta, WGN from Chicago, ESPN, a few movie channels, and...not much else that I can remember.

Before long, though, this strange beast called MTV appeared on the cable box.  To be frank, I thought MTV was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen - I mean, really, watching music?

I have a cousin who from the very start became MTV's Biggest Fan In The World!  She would plan her summer afternoons around the upcoming videos as announced by The Rocket at the top of the hour.

For the most part, the MTV landscape of the early 80's, as I recall it, was populated by such artists as Culture Club, Cyndi  Lauper, Duran Duran, and such like, which I really couldn't have cared less about.

However, there were a few videos that I kinda liked.  One of them was the video for Dire Straits' Money for Nothing.

I only recently learned just how many different edits of the song were floating around to work around some fairly controversial (especially for the mid-80s)  lyrics.  The video below is the full, unedited version.  (I'm not out to offend anyone by using this version, but that's how Mark Knopfler wrote the song, and I tend to prefer the artist's original version of things like music and films.  Call me quirky.  The conspicuous exception is that I don't care for George Lucas' endless noodling with the original Star Wars trilogy - I can't decide if he's really pursuing his vision or simply seeing how many times he can go back to the well.)

I liked the computer animation in the video, and I love Mark Knopfler's guitar work.

In later years, music videos became less of a novelty and more of a recognized form of film making, and MTV became much less music oriented and, based on what I saw earlier today (and what inspired me to put this post together) has decayed to yet another channel running trashy reality shows.

We've got enough of those...

-Jay

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