MTV Destroyed The Purpose Of Music

Am I the only one that was awake in the 1980's? In the Air Tonight from Phil Collins and I Love Rock n Roll from Joan Jett didn't define those ten years. Neither did Girls Just Want To Have Fun, Come On Eileen, The Stray Cat Strut and Rick Springfield chanting his love for Jesse's Girl. They were watered downed versions of a change in music. An evolution of exploration almost like that of the 1950's and 60's Garage Bands and Sun Record Studios. Punk Rock was the new pop combined with a second British Invasion that acted more like synthesized demonstration rather than setting a style or standard for a generation. So the music business relied on Friday Night Videos and MTV to get into the veins of mainstay. We became addicted to sight and more than sound remembering a song not for its lyrics or harmonies but how movie directors crafted images onto slivers of film then tainting it with the latest in special effects. I'll never forget crashing in the music room of KOOK in Billings, Montana. The new music would arrive on 45 and I'd rush to the room at the end of the hallway, throw my legs over radio station chairs then dine on the finely tuned instrumentations of what music without video did to your imagination. If I liked a song you knew it. Anyone passing the music room might not have seen but heard my fearless radio fingers hoisting needles off the fade allowing no space to race between a jock and his Rock. I cue burned more songs before they were hits than Elevation Church has members. It was my vow not to steal the soul of the song but to become part of it. I will never forget bumping into my first U2 song. Scratch...do it again. Scratch do it again! This wasn't Duran Duran, Loverboy or John Travolta's Urban Cowboy-isms of modernizing Country Music. Crap! Something was happening and I couldn't figure out why the Program Director didn't hear it. The only reason why I spent so much time creating specialty programming on my Arroe-ized Radio Shows between 1979 to 2005 had nothing to do with attracting brilliant ratings! I love music so much that redesigning my wave of radio announcing gifted me with a legal license to play the deepest cuts, nearly lost forever mixes and hard to locate musical connections that no other Jocks were allowed to spin. I can't thank Chris Beachley from The Wax Museum in Charlotte, NC enough for feeding my addiction to being stupid. While on-air talent chased the act of being morning show funny like Stern, Scott Shannon and Rick Dees. I had my music. And U2 was a major part of that nightly fix. I cringe when radio stations in 2012 claim they're playing the best mix of those ten bewildered years of music exploration only to find their flights are no deeper than Betty Davis Eyes, My Sherona and AC/DC's Shook Me All Night Long. Have you ever felt like MTV stole your virginity? Taking from the world the single most important blessing; the inner eye that instantly paints what you assume without Michael Jackson grabbing his crotch while wearing a white glove and well polished black shoes. I dare you to take an Arroe test. Check out the 1980 song Stories For Boys from U2 without watching the video first. Be a real radio jock and take stalk in the presence of lyric skating beyond invisible ice. After you've heard it jot down a couple of thoughts then watch the video and see what pictures do to the daily pace of the human race. Being a non-video fan of music...I get nothing. So I'll let Rollingstone Magazine set up the picture play. The Eighties were only five days old when U2 appeared on Ireland's Late Late Show to perform their new song "Stories for Boys." The band's debut LP, Boy, wouldn't hit stores for another 10 months, and their first single, "Another Day," wasn't even out yet. They did have a three-song EP called Three on sale in Ireland, and that was enough to get them a slot on the popular late-night show. Journalist John McKenna gave them a freakishly prescient introduction. "What can I say about these titans among rock & rollers?" he said. "The band for the future – the Eighties or Nineties, who knows? U2!" His words may not be as memorable as Jon Landau's "I've seen rock & roll future" line about Bruce Springsteen, but it's still quite remarkable when you look back upon it. Just two months after this appearance U2 were signed to Island Records. That same month, they met with Joy Division producer Martin Hannett about possibly producing Boy. By a crazy cosmic coincidence, they happened to visit during the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" recording session. They wound up working with Steve Lillywhite, who they've worked with (off and on) for the past three decades. But in January of 1980 not a lot of people were calling U2 the band of the Eighties, let alone the Nineties. John McKenna did, and we take our hats off to him. The Video