Blue-eyed Soul: Everybody's high on consolation Everybody's trying to tell me what is right for me...

 Hip to Be Square

 “She’s Gone”, Daryl Hall and John Oates, (1973; 1976)

The over-produced shiny pop hits in their later career make us forget where Hall and Oates came from – they were street corner doo-wop singers from Philadelphia who were too late for doo-wop but not rock and roll enough for new wave. They branded their own kind of music: Rock and Soul.

I said, what are ya tryin' a do to my head? Said, whatcha' tryin' a do to my head?

MTV and the Decline of Music, Part II

“You Better Run”, Pat Benatar, 1981

The second song ever aired on MTV was “You Better Run”. Pat Benatar had already established herself as a powerhouse. She had released the albums In “The Heat of the Night”, and “Crimes of Passion” that had sold millions of copies and had been awarded a number of Grammy’s and the American Music Awards. Pretty safe choice for song number 2 really...

A Toronto based company called CHUM Ltd. launched the Canadian equivalent to MTV, ‘ Much Music’  in 1984, noting the success of MTV in the United States, and wanting a piece of the action. The CRTC, which is the governing legal body in Canada, prevented MTV from either bringing its U.S. channel directly into Canada or setting up a home-grown competitor. As a result, MTV was initially content to sell Canadian rights to its programming for rebroadcast on Much Music. Before this happened we had really only seen MTV in bars on satellite. Not really thinking about whether it was legal or not.

And now we meet in an abandoned studio, we hear the playback and it seems so long ago...

MTV and the decline of Music, Part I

“Video Killed the Radio Star”, the Buggles, 1979

“Video Killed the Radio Star” was appropriately the first song to air on the brand new TV station ‘MTV’ in 1981, running 24/7 music videos. It is interesting to note that it was released in 1979. (Yes, I have the original 45!)

It would seem the origins of MTV could date back to 1966 when New Zealand record companies would provide the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation music videos to play on the air at no fee. The problem was few bands could or would pay their own way to be recorded. This concept though, was likely one of the seeds from which the ideas of MTV grew, although as we have seen there was considerable footage of music that was being created between 1966 and 1981when it happened...