I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution
“. . . all these fun facts get lost in the choppiness of I Want My MTV as a whole, and very few people will be willing to read 600+ pages of sound bytes.
Come on guys, you got your MTV.
I want my narrative.”
Remember when MTV used to be cool? Way, way, WAY back in the day when they used to actually play music? This of course is pre-“Jersey Shore,” pre-“TRL,” and pre-“The Real World.” The original Music Television was founded on the principle of music videos played 24 hours a day. And yet, getting music on TV was not the catalyst for the creation of the trend-setting station.
In their new book, I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, journalists Craig Marks and Rob Tannenbaum interviewed over 400 music insiders about the Golden Years (1981–1992) of Music Television. Executives, artists, and other big name celebrities tell their (sometimes conflicting) stories about the channel that changed the music business.
The founders of MTV (Bob Pittman, John Lack, Fred Seibert, etc.) wanted to create a TV channel that would target the fickle 14–25 year old demographic. Music seemed like the best medium in which they would succeed. Pittman and company even managed to talk the record labels into giving them the music videos for free—and when was the last time someone could say they got something free from a major record label?
On August 1, 1981, Music Television launched with “Video Killed the Radio Star” from the Buggles.
While the authors put quite a bit of work into interviewing mass quantities of people, their final product lacks continuity. It almost looks like they got out some scissors, cut and pasted everything together, and released it as a book. There is no storyline to pull (and keep) the readers interest.
I Want My MTV reads like the world’s longest magazine article; and just because something works in a short form does not mean it is as successful in a (really) long version. Anyone who saw A Night at the Roxbury in a theater will attest to that.
This book is more plausible as a first draft or a compilation. It has some fun stories about where artists were when they initially saw MTV (some watched it for days at a time) or why Fred Seibert chose the moon man as a marketing tool. Neil Armstrong was almost the voice of MTV—dichotomy, anyone?
But all these fun facts get lost in the choppiness of I Want My MTV as a whole, and very few people will be willing to read 600+ pages of sound bytes.
Come on guys, you got your MTV.
I want my narrative.