to songwriting. if you should fall into my arms and tremble like a flower artists in the 80s, david bowie for that matter, realized if you want to make it, you ve got to be on mtv. but there s one group that s not happy with mtv. many black artists who have been told their music doesn t fit the format. that s what s happening. we re being sat in the back of the bus television-style. and if pittman gets away with this and there are other cable shows that form, they re going to try it. mtv doesn t exclude black acts. what mtv does exclude is music that s not rock n roll. mtv came out with no consideration on how to infuse black music into their mix. i m just floored by the fact there are so few black artists featured on it. why is that? we have to try and do what we think, not only new york and los angeles will appreciate, but also some town in the midwest that will be scared to death by
the world has reacted with immense shock and grief to the first rock n roll assassination. it was like in one moment the 60s and the 70s got murdered. in his life he s given more love than most men and women on the face of this earth. we re here to prove that love is not dead, even though john is. you know, you start the decade with the death of a beatle. you don t really know where you re going to go from that point, you know, culturally or musically. for a while it seemed there was nothing new on the horizon. announcing the latest achievement in home entertainment. the power of sight. video. the power of sound. stereo. mtv. music television. we all are so excited about this new concept in tv. we ll be doing for tv what f.m. did for radio. at the time the world was saying, we don t think anybody is going to watch videos over and over. but we knew we had something special.
something new needs to happen here and it s got to be real-sounding, more garage, less produced. i need an easy friend this music that was bubbling out of places like portland and seattle, and bands like nirvana that weren t looking to fit in to what was being played on mtv or what was being played on radio. i can t see you every night eventually radio and mtv came to them. the seeds of what will happen in the next decade are already all there by the end of the 80s. college rock, like r.e.m., was something new entirely. follow me, yeah follow me got my spine i ve got my orange crush the way that peter buck played guitar and the way that
ooh, my little pretty one, pretty one when you gonna give me some time sharona mtv made you feel like those artists were in the room. you had a personal concert all day. crack that whip when you have the rotation of, say, maybe 100 different videos being rotated over and over on mtv, they do a great job of exposing new acts. here in my car where the image breaks down will you visit me please if i open my door in cars britain was ahead of the curve. they had a ton of videos in their inventory, and that was what paved the way for this accidental second british invasion. if you look at some of the groups on the popular music charts in america today you can t help asking where on earth did they come from? well, the answer is the same today as it was two decades ago. they come from britain. the music isn t anything like the famous group that came from there, the beatles. you ve got to understand, they were 20 years ago. we re a new generation. a new wave. you
or right just beat it he was the artist that mtv really needed. they didn t know they needed him, but boy, when we started to see those michael jackson videos, it was just unbelievable. then there was the domino effect. suddenly you see prince videos from warner bros. do the same thing. tonight we re going to party like it s 1999 prince wasn t just materializing out of nowhere. where was he before this video was done? prince was a huge star on black radio stations. i mean, people he had a real underground cult following him. he was a very sexy, hot performer. the sweat of your body covers me can you, my darling, can you picture this prince loved the idea that he was taking his punk-funk music and turning it on to a white audience, and that wouldn t have happened if not for mtv. this is what it sounds like when doves cry