MTV's first 24 hours

Not to mention the Bow Wow Wow video ...

 

Very effective use of the word "fucktarded," and I mean that sincerely.

 

S-S-S-S-Samantha FOX!



And BTW, China Kantner was the love child of Jefferson Airplane / Jefferson Starship / Starship's Grace Slick and Paul Kantner. (I think P.K. was out of the band by the time "We Built This City" rolled out.)

 

Watching these videos all day has taken me back to a special, crazy, turbulent, coming-of-age time when being a teenage boy in Long Beach was like being king of the world. I'm so back in 1985 right now. Hall and Oates "Maneater" is playing now. They get ragged on quite a bit, but some of their songs and videos weren't so bad.

 

They were pretty much hitting 1.000 until 1988's "Ooh Yeah."

Their songs hold up incredibly well. Their greatest hits is my current favorite CD. They didn't swing and miss at all in the first half of the '80s.

 

Not even with M-E-T-H-O-D-O-F-L-O-V-E? (the moment IMO they fell off the cliff, although "Out of Touch" was a great first single off their late '84 album.)

 

Here's a fond memory of Hall and Oates: Back in 1980, my mom pulled me out of elementary school 3 blocks down from our house, and made me attend the Hebrew Academy Lubavitch in Westminster, which was like 20 minutes from Long Beach. I was 9 and had no fucking idea why I had to leave my friends like that to attend some orthodox school. A few days after I started there Reagan got shot, but that's not the fond memory.

This orthodox Jewish girl named Sheila, who was in 6th grade, two years older than me, developed a crush on me. Kind of cool, but being a 4th-grader, I didn't really know what to do. So Sheila tries to woo me by giving me a present, this kind of cool portable light blue radio. She brought it to me one day at school and handed it to me in a brown bag. I turned it on and she had put batteries in it. The first song that played out of that radio was "Your Kiss Is On My List" by Hall and Oates. I never really gave Sheila the time of day, though she probably wanted my 4th-grade ass to go Boots on her, but I'll never forget that radio, and that song.

As for the Hebrew Academy Lubavitch, I learned how to read Hebrew in 10 days, quasi-assimilated to the orthodox lifestyle, though when I told my mom 2 years later if she'd put a bowl of water next to my bed so I could wash my hands and say the prayer as soon as I awake -- as per orthodox Jew rules -- she yanked my ass out of the "luv-a-bitch" and enrolled me back at Elwood P. Cubberly Elementary. I took that radio to school the first day at Cubberly and some fucktard named Dennis took it from me and smashed it.

 

I know there's a long history of rockers ramrodding hot models but I still, after all these years, cannot believe this guy was schtooping Samantha Fox.

 

Call that one a bunt single up the third base line that traveled about 12 feet.   Not great, but the video was kitschy and the harmonies were good.

My favorite song off that album was actually "Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid."

They definitely lost something off the fastball with "Ooh Yeah," but "So Close" off their 1990 album "Change of Season" was as good as anything they've ever done.

Edit: Songbird, do you think of your Hebrew school girlfriend whenever you hear Ready For The World's "Oh Sheila?"  

Edit 2: Lemmy fucked Samantha Fox?!?! No way. He also fucked Lita Ford.

 

Lemmy? Fuckin-A! Lemmy!

 

OK, the worst five songs to make the first-day video cut on MTV:

"History Never Repeats" by Split Enz
"Surface Tension" by Rupert Hines
"The Best of Times" by Styx
"Angel of the Morning" by Juice Newton
"Thank You for Being a Friend" by Andrew Gold


And the best six:

"In the Air Tonight" by Phil Collins (probably the best video concept of that first day)
"You Better Run" by Pat Benatar
"You Better You Bet" by The Who
"Brass in Pocket" by The Pretenders
"Hold on Loosely" by .38 Special
"Tough Guys" by REO Speedwagon