Welcome, fair readers, to the all-video installment of The Be-In, inspired by MTV’s big 20th birthday and the fact that a couple of juicy tidbits from last week got hacked at the knees by the gods of copy editing because I gushed for too long about the magic of Spike Jonze.
So first, Cake. MTV has been playing semi-regularly the video for “Short Skirt/Long Jacket,” the first single from their hot-off-the-presses “Comfort Eagle” album. The clip is the latest brain child from raving egomaniac and Cake frontman John McCrea, who also plopped down in the director’s chair for the video. It plays like a man-on-the-street report where, as the song plays, people listen to the single on headphones and give their opinions.
And — get out! You’re kidding me! — everybody likes it! Old, young, black, white — it doesn’t matter. McCrea has unified the world under one flag that flaps in the wind to promote “a girl with good dividends” who “is changing her name from Kitty to Karen.”
OK, so there are a couple people who slam the song. One is the stereotypical elderly person who just doesn’t get that rock ‘n’ roll music. The other is a wise adult who basically criticizes how pop music all sounds the same. But Mr. Lang hardly can consider those dissents based on the song itself, or enough to keep from considering the video from being personal, artistic masturbation by McCrea.
As for MTV itself, four of the channel’s bigwigs, including VJ Carson Daly and newsman Kurt Loder, sat down with Charlie Rose on Sunday. During the interview, Judy McCarthy, who has been involved behind the camera since the channel started, said the “I” in “I want my MTV” has always been the most important thing to the video channel. And, of course, it wasn’t long before Daly’s Total Request Live came into the conversation, and Carson began his spiel about it being controlled by the viewers. Previously, Daly as even called the show — where requests determine the top 10 for the day — a mini-democracy.
McCarthy and Daly’s comments exposed much of the hypocrisy on which MTV has built its empire.
For starters, “I” in “Mr. Lang wants his MTV” must feature the now-defunct “120 Minutes” show. From midnight to 2 a.m. each Sunday, the show had videos, interviews and live performances from a variety of acts that would fall into the broad “indie” category. Videos ranging from The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion to Tricky ran next to videos from national acts like The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead and The Bloodhound Gang. Frequently, videos on the show became the next big thing during the day.
Now, the show is on MTV’s sister all-music channel, M2, and the old Sunday slot is frequently filled with a rerun of “The Real World” or “Undressed.” Now, Mr. Lang is quite realistic and realizes his favorite bands will never rule the airwaves. But two late-night hours a week seem enough to give him the “I” he so desperately craves.
As for good ol’ TRL, the show is hardly a mini-democracy. Although viewers do “control” the countdown, MTV doesn’t give the viewers choices. So rarely does a non TRL-video air on the station, and with so little variety, it’s no wonder that the same small group of artists rules the countdown.
The show also gives a percent of the votes, but it never reveals the number of votes, which are only tallied by phone during the hour before the show. The No. 10 video may get only 10 votes and, if Mr. Lang knew that, he’d round up nine of his friends to call and vote for Radiohead‘s amazing new video for “Knives Out.” Then Radiohead would be a TRL band, and wouldn’t that be something.
It’s as though MTV has created a presidential election where everyone gets to vote for four candidates, but MTV only tells the voters about two of them and only gives them one hour to cast a ballot.
As a final side note, station programmers seriously need to make up their minds about Weezer‘s “Hash Pipe” video. First, they titled it “H*** Pipe,” bleeped out “hash” in the song, and had the VJs call it “Pipe.” Then the VJs started calling it “Half Pipe.” But MTV let the word stay when the band performed in June at the Movie Awards. But on Sunday night, MTV showed a five-song concert set by the band and bleeped it out again.
MTV has given Mr. Lang a number of fond memories, 99 percent of them based on great videos and live performances, but a deadbeat dad can’t secure his son’s love with fancy toys alone. MTV needs to be around the house more often and provide for its family.