“Bite My Tongue For No One”
I used to live by the aforementioned Biggie lyric. But within the past 24 hours I’ve bitten my tongue way too many times. I did it at work with my manager, I did it on the bus with some fool who was looking for a tussle and I did it somewhere else.
In my mind I know that I did the “right” thing in every instance, but it’s so against my nature that I feel dirty.
I hate that feeling.
Feedback Time
Tym G. took the time to drop me a response to last week’s outing;
A friend of mine passed your article in my direction, knowing it’s exactly how I feel about the current landscape of black music. Being a black male disgusted by what he sees and hears from this new era of hip hop/rap (pardon me for combining the two). I’ve never been able to explain to some of my friends my disdain for the likes of 50 Cent and Ying Yang Twins. I have already emailed them both of your articles on the subject. I appreciate your views and applaud how you’ve articulated this issue.
Thank you for giving this issue such a thorough inspection.
Well, let me thank you for writing. As I said, Hip Hop was heavy on my mind and I just had to let it spill out.
Three Years Ago
Three years ago I devoted a column to R. Kelly. He wasn’t a popular guy so much as a popular punchline. And here we are three years later and we’ve still got no resolution in the criminal charges, yet Kells slayed everyone with Trapped in the Closet. Basically I stand by everything I wrote in that column.
For this week I toyed with devoting space to Sufjan Stevens or Ben Gibbard, two songwriters that I’m currently enamored with. But I honestly didn’t think that I could to them justice.
So I decided to go the R. Kelly route and write about an aspect of the music industry that’s equally loved and loathed; MTV.
I happened to be off on August 1st, so I decided to celebrate MTV’s 25th birthday. I don’t know, maybe I wanted to remember a time before MTV was so influential. Maybe I was genuinely curious about what MTV played on it’s first day. There was perhaps a hint of desire to reminisce about a simpler time when the musical forecast was more optimistic. I can’t really explain why I tuned in to VH1 Classic but I did. And clearly my memories greatly exaggerated the quality of videos on MTV’s early days.
Before I get to that let me just say that I find it terribly ironic that MTV, MTV2 and even MTV Hits couldn’t be bothered interrupt programming to mark the momentous occasion. Could it be that admitting that MTV was actually older than it’s demographic might hurt the image? Still I found it telling and sad that MTV celebrated it’s anniversary on a VH1 channel.
That said, those videos that first day kind of sucked. Apparently my memories of the early days of the channel are firmly tied to fond memories of my Grandma’s house to really remember the low quality of content.
There were far too many artists that I’d never heard of (Shoes, Ph.D) for me to really enjoy it. I did gain a newfound respect for The Pretenders. I hear their songs all day at work so I dig them, but knowing that they got heavy rotation on MTV’s launch day earned them a great deal of admiration in my eyes. But I really can’t explain why.
Robert Palmer loses respect. I saw two of his early videos and they took away whatever cred he had from Addicted to Love and Simply Irresistible days. I mean the videos sucked. They had all the hallmarks of an early 80’s video; bad lighting, cheap special effects the whole shebang.
Of course Rod Stewart was there in all of his hammy glory. There was some group (whose name escapes me) whose song Remote Control was kind of catchy, as the beginning of the video featured the Theme to Peter Gunn. And Andrew Gold’s stuff was literally golden. Lonely Boy and Thank You For Being a Friend are my s$%t!
I could have done with about half as much Reo Speedwagon and 1000 times as much original VJ’s action.
But you know what; I’m not going to talk smack about how MTV no longer lives up to it’s name. I’m now at the age where I can understand that MTV started as an experiment and gradually evolved into what it is today. It moved from being a tastemaker in terms of music to being a tastemaker in terms of lifestyle and culture and it’s been equally successful at both.
Sure, I can mourn the loss of actual Music Television and regret that my concept of MTV is completely different then my younger cousins concept of MTV. But I won’t begrudge a fledgling cable channel for striving to become more successful. The same way I don’t hate the Cartoon Network for no longer showing the cartoons that I grew up with, I don’t hate MTV for no longer devoting itself to music videos. I have other options for cartoons (Boomerang) and other options for videos (BET, BET J, VH1 Classic and even Youtube.)
So, yeah, that’s how I spent my day off.
M2
Greg does a great piece on digital music. He makes me want to do the “random” thing. He also makes me long for a movie I’ve never seen; Dirty Dancing.
Kyle continues to blow my mind. This week it’s about music writers. He always makes me look at things differently.
Gloomchen writes about the power of distinct voices, how they can alter group direction and ultimately lead to great success.
MTV2
Ian has news on Thom Yorke’s next single and Ok Computer getting a DVD treatment.
Five Discs in My CD Player Right Now
1. John Coltrane – Blue Train
2. Miles Davis – Sketches of Spain
3. The Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Out
4. Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
5 Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane – At Carnegie Hall
