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Happy Birthday, MTV!


E-Roc and I spent pretty much the whole weekend watching the 30 years retrospective clips of MTV on VH1 Classic. What a stroll down memory lane! I had forgotten about half of all the great shows, award moments, live performances, promos, contests.....not to mention, the videos! It was so fun reliving the old times and kept me from thinking too hard about my Baby Boy going off to sleep-away camp for the first time, let me tell ya.

And I realized many times over the weekend and even on the drive to work this morning, how much my musical mind has been shaped by MTV. I heard "Beds Are Burning" on the drive-in, and I could see in my head that guy from Midnight Oil doing his weird little dance out there on the Australian Outback. Flipped the channel and could visualize Slash out there shredding it up by that little church in "November Rain".

Good or bad, for a lot of the music in my head, I think and hear in videos.

I also can track back many of my cultural touchstones to this station. The first time I saw Madonna, Michael Jackson, and The Police. Wondering where Motley Crue and Twisted Sister bought their clothes. Having my first rock star crush on Jack Blades. My first roommate from college who was from the sticks marveling over seeing Beavis and Butthead for the first time. And even bigger than that.......using clips from a documentary piece about race relations for a report I did in college, watching The Real World: Chicago respond to the 9/11 attacks.

I remember that some of my friends' parents back in the day put quite a lot of provisions on MTV. Mine didn't. My parents didn't censor my sister and me in what we read or watched, and thank Jeebus for that! For good or bad, look at what I was exposed to.....look at what I learned....about various cultures, other places, different people, and of course, the music!

I think I am as good a person as any to speak to the mark MTV left on my generation. I was 6 when that cartoon rocket blasted off and lit up my impressionable head. And yeah, since then, MTV has changed a lot. I guess the worst thing now is how little music there is in the television, but some of the current shows like Teen Mom and True Life are actually pretty valuable to today's youth. I think so, anyway.

So I, for one, would like to say Happy Birthday and thanks to the genius and innovative minds that brought MTV to me. Thirty years later, I think I could say it shaped me as much or more as any other media, literary or entertainment outlet.....more than CBS, The New York Times, The Bible, The Gaston Gazette, the Star Wars franchise or Wonder Woman re-runs.

It's up there in my head knocking around with Kate's Skating Rink, my 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Baker, Holden Caulfield, Scout Finch, J.R. Ewing, Simon LeBon, Saddam Hussein, Wendi Wood, Jimmy Carter, Laverne Dafazio, Tianamen Square, Pembroke State University, Dominick Birdsey, Bridgett Jones, Chuck Britt, Dr. Rudy Williams, Picasso, Woody Guthrie, Max Headroom, Chelsea Clinton, Jim Morrison.........

It's there with all of that and more.

I got my MTV.
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