Eat Them Up Yum!

Where did my brain damage come from? Ah now I remember. It was during the very late 1970s and early 1980s. You see before MTV, folks were making all kinds of weird music videos and short films. These shows were just nuts. Some were good, some were bad, but there was little or no corporate influence at all. Artists could do whatever they wanted. Remember Devo? They’re a good example. This creative free-for-all continued for a short time when MTV first started up, they pretty much played any old weirdo thing (except videos by most nonwhites) because nobody cared, nobody looking for huge profits that is. I would guess that this golden age of music videos was from about 1979 to 1982 at the most.

Childhood friends ridiculed me during the first half of the eighties because I called music videos “clips” after the show Pop Clips, the forerunner to MTV. They played a lot of weird stuff too; just watch a Kim Carnes’ video, or better yet David Bowie’s Fashion. Talk about warping a young mind! The strange thing was how normal we thought it all was, and now, thanks to youtube, we can rediscover this strange tiny era before the goons had descended.

Well, there was quite a bit of wacko stuff. But the one that really takes the cake is Fish Heads. This short film was first broadcast on Saturday Night Live but was quickly picked up by MTV. The song was made by Barnes & Barnes and the project was directed by Bill Paxton. At the time, we thought it was an odd, funny little short. Watching it now, I realize this is one of the most subversive, mind crushingly, dangerous videos ever… and I viewed it as a child. Enjoy! …Oh, Also, you won’t be able to get the tune out of your head. Ahh ha ha ha



-Swinebread

I WAS Downtown

I started thinkin’ about an animated TV show from several years ago called Downtown. I only saw a few episodes but it made a big impression. Downtown aired on MTV in 1999. Unfortunately only one season of 13 episodes was made. I really enjoyed the program’s animation style, the urban dialog, and the realistic characters. It was based on interviews with real urbanites after all, so that’s probably what makes Downtown ring true. It’s kinda’ Ralph Bakshi meets The Real World. The show has an interesting multiracial cast of characters that struggle to navigate the trials and tribulations of New York City. I could go on about what a great cartoon it is, but just take a look:

Another, more personal reason for my interest in the show is that Downtown made me finally grasp that my generation’s pop culture influence had passed. Or rather, that I was no longer the target of youth pop culture. I should have realized this looooooong before 1999, I admit, but I was overseas for a while and culture shock tends to retard knowledge of changes in one’s home culture and changes in one’s self for that matter. I specifically remember a moment on the show where Matt, Downtown’s resident graffiti artist, expresses awe at finding artist tags from the 1980s in the bowels of the subway system. At first I thought: “the ‘80s wasn’t that long ago, why is he’s treating this like an ancient discovery.” But in pop culture time, a decade IS ancient, practically antediluvian.

I’m sure shrinks and sociologists have names for this sudden realization, but I was trying to come up with a phrase or a word that encapsulates this experience. A PopGen Signpost? PCM (pop culture marker)? GenShift? Nothing seemed to fit, and then I thought about the name of the show, Downtown. Downtown is where the cool kids hangout, the culture is bumping, and the possibilities are endless. That’s IT! Downtown. Of course, I still participate in pop culture, I'm just not 'Downtown' anymore.
-Swinebread
The first episode