cindymay said:
Bowie basically exposed their asses. | |
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bboy87 said:
Ron Weisner who was MJ's manager from 1978 to 1983, tried to use the excuse that black artists and labels weren't investing in music videos so there was lack of videos to be aired
BS
Earth, Wind, and Fire, Stevie Wonder, The Jacksons, Michael Jackson, Prince, Rick James, Cameo, The Gap Band, The Brothers Johnson, Sylvester, and others all videos. While Motown and other labels were skeptical of the impact or need for videos, videos by black acts DID exist so that excuse is void Except for perhaps its very first year on air, MTV never showcased only rock artists. The most featured type of acts next to rock artists were new wavers and synth poppers and that doesn't include the many regular pop names at the time. Hall & Oates were one of those regular pop names and their music was heavily R&B-oriented; Rick James himself used them as an example of MTV's prejudice. If the channel really was true to its name, we would've seen those black artists you mentioned's videos airing alongside and in between those of the rockers and new wavers. Remember how big Marvin Gaye's commercial comeback was with "Sexual Healing"? Now, imagine just how much bigger it could've been with MTV's support; no telling how much more his stock could've rose. I don't think MTV would've truly hit its stride without "Billie Jean" but if they had been regularly featuring the black talent of the time, the need for Michael wouldn't have been quite as big. [Edited 3/27/18 20:00pm] | |
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but look at them now...down the tubes | |
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yep and I also remember in 1983,Donna Summer's "She Works Hard For The Money" video being played in heavy rotation on MTV. | |
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I honestly don't believe Chaka's "I feel for you" was the break through.
Run DMC broke it open. Specifically when they covered Aeorshith's "walk this way" with both bands in the video. | |
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Run DMC did their thing but it was Michael Jackson. He one of the first artist to spend big dollars to make decent videos. Thriller was an amazing.. But Prince was equally savvy when instead of a short film he released a full length movie . | |
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00000 said:
Run DMC did their thing but it was Michael Jackson. He one of the first artist to spend big dollars to make decent videos. Thriller was an amazing.. But Prince was equally savvy when instead of a short film he released a full length movie . | |
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This topic got my memory jogging and I remembered that I own I Want My MTV and the book has a chapter on this very subject.
The lady who rejected "Super Freak" is named Carolyn Baker and it turns out she did advocate for other black artists to be showcased. She talks about when she approached then-MTV President, Bob Pittman on the issue: I said, "We've got to play James Brown." And Bob said, "The research says our audience thinks rock n' roll started with the Beatles." I came through the civil rights movement. I was a member of SNCC. I believe in opening doors. The party line at MTV was that we weren't playing black music because of the "research". But the research was based on ignorance. I told Bob that to his face. We were young, we were cutting edge. We didn't have to be on the cutting edge of racism. Les Garland, the then-MTV executive vice president for programming at the time denied any sort of prejudice and defended the network: The worst thing was that "racism" bullshit. There were artists of color on MTV: Joan Armatrading, Eddy Grant, the Bus Boys, even Prince. But there were hardly any videos being made by black artists. Record companies weren't funding them. They never got accused of racism. Rick James singled me out in an interview, and it pissed me off. The mistake he made was calling me a racist and not knowing me. "Super Freak" was a booty video in a swimming pool. We couldn't play that shit. I ran across Rick James one night in a club. I went up to him and said, "My name is Les Garland. Does that mean anything to you? You called me a fucking racist. You don't even know me." He said, "Dude, I'm sorry." He apologized, I accepted it, and we became friendly. You remember the Eddie Murphy video "Party All the Time"? Rick wrote that song. And I'm one of the two white guys in the video. Garland may not be racist himself but based on these quotes, he comes off as that stereotypical "I'm not racist! I have a black friend!", deflecting type who can't see the much larger issue beyond their personal feelings. What he says about black artists hardly having videos in the first quote is a straight up lie. Black artists who had music videos at the time were more than the few he mentioned and even then, it's not like their videos were airing on MTV. If what he said in his second story is actually true, I'm surprised Rick backed down like that. Very out of character. Jeff Ayeroff, former Warner Bros. Records creative director and Virgin Records America co-chairman took a more neutral approach: I was one of the first people to point out that MTV didn't play videos by black artists. But the people running MTV weren't racist. Part of the problem was the quality of videos. If you look at the Michael Jackson videos before "Billie Jean", even those were just him backlit by lasers. No artist, not even white ones had a music video as immaculate as "Billie Jean" before it. Most videos of the rock artists MTV promoted were just a series of clips of their live performances; certainly nothing special. Did MTV air videos that existed before the channel's inception? If so, Michael and his brothers both had a video that was state of the art at the time they were released in "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" and "Can You Feel It?", respectively. By saying what he did, Ayeroff was (unintentionally) implying that in order to be recognized, black artists had to go above and beyond; they had to have a "Billie Jean"-tier music video in order to be a part of MTV's rotation. It truly is poetic justice that MTV's success was spurred by the music video of a black R&B/pop artist. EDIT: Let's jump back to what Les Garland had to say about "Super Freak": "Super Freak" was a booty video in a swimming pool. We couldn't play that shit. Hmmmm... let's watch the video: I just saw the whole thing and unless there was another video for the song at the time, I haven't seen a single "booty in a swimming pool" throughout the 3:21 this one lasts for. Yeah, Garland is full of shit. [Edited 3/27/18 20:03pm] | |
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BET was a superior counterpart to MTV, much superior to me. Unfortunately, it too lost its edge and character when its owner sold it to ViaCom (??) not sure which company, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong. | |
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Hamad said: BET was a superior counterpart to MTV, much superior to me. Unfortunately, it too lost its edge and character when its owner sold it to ViaCom (??) not sure which company, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong. | |
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All your points are valid (everyones) pertaining to the … 'MTV breakthrough' and all that, but simply put, it was only a matter of time. The walls were already crumbling and had been for some time. My personal view/opinion. . Now middle management at MTV might have not seen total integration coming as swiftly as it had, but nonetheless everyone of my generation did. WE were calling/demanding for all our artists’ music. (Didn’t we clear much of the way for you’all with Woodstock?) . I’m (white and) older than most of you and we (my generation) weren’t seeing/hearing the race of the artist in songs/music as teenagers in the 70’s. For example if I heard the Supremes were going to be on a varsity show, you can bet I stayed up to watch it! . Sadly, if anything I think we’ve gone backwards in the United States, but that is a whole other ‘red’ hot topic. ~DD55
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DD55 said:
All your points are valid (everyones) pertaining to the … 'MTV breakthrough' and all that, but simply put, it was only a matter of time. The walls were already crumbling and had been for some time. My personal view/opinion. . Now middle management at MTV might have not seen total integration coming as swiftly as it had, but nonetheless everyone of my generation did. WE were calling/demanding for all our artists’ music. (Didn’t we clear much of the way for you’all with Woodstock?) . I’m (white and) older than most of you and we (my generation) weren’t seeing/hearing the race of the artist in songs/music as teenagers in the 70’s. For example if I heard the Supremes were going to be on a varsity show, you can bet I stayed up to watch it! . Sadly, if anything I think we’ve gone backwards in the United States, but that is a whole other ‘red’ hot topic. ~DD55
MTV was on thin ice financially and in danger of elimination for its first 3 years. 1984 was when the network finally pulled out of the red and turned a profit. I'm sure the higher ups ate their words and choked on them when they started experiencing success in '83 and '84, two years where the most popular artists on the planet were black men. | |
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yup.
. As far as race and integration goes, MTV is just a footnote, was then and is now. The real issue right now is how (in the United States) we’re taking steps backwards. We (my generation) fought for equal rights, voting rights, ending the Viet Nam war and now years later we are seeing the ‘right’ trample all over voting rights and are chipping away at the law little by little thereby with the ultimate goal of denying people their right to vote. . There is an atmosphere of the rich driving a divide and conquer agenda, and until we realize we must unite and work together we (as a country) can’t grow. . In 1968, I had hope…. In 2018, I’m just scared of what the future will bring for everyone. Sorry to go a bit off topic …. Didn’t really mean to turn this into a political discussion, but at the end of the day it is a political discussion. . … my opinion only! Kind regards & Peace, ~DD55
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it's all good. speak your mind. [Edited 3/28/18 20:23pm] | |
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On the flip side, MTV's hesitation created an opening for BET to develop its own audience as a platform for black artists' videos. Good night, sweet Prince | 7 June 1958 - 21 April 2016
Props will be withheld until the showing and proving has commenced. -- Aaron McGruder | |
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BET wasn't music only though. I remember they weren't on the entire day at first. BET would show infomercails in the morning, and their programming came on in the afternoon and went off at night. There was another channel where people paid to request a video. I think it was called Video Jukebox. A few years later MTV created VH-1 to show adult contemporary and country crossover music videos. That's where you would see Kenny G, Charlene, and other acts that weren't shown on the main MTV channel You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton | |
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Good night, sweet Prince | 7 June 1958 - 21 April 2016
Props will be withheld until the showing and proving has commenced. -- Aaron McGruder | |
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Video Soul & Video Vibrations would show videos by white acts too. I remember them showing Get Nekked by Rick Dees and Black Cars by Gino Vannelli. I never saw them on MTV. Soul Train had a lot of pop music in the mid 1980s like Don Henley & Huey Lewis. I think Don Cornelius was trying to get a crossover audience at the time, kinda like Dick Clark attempted to get Don's audience with Soul Unlimited in the 1970s. Don did not understand why rap was becoming popular. Kurtis Blow gave an interview a few years ago and talked about appearing on Soul Train the first time. A few early rappers have said they toured with funk and R&B performers and some of them did not understand rap either and would cut the sound off or something when they were the opening act. Ironically, white acts like Blondie accepted hip hop before some black artists did. Wham! first singles were rap songs (Young Guns, Wham! Rap) and there was Queen Of The Rapping Scene by Modern Romance. You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton | |
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Why does VH1 always get overlooked in these discussions as if they were the only music channel that existed Straight Jacket Funk Affair
Album plays and love for vinyl records. | |
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MTV and VH-1 was started & ran by the same company. In the beginning VH-1 was the channel that showed Air Supply videos and other light rock and AC hits. You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton | |
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Other than maybe a song or two by LL and Salt & Pepa, Hip-Hop was not being played on radio much at all, until the late 80s. During the height of their careers, I never heard Run DMC on any black stations, let alone Pop stations. "It's not nice to fuck with K.B.! All you haters will see!" - Kitbradley
"The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing." - Socrates | |
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Good night, sweet Prince | 7 June 1958 - 21 April 2016
Props will be withheld until the showing and proving has commenced. -- Aaron McGruder | |
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You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton | |
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You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton | |
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Maybe that's the case where you live, but I heard a lot of rap on the radio, even comedy stuff like Bobby Jimmy & The Critters, President's Rap by Rich Little, Ya Mama by Wuf Ticket, and Rappin Duke by Shawn Brown. Acts like Whodini, Run DMC, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5, Kurtis Blow, Fat Boys, Sugarhill Gang, etc. were popular on R&B radio. They'd play the full versions of Jimmy Spicer's Super Rhymes and Rapper's Delight. Local pop radio would play Run DMC mainly starting with the Raising Hell album. Top 40 played Wipe Out by the Fat Boys & Beach Boys so heavily that I got tired of it. There was a lot of breakdance tunes as well like Street Dance, Rockit, There's No Stoppin' Us (another one I got tired of hearing at the time), Egyptian Lover, etc. A popular tune was Play That Beat by Whiz-Kid. Maybe some of these were local hits but they did get a lot of airplay here. There was even a special version of Five Minutes Of Funk by Whodini that had an extra verse that mentioned the DJs on the local R&B station that the station used to play. That also happened with Request Line by Rock Master Scott. I remember kids at school would sing We Want Some P-- by 2 Live Crew. I didn't even know that was a real song until months later I heard someone with a boombox was playing it in front of a store. Obviously that one never got radio airplay. Then that Roxanne Roxanne song blew up and it was like 200 answer songs to that one. You can take a black guy to Nashville from right out of the cotton fields with bib overalls, and they will call him R&B. You can take a white guy in a pin-stripe suit who’s never seen a cotton field, and they will call him country. ~ O. B. McClinton | |
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I remember that he called them out! Keep Calm & Listen To Prince | |
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Good night, sweet Prince | 7 June 1958 - 21 April 2016
Props will be withheld until the showing and proving has commenced. -- Aaron McGruder | |
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In 1982, the only R&B album that went platinum was the Gap Band's IV album and Thriller going #1 in February '83 was a big deal as it was the first album by a black artist to go #1 in 3 years.
That also tells you how segregated things had gotten after the disco backlash
Prince and Lionel pushed things further in late '83 and '84 with 1999, Purple Rain, and Can't Slow Down
[Edited 4/6/18 15:33pm] "We may deify or demonize them but not ignore them. And we call them genius, because they are the people who change the world." | |
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