The place for great and not-so-great nearly forgotten videos from the decade of Miami Vice, mullets, and acid wash jeans. All praise to the bands, YouTube, and the original posters of these videos.
It was 40 years ago today ... (to commandeer a phrase).
Just after midnight on August 1, 1981, the world's first 24 hour video music channel launched. At the time, only a few cable systems in New Jersey had MTV, though this quickly changed -- primarily due to consumer pressure driven by the "I Want My MTV" ad campaign:
MTV quickly became a sensation, and those of us who lived through the music revolution will never forget it. In fact, we started our little blog 10 years ago (August 2011), after being inspired by the hoopla around the 30th anniversary of MTV.
Below is the first two hours of MTV, including commercials. We hope that you dig it.
While Jim Capaldi is not a household name (even here on ERV), he was an interesting and important figure in rock, especially during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Capaldi was born in Evesham, Worcestershire (this isn't important, but we liked it anyhow) and became involved in the lively London music scene during the 1960s. He eventually started jamming with Steve Winwood, Dave Mason, and Chris Wood and they formed the influential rock/jazz band Traffic in 1967.
One of our favorite facts about Traffic concerns the way they wrote their songs. Capaldi would write lyrics first and then Winwood would compose music that suited Capaldi's lyrics.
After Traffic broke up (for the second time in 1974), Capaldi married a Brazilian woman (Aninha Campos) and raised a family in Brazil, where he became interested in environmental and social issues (and Samba). Although Capaldi remained active in the industry, his only real solo success came from his 1983 Fierce Heart LP. That album hit #91 on the charts and generated two charting singles - "That's Love" (#28) and "Living on the Edge" (#75). In typical ERV form, we are opting for the lower charting song, primarily because we like it better. Additionally, it has a pretty far out there video with birds, motorcycles, and what appears to be some sort of Native American ceremony.
[Note that the MTV has the wrong album title on their credits - Rock Art and the X-Ray Style is a 1999 album by Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros.]
Split Enz (the NZ is a reference to New Zealand, where the band originated) formed in 1973 in Auckland. The founders - Tim Finn and Phil Judd - wanted to create an eclectic pop band; hence the name (which was originally spelled correctly).
During the 1970s, the group went through a myriad of changes, both in terms of style and personnel. The most significant change was Judd's departure; he was replaced by Tim Finn's brother Neil in 1977. During much of this period, Split Enz was a flamboyant art rock band, but they had little success outside of New Zealand and Australia.
This changed with their 1980 release, True Colours, which was something of a coming out party for Neil as a songwriter. The resulting material had a stronger pop sound, and this combined with more straight-forward visuals allowed Split Enz to ride the New Wave (see what we did there?)
True Colours became a #1 album in Australia and New Zealand, and broke into the charts in the U.S. "I Got You" also charted, though it only reached #53 on the U.S. charts. However, it was top 40 in several countries, and hit #1 in Australia and New Zealand.
While the group continued releasing records for the first half of the 1980s, there seemed to be a growing musical disconnect between Tim and Neil, and Tim Finn finally quit the group in 1984. Shortly afterwards, Neil broke up Split Enz and went on to even greater success in Crowded House. The Finn brothers did work together on Crowded House's 1991 LP, Woodface, and more recently as The Finn Brothers.
Cool trivia fact: As mentioned above, Split Enz is a no hit wonder in the U.S.; "I Got You" (#53) was their highest charting single. However, Neil Finn did have two top 40 hits with Crowded House - "Don't Dream It's Over" (#2) and "Something So Strong" (#7).
Cool trivia fact #2: "I Got You" was the 81st video played on MTV's first day; interestingly, it was the third Split Enz video played on MTV, after "History Never Repeats" and "One Step Ahead."
Casual music fans may view Poco as an answer to the trivia question: What group did The Eagles raid for their bass players? In truth, Poco was a pioneering country rock band who flirted with crossover success twice, but never quite broke through.
Poco was formed in 1968 from the ashes of Buffalo Springfield, when Richie Furay and Jim Messina started the group. Rusty Young, Randy Meisner, and George Grantham rounded out the original lineup. Although their country rock sound was considered groundbreaking, the group had only modest success for much of the 70s. The act was also probably hurt by their significant turnover; by 1978 only Rusty Young remained from the original lineup.
Poco's first potential breakout came with the release of their Legend LP in 1978. The album went gold and generated two top 40 hits - "Crazy Love" (#17) and "Heart of the Night" (#20). Sadly, the group was unable to follow up that success and saw declining record sales in the 1980s. By the mid-80s, Poco had lost its recording contract and things looked bleak.
However, Poco caught its second big break when Richard Marx went to bat for the band, and had his manager (Allen Kovac) take them on as a client. This led to a reforming of the original lineup, a new recording contract, and a new album, 1989's Legacy. Surprisingly, this album was a hit, also going gold (and also with two top 40 hits - "Call It Love" (#18) and "Nothin' to Hide" (#39)). And once again, Poco was unable to capitalize on this success, although they remained a working band through 2013 (and sporadically since then).
Cool trivia fact: "Call It Love" was directed by Michael Bay (Transformers, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon) in one of his first directing jobs.
