120 Minutes: A Decade on The Edge Special
 

Remember when MTV used to be cool and you could actually find good bands on the station? When the term alternative was just another term to market a band? I dont cause i was only 7 in 1992 but its still fun to look back and see some of my fav bands get airplay.

Enjoy the special (Thurston is a talking head throughout) and reminisce about favorite alternative mtv moments


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx8Wkhb3SXY

thank you.

cooo, I never got to see this.

I went to University of Houston in 1991, and stopped watching able television, no access.

wow. I discovered SY on 120 MINUTES!

120 minutes is ultraoverrated, you had to wait for hours to see a decent band.

it fucking ruled!!!!!!!!!!!!

Same here! Actually I found out about most of my favorite "alternative" bands on 120 minutes. I watched circa 88-92. You had to wade through a lot of shit, though, a lot of wanker bands, but it was worth it. You could count on about 15-20 minutes of the show to be really revelatory, in terms of showing you bands you might not hear about otherwise.

Sweet.

no other show played replacements, skinny puppy, sonic youth, Pixies, Siouxsie, etc.

to call it over-rated is ridiculous.

So's your face.

hahahahahaha

i love people who are so passionate about mtv.

Uh. Yeah. Passionate. Sure.

i just insulted my chemical romance or something.

"jarrrrred leto is teh vest!!!! fukkk u!!!"

passinate about MTV? Nope, just passionate about a 2 hour show, on at 11:00PM on sunday nights, extending to 1:00 AM Monday morning, a shit time slot, and I would tape it (ahhh, video tape) and watch it all week long until the next one ame on, and OH THOSE summer vacations, when I could stay up and watch it personally, all alone, my mom/dad, and brother having long since gone to bed, stayi ng up late recording individual videos on VHS and then showing them to my friends when they would come over, seeing TEENAGE RIOT, Shadow of a DOUBT, Kool Thing, so many fucking great videos, seen NOWHERE else on MTV/night flight/friday night videos, etc.

you had to be there.

Of course, 120 minutes is overrated, but to me it represented a time when you could actually watch the channel and see quality television. Besides actually showing music videos (which, compared to today's videos, were actually pretty awesome; I'd rather watch Alanis Morrissette or Superdrag or whatever other bullshit than anything they play today... if they play anything today...), they had great shows like the State, Buzzkill, The Head, The Maxx, Beavis N Butthead, etc...

Way to act 14. Oh, wait. Are you 14?

who is jared leto? was he "anakin skywalker" in the star wars movies?

some idiot who gets killed in american psycho.

and another idiot who gets beaten till hes ugly in fight club

AHHH! I looked him up. he is the ass-smear in that shit TV show My So Called Life! too funny

and hes the singer of a band called "we are sounding like shit"

says the moron who said my face was overrated because i insulted his favorite mtv show that wasn't a reality show.

go start your 600th thread about how to stack your sonic youth cds, twat.

the thing i like about the internet is that it makes even the most obscure music being made today accessable to anyone who is prepared to put in the time to look for it, and people can find music this way from the comfort of their own home no less, but it confounds me that even with such levels of ease and convinience at their finger tips other people are content to remain ignorant & reminisce about some 2 hour long tv show they watched 15 years ago of which maybe 5 minutes were actually any good.

i think it's a nostalgia factor if anything else, like this one clips when they interviewed Ben Lee then of Noise Addict shopping for albums and holding up a Skullflower album on MTV, or that clip of Thurston when he hosted 120 minutes and he highlights Hanatarash and their mere existence, it's taken for granted now with the access of the internet but to have someone say they even exist back then was kinda amazing, makes you wonder who ever gave MTV that much leeway at all nd make look like it was a network that actually had taste (which not relly but had taste in those who HAD taste)

Looking back in 2008 then 120 Minutes definitely seems overrated, but back in the days before internet it was one of the few platforms showing underground music, even if it was only 5-10 minutes out of 2 hours. I watched it in my early teens and used to enjoy it a lot, but the more "alternative" moved to mainstream, the more 120 Minutes did as well and at the end they were only showing stuff like Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stone Temple Pilots and other millionaires of alternative rock.

But yeah, Masonna was on 120 Minutes.

Daniel Johnston was on mtv in 1985...... that must say something about how the thing has changed

why do people even talk about mtv seeing as 99% of the music they play has nothing to with anything anyone likes?


nostalgia can go and fuck itself.

I know I'll get blasted for this for one reason or another but what the hell...

Making music so widely accessible is almost a turn-off for me. There's no mystique, no feeling of discovery, no specialness. When the neighbor flying his rebel flag next door can learn about and download the same music I can, what makes my pursuit unique? Back in the day when you had to rely on 120 minutes and underground music rags to keep informed, you "discovered" bands, you fell in love with an album nobody else had heard of, and you went on a campaign to enlighten your friends.

It's too easy these days. Sorry.

any idiot can watch mtv, what makes you so special for watching 120 mins?

i'm not bitching, i'm trying to stop people from being stupid, and failing

the lst time i saw 120 minutes it had a cool animal collective vid on it, 3 bands that tried to sound like interpol. 3 terrible ambient acts. 4 clones of razorshite. 17 thom yorkes. 76 alienated emo kids trying to be happy because thats whats in, a future of the left video, 4 djs trying to be rockin. 17 chemical brothers 34 real annoying mtv stings (you know the ones..buzzz, crackle, stupid sample of crap), 2 american college rawk bands, 5 metal bands because they are diverse, 8 real cute girls who cant sing but fuck it thats ok, just keep your mouth shut when appropiate missus! and 1 my bloody valentine video, but fuck them cuz they are shit and stuff...


it was a great programme and now its just plain awful!

What's really hilarious to me is that I figured saying "your face is over rated" was an obvious joking around. You're the one who seems to take this whole MTV thing seriously. But whatever. Now I know not to joke around with you. Lesson learned.

They had 120 minutes a few years ago, then they cut it in half and called it subterranean, then it disappeared completely. Towards the end, they would only play maybe a few good videos per episode, so I guess it didn't matter too much.

^^^same story with a german independent format, which was really really undergroundish on a not-so-big music television channel. it was called fast forward, they cutted their airing time until they let it disappear completely, but it was funny cause the crew made jokes out of it the last shows and played the whole show upside down, or 10 minutes white noise with pictures of the pope or something

on david wain's facebook is a picture of the cast of the state in its heyday and i was sat for a minute wondering why this show never had a bigger audience. or why some of them have faded into obscurity.

just adding this.

thanks for the link! subterranean sometimes has good things, when they don't rerun the same videos over and over. i've found some bands through it. i just miss when they had a host and actually interviewed, instead of doing the talking head segments. jim shearer came off as just a big fan boy getting to talk to artists he admired and it was fun to watch.

Well, back in the day, it required 1) knowing about it; 2) the willingness to stay up to 1 in the morning when the next day was a work Monday and you're married with two little kids, to watch the whole damned thing.

I never said I wasn't an idiot or I wasn't stupid. I guess if watching 120 minutes once upon a time makes me stupid, call me stupid. At least I'm not an overbearing, close-minded asshole.

Well if that was ironic you should know that irony doesn't necessarily come across well in written form (as irony is usually conveyed by the tone of voice)...

Let's all chill out and have sex.

Like bonobos ? :D

I don't know why but the reputation system here makes me think about bonobos actually...