Tag Archives: youtubery

Pointless Nostalgia: The Pixies on 120 Minutes, 1991

As I eluded to last week, when I found the bounty of Steampipe Alley tapes, I was looking for something else. That something else was an episode of MTV’s 120 Minutes from 1991 that featured an episode-long appearance by The Pixies, mere months before they broke up.

When this show aired, I did not actually have cable in my house. But my grandparents, who lived next door, did. So I would monopolize their VCR in the wee hours, taping either Mystery Science Theater 3000 or 120 Minutes. Despite being an MTV product, 120 Minutes was a pretty decent window into the amorphous world of “alternative” music back then, and also the only way that I could hear about new-ish stuff in the pre-internet days, since I lived nowhere near a cool records store.

This particular episode is an odd time capsule piece, because it comes from one of those in between periods of music. The indie music scene that launched The Pixies was largely dead. The Nirvana phenomenon had yet to begin, although it was just about to (the video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” aired during this episode, and had just debuted a few weeks previous). So in most cases, alternative = British. By my rough estimate, 75 percent of all the videos that air in this episode come from English bands, most of them being shoegazer types like Ride, Curve, Lush, etc.

But my main reason in presenting these clips to you is not to highlight this very brief era. I’ve digitized them because they’re some of the most uncomfortable video you’ll ever see.

For one thing, The Pixies were already well immersed in the tensions that would doom the band. But rather than exercise that misery on each other, they aim it squarely at the show’s host, Dave Kendall. The poor man has to dig and scrape to get the most mundane answers out of them.

This first clip is benign enough. The band is introduced, and Frank Black talks briefly about the inspiration behind the “Here Come Your Man” video. But the fact that he’s wearing a panama hat and sunglasses for this interview should have thrown up some huge red flags. As should have Joey Santiago’s weird fuzzy hat.


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Pointless Nostalgia Bonus: Ads! Ads! Ads!

One fringe benefit of discovering the Steampipe Alley tapes (other than being able to expose the world to the genius of Mario Cantone): they were also full of some “classic” ads from yesteryear. Anyone who reads this site with any regularity will know that I have a thing for old commercials. Because I think commercials say a lot more about their respective eras than other media do. After all, art wants to be timeless, but ads are aimed at The Now.

These ads are even more special to me. Why? Because they ran on WWOR, an independent station. So the spots are a little cheaper and a little more home grown.

I realize that many of the ads you’ll see below only resonate with me because I remember them from being a kid. I’ll cop to that. Because if you can’t indulge yourself once in a while, you can you indulge, really?

For instance, this spot for Young People’s Day Camp. This ad ran, virtually unchanged, for my entire childhood. The narration, music, and footage stayed the same for at least ten years. I imagine their PR/marketing department was run by one tyrannical, crusty, cigar-chomping veteran who refused to acknowledge that times change. “Look, the ad worked in 1979, it’ll work in 1995. Why shouldn’t it?!”


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YouTubery Friday: Bad Video Game Dialogue, Dock Ellis, and The Minutemen

It’s Friday! Procrastinate and count down to happy hour with these lovely bits!

Over at the FOT forum, Stupornaut posted a link to this amazing collection of terrible dialogue from video games of the last 10 years or so. Most of them are terrible because of the dialogue itself–not too many Faulkners work in the video game industry–although there are clearly a few “actors” included here who should not have chosen voice over work for their vocation Particularly one man who did a voice for Mega Man, who sounds like he went to the Elmer Fudd School of Diction.

Earlier this year, former major league pitcher Dock Ellis passed away. His biggest claim to fame is the fact that he once threw a no-hitter while tripping balls on LSD. That feat has now been immortalized in animation form, thanks to the good people at No Mas. Even if you don’t like baseball or lysergic amusement, you will enjoy this video. Trust me.

Finally, just because, here’s The Minutemen performing “Little Man with a Gun in His Hand” (one of my favorite songs of all time) at the 9:30 Club in DC, circa 1984. D. Boon, gone way too soon.