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(New to the countdown? Catch up here.) The commercial break kicks off with a time-lapse video. A shadow of the MTV logo glides across a wall. As it moves, black-clad graffiti artists paint the shadow on the wall, resulting in a mural of overlapping MTV logos. It’s a well-conceived, attention-grabbing ten-second spot. Next up: another […]
posted 10 May 2011 in 1988. no comments yet
(New to the countdown? Catch up here.) The commercial break begins with the promo for “The Year in Rock 88.” The people deemed newsworthy enough to get a quick video clip of them flashed in this spot: Chuck D. (in a Pittsburgh Pirates cap), Tracy Chapman (looking dour), Keith Richards (with cigarette), Billy Joel (playing […]
posted 22 October 2010 in 1988. 5 comments
Once again, we visit the Duke. For the fifth time, we see the hourly promo spot for the “Big Bang ’89” broadcast. Lots of quick video clips: Robert Plant points to the sky. Bret Michaels flails his arms around. Kip Winger bashes out a chord. Larry Blackmon rocks the codpiece. Daryl Hall grabs a handful […]
posted 10 June 2010 in 1988. 4 comments
We kick off with an MTV promo, repeating from about three hours ago, for their show Now Hear This: MTV’s Guide to New Music. “On this week’s special year-end wrap-up,” Adam Curry says in voiceover as we see the members of R.E.M. doing their “Stand” jumps, “we’ll take a look back at world premieres, the […]
posted 17 March 2010 in 1988. no comments yet
In case you’re just joining us: I found some old videotapes of MTV’s year-end countdown of their top 100 videos. From 1988. Naturally, I’m working my way through the tapes, writing about each video (and commercial break). It’s taking longer than originally planned, but I march onward, fueled by the power of mullets and Kevin […]
posted 6 January 2010 in 1988. 4 comments
(New to the countdown? Catch up here.) We head to a commercial break with a fifteen-second MTV bumper: lots of revved-up stock footage from the early twentieth century, superimposed over what appears to be flickering pages from textbooks. There’s a director with a megaphone, an old gramophone, men in hats operating film cameras, an orchestra […]
posted 2 December 2009 in 1988. no comments yet
I suspect you’re not keeping up with comments on posts from a year and a half ago, but let me share a recent one that was interesting: responding to my rundown of commercial break #4 in the MTV 1988 countdown, “CheezNapkin” informs us that the great animated spot featuring a scientist getting the MTV logo […]
Time to visit the Duke. MTV replays their promo for “Michael Jackson Sunday”; as you might expect, it plays very differently now than it did a few months ago. “He’s been bad,” says the MTV Voiceover Guy. (A clip from “Bad” plays.) “He’s been smooth.” (A “Smooth Criminal” clip.) “Now he takes his own image […]
posted 24 September 2009 in 1988. 4 comments
(If you’re new to the countdown, you can click here to catch up.) We kick off this commercial break with the spot for MTV’s “Big Bang ’89” broadcast that we’ve seen three times before. A lot of big hair among the featured acts: Poison, Winger, Daryl Hall, Escape Club, Vixen. But even at age 40, […]
Last year, while sorting through some mildewed videotapes in my garage, I discovered three VHS tapes that contained the complete year-end countdown of MTV’s top 100 videos of 1988, unwatched by me since they were broadcast over the last ten hours of that year. Since then, I’ve been working my way through the tapes, and […]
posted 29 April 2009 in 1988. 4 comments
