48 min
Before there was MTV with Tarzan Dan Geeks & Beats
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- Technology
MTV is pushing 40?!? Tarzan Dan from YTV’s Hit List drops by Studio 3B to talk about those in music television who came before him, he and Alan swap tops on how to interview a rock star, and we find out how he reacted to landing in the pages of Canadian music history.
MTV airing The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” to launch the network was not the first music video ever broadcast. Nor was it the first music video ever made.
It was far from the first time music appeared on TV, that’s for sure.
But the two pop culture staples have often worked hand-in-hand for entertainment and cross-promotional purposes, a practice that dates back to at least the 1950s.
How old are music videos? What qualifies as the first music video is up for some debate.
For example, waaaaaaay back in 1894, a pair of sheet music publishers, Edward Marks and Joe Stern, hired an electrician named George Thomas, along with some musicians, to promote the sale of their new song, “The Little Lost Child.” Using a very early form of movies, a series of images set to live performed music was displayed and came to be known as the “illustrated song.” Does that make it the first video?
Jump ahead to the late 1920s, as the “talkies” started to take the world by storm, and Vitaphone started producing shorts with bands, singers and dancers. Max Fleischer, an animator, produced a series of short cartoons called “Screen Songs,” which were kind of like a precursor to karaoke, in that the audience was encouraged to sing along. By the 1930s, we have the legendary incorporation of opera music into Looney Tunes cartoons — Elmer Fudd as a viking, anyone? — followed soon thereafter by Walt Disney’s Fantasia, one of the most visually and artistically stunning creations of all time (think about how painstakingly it was produced and how incredibly imaginative it was at the time before arguing this point).
By the 1940s, we’re into the era of short films set to music, such as those from musician Louis Jordan, including a feature-length film called “Lookout Sister.” That’s been added to the LIbrary of Congress to be preserved for its historical significance.
Tony Bennett claims he created the first music video with 1956’s “Stranger in Paradise.” His label at the time filmed the crooner walking through London’s Hyde Park and added that song behind it. The video was sent to TV networks in the U.S. and UK and it played several times on American Bandstand.
About that Bandstand Two shows are inextricably tied to music and teenage culture in the United States: American Bandstand and the Ed Sullivan Show.
The so-called perpetual teenager, Dick Clark was the affable host who helped provide apple-cheeked youngsters a place to dance, wholesomely, to some of the country’s top pop bands. The show started on Philadelphia public TV in October 1952 and ran well into the 1980s, featuring a respectable variety of genres: doo-wop, teeny boppers, psychedielic rock, disco and hip-hop over the course of its 30 years. Clark took over for the show’s original host (after he was arrested for driving while intoxicated) and helped kickoff the career of Paul Anka, the first performer to make his debut on a nationally televised show.
A few months into Clark’s tenure, the show moved to Monday nights from 3:30 p.m. and expanded to a full hour, but the ratings tanked and they moved it back to the afternoon time slot, until it was eventually so popular and so important, it was moved to Saturdays.
From then on, anyone who was anyone played Bandstand: Sonny and Cher, Gladys Knight, Ike and Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder (just 12 at the time!), Aretha Franklin, The 5th Dimension, The Doors, Michael Jackson as a solo artist and as part of the Jackson 5, Little Richard, Paul Revere, Annette Funicello, even Talking Heads and Prince.
All good things must end, of course, and after refusing to cut back from a hour-long show to 30
MTV is pushing 40?!? Tarzan Dan from YTV’s Hit List drops by Studio 3B to talk about those in music television who came before him, he and Alan swap tops on how to interview a rock star, and we find out how he reacted to landing in the pages of Canadian music history.
MTV airing The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” to launch the network was not the first music video ever broadcast. Nor was it the first music video ever made.
It was far from the first time music appeared on TV, that’s for sure.
But the two pop culture staples have often worked hand-in-hand for entertainment and cross-promotional purposes, a practice that dates back to at least the 1950s.
How old are music videos? What qualifies as the first music video is up for some debate.
For example, waaaaaaay back in 1894, a pair of sheet music publishers, Edward Marks and Joe Stern, hired an electrician named George Thomas, along with some musicians, to promote the sale of their new song, “The Little Lost Child.” Using a very early form of movies, a series of images set to live performed music was displayed and came to be known as the “illustrated song.” Does that make it the first video?
Jump ahead to the late 1920s, as the “talkies” started to take the world by storm, and Vitaphone started producing shorts with bands, singers and dancers. Max Fleischer, an animator, produced a series of short cartoons called “Screen Songs,” which were kind of like a precursor to karaoke, in that the audience was encouraged to sing along. By the 1930s, we have the legendary incorporation of opera music into Looney Tunes cartoons — Elmer Fudd as a viking, anyone? — followed soon thereafter by Walt Disney’s Fantasia, one of the most visually and artistically stunning creations of all time (think about how painstakingly it was produced and how incredibly imaginative it was at the time before arguing this point).
By the 1940s, we’re into the era of short films set to music, such as those from musician Louis Jordan, including a feature-length film called “Lookout Sister.” That’s been added to the LIbrary of Congress to be preserved for its historical significance.
Tony Bennett claims he created the first music video with 1956’s “Stranger in Paradise.” His label at the time filmed the crooner walking through London’s Hyde Park and added that song behind it. The video was sent to TV networks in the U.S. and UK and it played several times on American Bandstand.
About that Bandstand Two shows are inextricably tied to music and teenage culture in the United States: American Bandstand and the Ed Sullivan Show.
The so-called perpetual teenager, Dick Clark was the affable host who helped provide apple-cheeked youngsters a place to dance, wholesomely, to some of the country’s top pop bands. The show started on Philadelphia public TV in October 1952 and ran well into the 1980s, featuring a respectable variety of genres: doo-wop, teeny boppers, psychedielic rock, disco and hip-hop over the course of its 30 years. Clark took over for the show’s original host (after he was arrested for driving while intoxicated) and helped kickoff the career of Paul Anka, the first performer to make his debut on a nationally televised show.
A few months into Clark’s tenure, the show moved to Monday nights from 3:30 p.m. and expanded to a full hour, but the ratings tanked and they moved it back to the afternoon time slot, until it was eventually so popular and so important, it was moved to Saturdays.
From then on, anyone who was anyone played Bandstand: Sonny and Cher, Gladys Knight, Ike and Tina Turner, Stevie Wonder (just 12 at the time!), Aretha Franklin, The 5th Dimension, The Doors, Michael Jackson as a solo artist and as part of the Jackson 5, Little Richard, Paul Revere, Annette Funicello, even Talking Heads and Prince.
All good things must end, of course, and after refusing to cut back from a hour-long show to 30
48 min