no wish for you, gordon!

i did a bit recently about mtv returning to it’s former glory…

…but i guess that depends on when you referred to it as “glorious” in your world.

so far i’ve seen very little music. there’s some musicish programming, like LOTS of live shows and music-themed movies like howard stern’s private parts. but actual MUSIC? not so much. some of the 1990’s shows like beavis & butthead and daria are back, which is cool.

but actual videos? well…not so much.

the ads running up to this “conversion” didn’t promise music per say, they just said it was becoming mtv classic. and while they DID show butthead and daria and such during the ads, they also showed bowie, the police, and other 80’s icons that built the network saying, “i want my mtv”!. as in THEIR mtv. OUR mtv. the one where the “m” stood for “music” not “moms who are teens” or “mondo gelled orange jerseyites” or “more internet videos to giggle at with rob and ms. west coast”.

but apparently it was not to be. it’s been a week since their switch, and just randomly checking it has yielded no videos as of yet.

that being said, the one show i watched on vh1 classic has made it’s way over to the mtv version AND improved – 120 minutes. back in the day it was alternative music at it’s finest, and the vh1 version seemed a bit more vh1-ish. LOTS of live pearl jam (one guaranteed every hour of programming) and a LOT of repeats. enough to where i would fast forward through most of of what my dvr had nailed down, and while the show was broken off into hour chunks they did play two of them back to back every sunday, monday, thursday and friday from 2am-4am. now it just airs on sunday, like it did back when i watched it at john mark’s every week, but the appear to be focusing on quality not quantity. it was only two hours this week, then repeated (and here i thought i still got four hours out of ’em!) but it was a quality two hours with plenty of off bands (gumball, ned’s atomic dustbin) with some college radio faves (darling buds, matthew sweet) and some shit radio played (love & rockets, alice in chains) all combined together…the way it used to be. with new theme music and graphics.

not bad – at least my little chunk of the network improved. now somebody explain to me what revenge of the nerds and sixteen candles is doing on there…