Friday, January 18, 2013

Radio With Pictures

Back in the days before MTV (and by MTV I mean the one that played music videos, not episodes of "Teen Mom"), I spent my formative teen years watching a show called Radio With Pictures. This show was no Top Of The Pops. RWP beamed into my living room every Sunday night and kept me glued to the tube with post punk, new wave, metal, avant garde,  homegrown Kiwi tunes and more. To see my heroes sing on screen and see their faces, fashion, their attitude all at once was inspiring.

I know this all sounds strange in our modern multi-channel youtube internet-enabled lives but back then if it wasn't Radio With Pictures it was just plain radio. Come to mention it, I can still recall when radio meant AM, no FM. Now those were dark days...

So, back to the present. We all now accept that the visual goes hand in hand with the audible. Some would argue that the visual contributes more. I watch quite a lot of of the music channel '63'. I love it. If it weren't for '63' for me and 'Living' channel for my wife we'd cancel our subscription. The point I'm trying to make is I see loads of music videos and as I age, I am attracted still, if not more, by the visual package that accompanies the music.

The best example I can think of recently is the song "A Long Time" by Mayer Hawthorne. It's a 70's funk filled dance track with the whole video simply filled with people dancing on "The New Dance Show", a low budget TV dance show based in Detroit in the late 80s. Check it out here, it makes me smile every time.




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