MTV:

During Reagan's presidency something else began stirring in the mist. This thing was a television channel from the Viacom Corporation that would essentially change the world of music as we know it. The idea was simple and was basically a radio station that played videos instead of just the audio. Music videos are ads themselves, so the idea behind MTV initially was to show ads between commercials and sell music that way. MTV was completely original and revolutionized the way people absorbed and found new music. The videos were often elaborate and grand and showed the band members in space or something equally ridiculous. MTV quickly became the new hot spot on television. People could sit at home and watch their favorite musicians instead of listening to the radio hence that famous song video killed the radio star. A new era or music and more importantly music marketing had come to a head. MTV was able to reach kids sitting at home after school in that volatile time slot when only old people and kids are watching TV, 3pm-5pm. MTV quickly became the top of all that was cool, the pinnacle of the modern music industry. Anyone who was anyone was on MTV. 

MTV began to use this newfound control to dictate what was cool. MTV became the trendsetter’s generation X. They found all of the obscure, but marketable bands (Nirvana) and played their songs multiple times a day to give the little known band exposure. If viewers acted in a positive manner towards the band than they began signing the band up for things like the MTV Music Awards, and MTV Unplugged. Both of these marketing ventures are things Nirvana was wrangled into doing during their short career. Nirvana's performance on unplugged was released on video and cd/lp after Cobain's death but is regarded by many people as their greatest release of all time (Sandford 1995). This example shows that MTV was successful in their ventures. MTV essentially turned Nirvana into rock gods overnight and essentially opened the doors to a private life so as to allow all members of the media to enter, and this is what ultimately ended up killing Kurt Cobain, both metaphorically and literally.

MTV's control would rise through the 1990's and they would shift their program to fit what they felt the youth demographic sought. Today MTV is more pop culture television than music television, rarely airing music videos, and when they do they are just snippets. However MTV still remains extremely popular and is still considered a channel that sets and recognizes trends. Over the years MTV has proven to be authenticity's worst enemy. MTV has consistently found no-name bands, Nirvana, Fall Out Boy, Blink-182, and Third Eye Blind are all examples of bands that barely had careers before MTV. These bands are just a few of the plethora  that would not have careers if it were not for MTV. 

MTV's monopoly over the youth demographic during the 90's is essentially unprecedented. Kids were drawn to MTV like moths to a light. MTV was not just cool, it dictated cool. It took the power generated by charismatic authority away from the artist and channeled it through MTV's own means. This is something the radio was never able to do because it was one dimensional. MTV added a second dimension by adding video to the audio. Pavement and Nirvana would both become proteges for MTV, but only one would skyrocket to stardom. 

Gold Soundz….The Rise of Pavement

Rattled By The Rush/No More Kings….The End of Pavement + Mtv

Then came, Wowee Zowee and it all ended as quickly as it had started. Wowee Zowee was Pavements third studio album and is generally remembered as, the weird record. The songs are weirder but much more midpaced as a whole. It was the record the band members had wanted to make their whole careers. Pavement peaked in 1994 and peaked out in 1995, much to the dismay of record executives and much to the relief of the band. Jovanovic describes why Nirvana and not Pavement became popular. (Jovanovic 2004)

What record executives made of Wowee Zowee’s opening track, We Dance, is anybody’s guess. The slow, plodding guitar strumming was not exactly MTV friendly. Nor was it what they could have reasonably expected from a band earmarked as the inheritors of Nirvana’s crown. It is pretty highly stylized says Malkmus. I suppose people could get mad about that, Style is an empty thing to some people.

The album sounded much more polished, this is the first and most noticeable thing. It was miles away from the fuzz/grunge of Slanted and Enchanted. This transition had started one album previous but took full form during Wowee Zowee’s recording.

Malkmus chose “Rattled By The Rush” for the first single from the album, but it went nowhere, as did “Father to a Sister of Thought.” “I was smoking a lot of grass,” Malkmus shrugs, “they sounded like hits singles to me.” He used some of these songs to show off he ever improving guitar skills…

The spooky ninety-second ditty of Brinx Job continues the albums midpaced groove, nicely setting up for the pre Coldplay guitar chimes of Grounded. Things don’t really speed up until Serpentine Pad, where a shorted Malkmus vocal harks back to Slanted and Enchanted. By the time you were a  third of the way into the album listeners didn’t know where it was going or where it would end. Motion Suggests starts with a fairground styled intro and again settles into a comfortable mid-tempo strum with a nice keyboard current lying just under the surface.

Wowee Zowee would be looked at initially as a critical and commercial failure though almost every member of the band considers it their favorite Pavement record (Jovanovic 2004). Over the last ten years many fans have changed their tunes to reflect a similar sentiment as the album has sunk in. MTV lost all hope in the next Nirvana after Wowee Zowee's release. The small relationship that had developed between the band and MTV was severed.