120 Minutes later

Obviously, being in the UK our flavour of 120 Minutes was Paul King presenting Chapterhouse videos until someone made it stop - two hours of sitting on a sofa in a shared house saying "do you reckon he ever got the paint off those shoes?" (Actually, nobody had MTV in those days, and the programmes circulated on fuzzy VHS tapes, sourced from richer friends' parents' homes.)

In America, where the alternative music pickings in the mainstream were a bit thinner, 120 Minutes was treated with a bit more respect. But surely it was of its time? Bringing it back now feels a bit like that horrible mid-70s revival of Ready Steady Go.

Bob Mould - while happily acknowledging that the original was pivotal - isn't exactly welcoming it back with open arms:

“The show really invested in careers,” notes Mould. “The 1990s may have been the last time you see that investment. 120 Minutes elevated new artists and framed them as career musicians. But even now, my attention span is shorter. It’s a whole different game.”

The original 120 Minutes could coast quite a bit - with very few places you could see, say, Husker Du, it was simply enough to stick them on the telly. That won't work any more, because Mould and Hart dance to my demand if I type in that little box up there to the right of the screen. MTV2 going to need something unique, and surprising. For all those 120 Minutes. And hope the kids want their grandad's alternative.

Other music blogs are available

I don't think we've ever linked through to a Tumblr blog before, so it's a double delight to point at 120 Minutes, a simple blog which collects videos of the sort MTV's 120 Minutes used to play. The US version, we guess, rather than the UK version, which always suffered from having its finely-chosen musical content introduced by Paul "I'm talkin about the woah-oh-oh-oh" King. Until he left and was replaced by Miles "by this time rhyming slang" Hunt.