Word: mtv
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...would be a corporatized simulacrum of the original festival. A '60s myth would be used to sucker the 16- to 30-year-old demographic. Woodstock '94 was seen as the ultimate musical sellout, the sort of thing that made Kurt Cobain leave this world riding on a shotgun blast. MTV, which televised some of the festival and launched a home-shopping show during it, ran an ad for its coverage with the slogan, "All you have to do to change the world is change the channel...
...outward from the back rooms of a few cities to the great plains of America's cultural space. Ideas and style statements that 40 years ago might have languished for a while in jazz clubs and coffeehouses now move in nanoseconds from the dance clubs and gangsta corners. Through MTV and the trendier magazines, and whatever other express routes the mass media command, they get passed over to mass-marketers who shear off the rough edges and ship them to the malls. So body piercing and ambient technomusic and performance art and couture motorcycle boots and the huggie drug Ecstasy...
...diverted quickly enough into the more market-friendly notion of new wave: here came the dance-beat torching of Blondie instead of the primal screeching of the Sex Pistols, red sneakers instead of the safety pin through the cheek. The ground was well prepared for the appearance of MTV in 1981, which ushered in the age of video rock stars, such as Duran Duran and Adam Ant, for whom the right look might outweigh all else. The perverse machinery that would simultaneously make hipness hard to avoid and harder to achieve was complete...
Some people are still trying their best to patrol the borders of hip, keeping out the pretenders. No sooner was Evan Dando, lead singer of the Lemonheads, identified by MTV as the next sensitive stud-muffin than some anti-fans started Die Evan Dando, Die, an anti-fan magazine. "I have nothing against teen idols. It's just that he was so publicist-ejaculated," says publisher-editor (and most other titles) Jeff Fox. "He was being forced down the throats of the American public as hip, and I couldn't take it anymore...
...buttons or cleavage or appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman chewing cigars and swearing to get attention, as Madonna did in April. Although their CDs have sold consistently well -- their self-titled debut album went platinum -- both Girls harbor acid feelings about the image-conscious video age. "MTV has hurt music in one sense because people now judge a song by more than just the song," says Ray. But, she concedes, "in the sense of having another art form around -- video -- MTV is probably a good thing. If only they would be more responsible and not just play...