Download of the Month
October 31, 2022
Gotta Get a Video on MTV
©1983 by Jim Stringer
The Early MTV Age
From 1974 to 1985, I worked for a Lawrence, KS based motion picture producer, Centron Films. Centron was primarily in the businness of industrial, and educational films.
Around the early 80s, as video tape was taking over from 16mm film, which had been the forte of Centron, management was looking for new business avenues. I'd been keeping close tabs on the budding music video business, and Centron was well equipped to do this kind of production.
After finagaling the funding to create a demo reel featuring local faves, Kelley Hunt and the Kinetics, I also came up with a promotional concept that involved a cartoon, created by famed Mad Magazine cartoonist, Paul Coker, the video reel, and a song that I composed a recorded, called "Gotta Get a Video on MTV". I made about 50 copies of the cassette and the cartoon, and sent them to key record company people. I then made appointments and spent a couple of weeks knocking on the doors of (figuratively... really, making appointments with) these people. My success rate was not something to brag about, though I did round up some interest.
Believe it or not, two of the key personnel with early MTV were actually from Lawrence KS, and I used this connection to get a copy of the Kinetics video to Basement Tapes. In addition, a copy of the promo song made its way to the Music News writing staff. Each Video DJ would recite this "news" about once an hour. This is a link to one of those segments, in this case, VeeJay J.J Jackson, recorded for posterity on YouTube. The part with Jackson discussing my song begins at about 0:39sec and continues for about a minute or so.
Contributing Musicians
- Jim Stringer - all instruments and voices
Recorded in 1983
at The Music Room in Lawrence KS, USA
