Must-See-TV: The Eighties
Published on November 29th, 2008 in: Issues, Movies, Music, Retrovirus, TV, Underground/Cult |“Welcome To Night Flight”
USA Network’s Night Flight began with those words in the wee hours of the weekends. Where it would go from there was anyone’s guess. Night Flight broke all the rules of television. They played music videos by the likes of Bauhaus, The Residents, Frank Zappa, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Ramones, and lots of Devo. Even the uncensored club version of Duran Duran’s “Girls on Film” (with its ice cubes on women’s nipples) was shown. Occasionally certain directors were featured; were it not for Night Flight, the name of Art of Noise’s “Close To The Edit” video director Zbigniew Rybczynski wouldn’t be taking up space in my brain.
Episodes might also feature music-based movies that were otherwise unlikely to air on television like Urgh! A Music War, Hazel O’Connor’s Breaking Glass, Mike Nesmith’s Elephant Parts, The Clash’s Rude Boy, or the D.I.Y. punk documentary Another State of Mind. Two films in particular—Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains and Susan Seidelman’s Smithereens—gained a wider audience to be sure. And though it can’t be verified, I am almost certain Night Flight aired Get Crazy, featuring Malcolm McDowell, Lou Reed, and Lee Ving (Fear).
Sometimes musical acts, such as Kate Bush, were interviewed. Music videos were often played within a given evening’s theme. That practice, paired with the interviews and “New Wave Theater” (which featured bands from California), gave Night Flight a “show within a show” vibe. Since it was the Reagan era, many Reagan parodies made appearances in between longer pieces. Nuclear war was another recurring theme on Night Flight and eventually longer stretches of that material were aired in compilations and titled “Atomic T.V.” Movie bloopers, clips from old campy films, B-movie trailers, and avante garde short films and animation (such as the hot rod-riding nuclear hellcats Jac Mac and Rad Boy Go!) were show staples. Night Flight brought eclectic musical and visual artists together, creating not only a memorable show, but shaping the opinions, music collections, and memories of thousands of fans.
And it all happened in the eighties.
Additional Resources:
MV3 videos on YouTube from crashsite000 and drkmiller.
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4 Responses to “Must-See-TV: The Eighties”
December 19th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
This piece is actually making my chest hurt. I have acquired a bunch of this music now that I actually have money and connections, but some of it still eludes me… but some of these songs are so great. I was just listening to Heaven 17 this morning… Does it count as nostalgia if you never stopped loving it for a minute?
December 19th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
I totally feel you on that! As David Sylvian once crooned, “I’m drowning in my nostalgia.”
LLM
December 31st, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Hmm so you liked the piece or it gave you heart burn? SAid captain said WOT. 🙂
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:33 pm
[…] This type of thing is terribly unsettling, to be sure, and is something that we at Popshifter have addressed in our Manifesto. I’ve personally pondered the role of both the past and the future in our Editorials and how they inform our present. Based on our last issue (Retro Is So Retro) and in fact, much of the content of the site, one might accuse us of being like those same cynical folks described above, or at the very least, enslaved to nostalgia. As one of our writers noted in a comment, “Does it count as nostalgia if you never stopped loving it for a minute?” […]
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