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Now that I am unemployed, I have all day to thumb around MTV’s excellent video archive, which hosts 16,000 videos and should really replace YouTube as the go-to video source for videos but is achingly underutilized. (I was the second view on this vintage video of Faith No More doing the Mosely-era non-hit “The Crab Song.”) I soon found myself just entering videos I vaguely remembered as blowing my mind for how noisy, disgusting, scuzzy, blown-out and awful they were in comparison to the Everclear songs they were sandwiched next to on 120 Minutes. So what was the noisiest song to ever get MTV airplay?
• Maybe it was Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Dang” from 1994’s Orange? An Ed Wood nightmare video directed by Steve Hanft accompanies an in-the-red hyper-distorted pigfuckathon straight out of Jon’s Pussy Galore days.
• Maybe it was Deluxx Folk Implosion’s “Daddy Never Understood,” a Harry Pussy-styled squeak-n-squeal off the Kids soundtrack. Neither MTV or YouTube have the video for this 90-second monstrosity, so you have to just take my word for it that I saw this video in 1995.
• What about Six Finger Satellite, the squonky, synthy band that would spawn Landed, Men’s Recovery Project and the Olenyville Soundsystem? MTV gave them a little love in 1995.
• And let’s not forget our pals No Age, whose “Eraser” was played approximately once on FNMTV last year.
Anyway, your memory is probably better than mine. Do you guys remember anything noisier? Maura tells me Buzznet has been kind enough to provide a comment box for you to tell me. Ain’t that nice?
Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band’s “Ice Cream for Crow”–or did they reject that? I can’t remember.
I can tell you that VH1 played an Ornette Coleman and Prime Time video on one of their short-lived jazz programs hosted by Ben Sidran, this a few years after it ditched the MOR programming but a few years before it went pop-snark. I’m at work, so I can’t sleuth out which one it was. It was the one with New York City skyline all warped by Video Toaster effects, and was easily as noisy as anything anybody will name for MTV.
Atari Teenage Riot-”Speed”
[www.mtv.com]
(I’ve never put a video as a comment, so I may have effed it up)
Whale – Hobo Humpin Slobo Babe
PS – I love that you extoll the virtues of the MTV video library and go straight to youtube for embedding the vids.
@Sniffle: I bet it’s because it only works for US based peeps.
The rest of us will have to rely on youtube, as will every web site that doesn’t wanna alienate its non-American readership.
Killing Joke – “Money Is Not Our God”
Lots of yelling and stuff getting blowed up real good…
+ Watch video
@sicksteanein: yep, that’s it. see also dailymotion.
man i loved that whale song SO MUCH
[www.dailymotion.com]
oh my god this would be so much fun to do at karaoke
Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” immediately comes to mind. The Chris Cunningham video for that track got pretty substantial airplay, I think.
The dying guitar feedback in Rage Against the Machine’s “Freedom” was usually aired on MTV. There’s also that 120 Minutes noise-jam between Thurston Moore, Beck and Mike D, damn I miss the mid-90’s.
Ministry “Jesus Built My Hotrod”?
@CarWashHair: I was thinking more along the lines of “Just One Fix”..
The noise during the intro to Grace Jones’s “Nightclubbing,” when she blows into the trombone, really freaked me out as a kid. I checked last week and there were no Grace Jones videos on the MTV site.
I am desperately seeking the Grace Jones MTV appearance from the mid-80s when she slapped John Norris on the knee and said something to the effect of, “Can I just say, I can’t believe I never fucked you honey!”
One day I came home from school and there was some kind of live in studio performance from Faith No More. they did Caffeine. it was 92/93, obviously from when Angel Dust came out. it was completely insane… and if you knew the lyrics as well as I did at that time, mike patton did not censor himself, nor was he censored when he screamed the line “I’m FUCKING YOU!!!”
when I was 14 that kind of shit was awesome.
The show was Hangin’ With MTV Live.
Unsane’s “Scrape” (warning, not for the squeamish):
And apparently I fucked that up:
“>Scrape
We should all aspire to one day be as cool as Jon Spencer.
My god…I need that suit.
@anumberofnames: Damn! As a hardcore GJ fans, you’ve got my attention. I’ll start digging around for that one too. That sounds like the classic Grace I know and worship!
@anumberofnames: Damn! As a hardcore GJ fans, you’ve got my attention. I’ll start digging around for that one too. That sounds like the classic Grace I know and worship!
Jesus Lizard – Glamorous:
[www.mtv.com]
Mercury Rev – Bronx Cheer:
[www.mtv.com]
I know Trance Syndicate made some videos for their bands. I think this one only got as far as public access, though. Crust – Chlamydia is not a flower
@anumberofnames: One of my favorite MTV moments from the 80s was when Downtown Julie Brown introduced the MTV news and then made the note, “As if anybody in their right mind would get their news from MTV.”
Oh yeah, I forgot “Scrape.” That sounds like shit and got played in the DAY
Possibly “Only Shallow” by My Bloody Valentine (which absolutely must be the noisiest video ever played on VH1 Classic – it’s often played on VH1 Classic 120 Minutes).
@T’Challa: That clip was definitely recycled during one of those “MTV Uncensored” shows that aired in the ’90s, which actually weren’t uncensored, but just compilations of bleeped and blurred things. Grace is wearing an awesome outfit too.
What about “The Diamond Sea”? It might be an edited version, though… I remember playing that video during my college video show…that I hosted! We would get all kinds of great stuff (Seam, Jesus Lizard, Chavez) that MTV passed on.
the butthole surfers, “i wonder who was in my room last night”, was apparently played. fuzzed out everything in that song.
also, although it’s not in the archives, i could’ve SWORN i saw a cradle of filth video on mtv forever and ever ago.
aaand the melvins. pretty much anything they ever played by the melvins.
[www.mtv.com]
I’m sure plenty of feedback bands form the early 90s would be up there. My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus & Mary Chain definately. Maybe even Curve too.
As the above mentioned, there is one point in Aphex Twin’s ‘Come to Daddy’ where, even at low volume, the near clipping of the sound is very very load.
Such a great video.
i’d go with the aforementioned ministry, or maybe a refused song, or “only shallow.”
guess there are frustrated lou barlow fans in argentina. it’s definitely true that the kirchners, together and separately, pretty much took that country’s recent (relative) economic stability and crapped on it.
@Chris N.: i was going to say basically anything from the broken EP was pretty noisy, especially considering the type of airplay it would’ve got.
ATR and unsane are on another level though, nice finds.
the headline for this post makes me pine for the days of the paperthinwalls news aggregator and all the glorious lulz.
honorable mentions: mudhoney, babes in toyland, or that one really old hole video that got a lot of play. can’t think of the title but the video featured a very young co. love emoting from the back of a car.