TFTP Cable: MTV Aircheck with Guest VJ Cyndi Lauper (1984)

Posted to YouTube by user 'CLyoutube'
Length - 10:07

In its early years, MTV often featured celebrities as guest VJs (or, video jockeys). Here is a set of clips from a VJ stint that Cyndi Lauper did in 1984.

Lauper--near the height of her fame from her smash album "She's So Unusual"--is her usual impish self, as she introduces some of her favorite music videos, talks a little about some of the recording artists in the videos, and cracks wise in her thick New York accent. The clips were recorded in aircheck style, so there are no actual full music videos, just very short snippets at the beginning and end of some of the music videos; there is also a commercial fragment or two and the clip begins with the classic rocket launch MTV network ID.

As she re-appears after the end of various videos, Lauper pops out from behind parts of the VJ set, reclines on windowsills, and lounges in front of a large bank of TV screens. At one point she's joined by her compatriot "Captain" Lou Albano (renowned at the time for his appearance in Lauper's own music video for her song "Girls Just Want to Have Fun"), and they banter about music videos. At the very end of the set of clips, there is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it slide with the MTV logo and the title "Cyndi Lauper - Guest V.J."

TFTP Flow: MTV (Music Television) from Nov. 1983

Posted to YouTube by user 'phxlefty'

A few weeks ago, TFTP featured its first post of a clip from a cable TV network (some promos from Showtime); here we have another clip of early cable TV--the legendary early MTV. MTV Music Television was one of the proto-cable networks that helped establish cable television as a medium after it launched in August of 1981. Early MTV, of course, featured mainly music videos, with a number of different kinds of segments as interstitials between the videos.

This extended (25 minute) clip is of those interstitial elements (the music videos themselves have been excised). Included in the clip are: VJ (video jockey) segments with original MTV VJ Mark Goodman; promotion of concert dates by The Police and Black Sabbath (and a taped intro to a Police concert by VJ Martha Quinn); classic MTV network IDs with the shifting-colors MTV logo and the iconic spaceman; promotion of the network's "Friday Night Music Fights", in which two music videos were pitted against one another; a spot for one of the network's famous giveaway promotions (here for Neil Young's pink Cadillac); and a "World Premiere" video announcement for Bob Dylan's latest music video.

The clip includes several commercials as well, and there is no mistaking the channel's adolescent target demographic based on the commercials featured here: compilation record albums, the Atari video game system, Panasonic boom boxes, and Compound W wart remover (!).