Video Lounge

Getting the Word Out

New York fostered musical innovation in its varied venues, and as a global media capital it also provided the infrastructure to spread its new sounds locally, nationally, and inter-nationally. Influential print journalism and music criticism could be found in the pages of local outlets like The SoHo Weekly News and the East Village Eye, along with others with a further reach such as the Village Voice and New York Rocker. Radio remained an influential presence, particularly spreading dance music and hip hop, thanks to innovative producing and programming by DJs like Frankie Crocker, Mr. Magic, and Marley Marl at WBLS FM 107.5; Shep Pettibone, Tony Humphries, and DJ Red Alert at WRKS FM 98.7 (KISS); and The Latin Rascals and Jellybean Benitez at WKTU FM 92.3 (DISCO 92).

Meanwhile, emerging media provided new ways to get the word out. The advent of cable television allowed musicians to reach new audiences through influential public access programs like Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party and Ralph McDaniels’ Video Music Box. Ultimately, commercially developed stations like Black Entertainment Television (BET) developed programming for music, including Video Vibrations (1984) and Rap City (1989). Channels dedicated specifically to music like MTV and VH1 were able to reach an ever-expanding audience, broadcasting new mu-sic around the globe. The handheld video recorder allowed easier documentation of the live music scene and the material quite often appeared in the lounges of local clubs.

Video Lounge

This “video lounge” installation was developed in collaboration with video artists Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong (the GoNightclubbing Archive), who originally created the lounge for Danceteria in May 1980. Using the trope of the suburban rec room, here they have played on the tension between the familiarity of the setting and the unfamiliarity of the programming in those pre-MTV times, with a mix of found footage, video art, and their own archival film of downtown musicians, including the Dead Boys, the Heartbreakers, and Ballistic Kisses.

For this presentation, we have supplemented the GoNightclubbing Archive material with footage from The Scott and Gary Show, a Brooklyn-based public access program created by Scott Lewis and Gary Winter. Their show, which aired from 1983 to 1989, featured live music, dance parties, and sketch comedy. Early performances by Beastie Boys, Butthole Surfers, and R. Stevie Moore are included. Additionally, this presentation includes a clip from Willoughby Sharp’s Downtown New York Cable Show featuring Vernon Reid and rare early MTV interviews led by video jockeys of several influential New York artists, including David Johansen, Madonna, and Run DMC.

The GoNightclubbing Archive and The Scott and Gary Show footage was digitized and is archived at NYU Fales Library, the Downtown Collection.

Music Television Revolution

Among the media forces in New York City was MTV (short for Music Television), which launched on August 1, 1981 and went on to revolutionize the music industry, becoming an influential force in media, pop culture, and entertainment worldwide. While there were already television channels that featured musical programming, MTV was the first to dedicate 24 hours a day to music. With their VJ (“video jockey”) hosts, concentration on music videos, regular interviews with musicians, and exclusive insider news updates, the channel quickly became a media juggernaut.

The channel was founded by a core group of young media executives. MTV was not actually available to Manhattan cable subscribers until the end of1982, but the intention was to build a national audience anyway, one that appealed to young adults in Madison, Wisconsin as much as nearby Newark, New Jersey. The channel initially emulated the “album-oriented rock” (AOR) format that was popular with many radio stations at the time. The result was exciting but narrow, and was criticized for its lack of diversity, particularly ignoring hip hop and Black artists more broadly. As time went on, the format changed and began to bring in a wider range of artists and created specialty programs like Yo! MTV Raps (1987) for hip hop and 120 Minutes (1986) for “alternative” music.

MTV soon moved beyond music videos, hosting live concerts and contests, New Year’s Eve celebrations, and an annual Video Music Awards. Many acts based out of New York City, including Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Talking Heads, and others received a significant boost from their exposure on the channel. By the end of 1984, MTV had more than 25 million subscribers with more than 3,000 affiliates across the country.

End of an Era

By the mid 1980s, new forces were converging to shift the trajectory of New York City’s music scene yet again. The surging economy contributed to rising rents, and club owners increasingly found themselves unable to make ends meet. At the same time, they came under attack from efforts to “button up” the city’s image and reputation.

Meanwhile, the HIV/AIDS crisis and the crack cocaine epidemic both ripped through the communities where artists lived and worked. These traumas, along with the economic strains of gentrification, hit the club scene hard. In 1985, 8 B.C., Peppermint Lounge, and Darinka all folded; the following year, Danceteria closed its doors; and by 1987 Paradise Garage was gone. But New York nightlife was far from over: a new era of vibrancy, with a very different vibe, was on the horizon.

Changing Neighborhoods

Artists and musicians who had moved to the Lower East Side and East Village to escape gentrification in SoHo began to see the same process happening in their new neighborhoods. Nothing symbolized the conflict over housing and space more vividly than the Tompkins Square Riot in 1988, spurred by efforts of police to forcibly remove the park’s homeless population.

The AIDS Epidemic

In 1981, AIDS was still largely unknown, although rumors about a new and terrifying disease were spreading. By the mid-1980s, it was a full-blown epidemic, especially ravaging the LGBTQ community in neighborhoods like the Lower East Side. Fear of the poorly understood and stigmatized illness spread throughout the clubs of the East Village, as more and more members of this tight knit community were lost to the disease. Activists began to respond by demanding that the government acknowledge the crisis and invest in treatment.

Nightlife Under Siege

The Lower East Side became hotly contested terrain by the mid 1980s. As in SoHo in the decade prior, the sense of open space and opportunity were threatened by new development, as these videos from 1985 show. Musicians and other artists increasingly found themselves competing with the forces of gentrification that had driven many of them there in the first place.

When The New York Times declared in 1985 that “the party seems to be over” for the downtown music scene, it was reflecting on this dynamic. It also pointed to the growing “club fatigue” as well as the legal squeeze that the Koch administration was placing on nightclubs. By cracking down on violations, including of the city’s cabaret law (which required a special license for dancing to be allowed in a club), the administration pushed many already struggling venues into closing.

A New Beginning

By the mid 1980s, the eclectic New York sound was giving way to one genre above all others, as hip hop took center stage as a global musical force. When Run-DMC covered Aerosmith’s rock classic “Walk This Way” in 1986, hip hop symbolically entered the music mainstream. The sound of hip hop itself also shifted by the mid-1980s. Performers left behind the electrofunk sound, embracing instead raw beat sampling combined with complex internal rhymes and methodical flow. The new hip-hop sounds reached ever wider audiences through television shows Yo! MTV Raps (1987) and BET’s Rap City (1989).