The other day, I was making a list of the 30 albums (I’m already up to 43) that most influenced Joy on Fire, from my perspective, and Stop Making Sense by The Talking Heads made the list.

The first time I saw MTV was at Jeff Benjamin’s house. I was at his place all the time, raiding the fridge, infuriating his parents with bad table manners, etc. The Benjamins, besides better snacks, also had better TV than my family. It was a sunny day, I’m sure, and we should have been getting a little exercise by playing soccer in Jeff’s backyard—which meant intentionally kicking the ball over his fence into the neighbor’s yard so we could spy around back there—but, as per Cablevision, we were, instead of sport, clicking channels and munching Cheetos in Jeff’s shag-carpeted den.

“Let’s watch—”

“No,” I cut Jeff off—I had a habit of swaggering around the place as if I lived there and Jeff was the guest—“let’s watch The Playboy Channel.”

“My mom and dad had a big fight and now it’s cancelled. Let’s watch MTV.”

MTV, of course, was considered, by some at the time, dangerous. (It’s certainly dangerous now, but that’s another story.) Fragmented, non-narrative, lowbrow low-attention-span type stuff. It’ll fuk yer kids up, and so on. As noted by writer Craig Marks, “They”—conservative cable TV operators—“thought that MTV was a bunch of coked-up rock and roll fiends, and they were right.” Yet, like many who grew up at the time, I see early MTV, and its predecessors, as an art form. The best videos really make a statement. Not something like “Thriller,” which doesn’t do it for me, but “Rock the Casbah” by the Clash, “This Ain’t No Picnic” by the Minutemen, “Electric Avenue” by Eddie Grant, “Little by Little” by Robert Plant, “Let’s Dance” by David Bowie, “Back on the Chain Gang,” by The Pretenders, “Old Man Down the Road,” by John Fogerty, Yes’s “Leave It,” “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” by Public Enemy, and Jane’s Addiction’s “Mountain Song”—to name just a few from MTV’s first decade.

There was also late night MTV shows like Closet Classics, featuring wonderful music like Jimi Hendrix’s “Crosstown Traffic,” King Crimson’s “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic” Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock,” “ A Song for Jeffrey” by Jethro Tull, “My Generation” by The Who, The Doors “Wild Child,” “Walk Away” by James Gang, and the entire The Song Remains the Same film by Led Zeppelin.

120 Minutes and MTV AMP were two other great late night shows, featuring videos from the aforementioned Minutemen and Jane’s Addiction, as well as PJ Harvey (“Dress”), Soundgarden (“Loud Love), Sonic Youth (“Kool Thing”), Massive Attack (“Unfinished Sympathy”), Beck (“New Pollution”), Bjork (“Army of One”), Morphine (“Early to Bed”), Orbital (“Belfast”), Future Sound of London (“We Have Explosion”) and Swervedriver (“Rave Down”).

And later, when directors like Spike Jonze got into the form in the 90’s with “Cannonball” by The Breeders (co-directed with Kim Gordon), “Sabotage” by The Beastie Boys, “Drop” by The Pharcyde, and “Elektrobank” by The Chemical Brothers, to name a few, the form was revitalized with new creativity and cinematic flair.

The first video I ever saw—enough to have me put the Cheetos down, and even wash my face after—was “Once in a Lifetime” by The Talking Heads. I was enthralled, and also weirded out. I didn’t quite get it. Both Jeff and I burst out laughing at David Byrne’s same as it ever was bit where he seems to repeatedly karate chop his own arm, as well as his geeky bow-tied attire in general, but I think I sensed there was more there than just laughter and a groovy bassline. Laughter was part of it, yes, but there’s something else there, too. I would later read, in fa fa fa fa fa fa by David Bowman and in Byrne’s own How Music Works, about Byrne’s collaborations with Brian Eno—sometimes to the rest of the band’s dismay—and the process of how Head’s songs like “Once in a Lifetime” were composed (jamming, finding a groove, Eno helping to create loops, building on a loop, singing nonsense vowel sounds over the still-in-production music until the lyrics finally came—in this case the word water being the breakthrough).

Every time I went to Jeff’s house hence, after demanding a snack and a drink, I demanded to see that video.

“It doesn’t work that way,” said Jeff.

He was smarter than me, but I paid no attention: “Just put it on!” I demanded my MTV. Then softened a bit. “Maybe it will come on.”

He clicked on MTV.

I was infuriated! Some other video was on!!

“Jeff, man—what the fuck!”

“I tried to explain—“ said Jeff, but I waved him off.

One video I remember coming on in lieu of my beloved “Once in a Lifetime” was The Art of Noise’s “Close (to the Edit).” Terrible video. Interesting in retrospect, still really not my thing, but at the time I was totally absolutely infuriated. “What’s that midget doing to that piano!?!”

“Helping the band to cut it up with a chainsaw,” said Jeff, dispassionately.

“I can see that! Why?!?”

“It’s a comment,” said Jeff, “on the nature of music in the early part of the latter half of the latter half of the 20th century, where electronics and technology are taking over traditional forms and sound palates, i.e., the piano. Yet, the paradox of the child—it’s not a midget—being the arbiter of destruction—”

He didn’t really say that, but more of a 10-year-old’s version of that.

“Don’t you mean e.g.,?” I said.

“What?”

“Jeff, it’s a chainsaw. How’s that technology?”

Jeff sighed, turned the television off, and we went into his backyard to kick the soccer ball around—some technology I could handle. After a couple of shots, I didn’t bother to kick the ball into his neighbor’s backyard—I just picked it up with one hand and hurled it onto their deck.

Anyway, of course, as per YouTube, I no longer have to go to Jeff Benjamin’s house to try and watch The Talking Heads. Jeff. Where is Jeff now? I think he’s a dentist, but I don’t really know, and I don’t really know where, as I’m not on Facebook and cannot track him down and yell at him about that stupid Art of Noise video. Toledo. Let’s put him in Toledo. A house in Ohio. McMansion. Is that Jeff’s beautiful car? His nitrous oxide addicted wife? (Are people real?) Anyway, I can watch “Once in a Lifetime” any time I want, as well as many other of their crazy videos (“Burning Down the House” is particularly hilarious—with its psychological-manifestations-as-monkeys-on-the-back motif—as well as being the Head’s best song, to my thoughts). And many of the other videos produced by inspiring bands, past, present, and future. Sleaford Mods, for one, are making great YouTube videos and have been for years, one favorite being “No One’s Bothered” which features singing sock puppets in perfect sync. And can anything top Anna Meredith’s “Nautilus,” with its joyful menace of animated geometric monsters morphing from shape to shape and color to color in rhythm with its adventurous and unrelenting brass ostinato?

The future: JOY ON FIRE’S new video, “Punk Jazz,” directed by Cody Nenninger of Momentum Printing and Production, to be released next week, July 16th!