Much Ado But Not Too Much

IF YOU WERE a teenager in the 1980's you had MTV and his moon men.

Unless you lived in Canada, where the big M logo stood for something else entirely. Twenty-five years ago today, August 31, 1984, Muchmusic signed on the air from downtown Toronto. In doing so, Canada became one of the only countries in the world to go a different way in just licensing the American MTV brand.

Yeah, I know. I can scarcely believe it either. Canadian TV, doing something different.

Muchmusic would, through the years, run MTV programs through licensing deals -- but the relationship was never what you would call cordial. It was either a lawsuit or a threat of one that finally got the powers-that-be to change Much's "M" logo to the current Globe version, for instance.

It's hard to overstate Much's cultural influence

over the generations of kids who came of age in the 1980's or even into the 90's. In the pre-internet age (yes, it wasn't that long ago,) TV was the main cultural arbiter, the place teens looked to for style and information that catered to them.

Because the rest of the culture -- baby-boomer focused in those years -- hadn't yet realized the value of targeting teenagers in all things, Much was often the only place you would see stuff that appealed and talked to a younger demographic. It was the place you found out about new music, taking over largely from radio during the era. If you're of a certain age, when you hear a song from, say, the mid to late 1980's, you can probably picture the video. God knows you saw it enough.

Along the way, you also saw a product on air that sometimes was shoestring, but was always compelling. From the moment they moved to their current headquarters on Queen St. West at John, the Much brand took a hard peel away from the MTV brand.

Because the VJ's were live. Absolutely, perfectly, gruesomely live. Stumbling on air, in all their imperfect, improvised glory -- Much eschewed the processed, edited and inert links of the MTV VJ style and let it all hang out. The technical direction was in the background. There was no studio -- only the "environment," where chase producers would sit with their fingers in their ears, shouting down the phone while some degree of foolishness was going on in front of the camera. People would gather out on the street, and the VJ's would interact with them. Musical acts would come in, and they'd push desks out of the way to let it happen -- and all the while, the street beckoned and watched and fed back. It wasn't always great television -- but it was alive.

While Canadians grew up on Master T, Chris Ward, Erica Ehm, J.D. Roberts, Steve Anthony, and later Simon Evans, Rick The Temp, Monika Deol and Sook Yin Lee just to name a few -- they were also getting a daily dose of Canadian music and musicmakers, amidst the world product.

This is just my opinion, but I think that's one of the main reasons why Canadian music has such a healthy reputation among people in this country. Wonder of wonders, when you're actually exposed to it daily, as a matter of course, the people comes to view it as normal. The idea of hating a band or an artist just because "they're Canadian" would seem ridiculous.

Muchmusic is a lot of the reason why.

Which isn't to say the channel was all that puffed up and important. There was silliness, such as the venerable Electric Circus dance show, annual Video Cutup show Fromage, and more improvised traditions like the yearly Christmas tree toss off the roof off the CHUM building -- a stunt that seemed to get more byzantine and dangerous each and every year.

Occasionally, Much would court controversy and even ambition. They got into deep dutch for running Ren & Stimpy in the early 1990's -- it's the first time I remember hating the CRTC -- and under Avi Lewis and later George Strombo, they even dipped their toes into the political arena with coverage of elections and specials like "Too Much 4Much."

I still maintain the day that Master T quipped, "Yo Brian, wassup?" to then-prime Minister (and sire of the uncomfortable-to-watch Ben) Brian Mulroney was the day something changed in Canadian Politics. (And I'm certainly not the first to say that.) The soon-to-be ex-PM ignored Much -- but he'd be the last to do so. The next three Prime Ministers all made campaign stops at Muchmusic at one point or another. I don't know if Stevie Sweaters went, but, hey, anything's possible.

After growing up with the channel as a teen, I was lucky enough to have a close-up view of Muchmusic at the very tail end of what I'd call the golden era.

I worked upstairs on a show for Citytv, but you were forever walking down to see who'd dropped in to play a set. You'd drop by to grab a tape you needed from an edit bay and run into Stephen Tyler or the Tragically Hip or No Doubt or Bono back before his sainthood. One time I went to the bathroom and found myself peeing beside Joey Ramone.

I did not shake his hand.

Just before I got hired in the building, I was there doing a paper-edit of my "audition piece" and walking about I ran into Peter Garrett -- the lead singer for Midnight Oil. This was just post "Beds are Burning" days, and Midnight Oil was a pretty big deal. The guy towered over me -- no mean feat, and we had some time in the elevator together (the front elevator in the 299 Queen Street W foyer redefined slow.)

He asked me what I did there, and, too surprised to think up an excuse, I told him. He was very kind and looked around and said, "this looks like a really cool place to work. I hope you get it." Then he invited me to come see their show that night.

I did. It was great, and several hours later, after the taping he looked over, saw me and came over and asked me how the "audition" had gone. I smiled and said, "Good. I think I got the job." And he pumped my hand and said, "that's great, great."

Shit like that happened all the time.

But whether you were within or without it, Muchmusic brought something new to Canada. Everywhere outside of Toronto complains about Toronto and sees Toronto bias in everything. Much went all across this country -- hosting shows with a western and Eastern focus, doing "Snow Job" alternative spring breaks from B.C. to all sorts of far flung Canadian locales. It wasn't unusual to see people or requests or reports from Alberta or Newfoundland. I think, in many ways, a kid watching Muchmusic in the 1980's or 90's got a better sense of the vast diversity of Canada than, say, a CBC Radio listener. And it was all osmosis -- you didn't realize you were sucking up the country. It just happened.

And eventually, people noticed. Spinoff Muchmusics were exported to South America, Europe -- and mighty MTV copied the Much Environment idea and planted a studio in Times Square for "Total Request Live."

The Golden Age faded, of course, as these things are destined to do. And it wasn't just the changing of the guard and getting older, as the VJ faces changed and the original audience, and the 2nd generation and 3rd moved on... No, slowly, as it became more successful, Muchmusic got more corporate, reflecting the corporate culture CHUM had become around it.

First the logo changed...then there started to be restrictions on staff getting into the live performances in the "environment." Every week, you'd get a new email about so-and-so being appointed Vice President of this or that or the other thing. The Canadian Music Video Awards became the Muchmusic Video Awards - and a legendary party that everybody in the building went to became all swarming publicists and nineteen wristbands and threats that if you were in the building and you weren't working, they'd come in the night and steal your children. Muchmusic, who'd once been an accidental innovator, became the snake eating its own tale, when it created "Much on Demand," a photo copy of "Total Request Live," which stole from Much. The photocopy of the photocopy became the norm. Where once there was the desire to do something different, now the consultants preached samennes. The first wave of the old guard left for elsewhere in the building, or sunnier climes at other broadcast networks.

Along about the time that I left the CHUM organization to make the jump to writing full time, the memos had started to get byzantine. One missive spelled out the great restrictions on not being in the halls when Harrison Ford came to visit. Then there was the one that told people not to look at Tom Cruise. I mean it -- no eye contact. (Never did find out if that was a CoS thing.)

What had started as this ratty and ragged and improvised Canadian, scruffy thing had grown up, drank the fizzy water and started to believe its own hype. Then, of course, the business changed. Youth programming rose, videos were over, and MTV started rebranding as a lifestyle channel. The Much I knew slowly faded away, but, of course, to a new generation of viewers -- it was still the place to be. And I guess that's the way of the world, right?

Still, I've got a lot of fond memories of the place. From being able to work with a guy I once watched on TV, Simon Evans, to that interview with David Bowie that Avi Lewis did that was the best interview I'd ever seen of Bowie. It was so good I watched the Raw. There were a hundred encounters with rock and pop stars in hallways and parking lots and parties. There was that time in the edit bay when I watched and laughed at this filthy little construction-paper greeting card that was the original South Park vid. There was the legendary, unedited Speakers Corner tapes, and Carl Armstrong's latest incomprehensible and brilliant I.D.'s (he roped me into appearing in one or two of those) and the outtakes from America's Funniest Home Videos. Why do editors always have the sickest shit?

I remember returning to work with a coffee one time, to see a horde of screaming girls and five pop tarts whiz past me, and asking who they were. "The Spice Girls," came the reply. And I, inevitably and terminally square now that I was out of the Much demo, replied, "Like Old Spice? Who the @#% are the Spice Girls?"

I railed everytime the Backstreet Boys showed up. Then felt guilty years later when, homesick, I heard "I Want It That Way" in the back of a Cape Town taxi and hummed along, lustily.

And then there was the strange, spontaneous, and terribly sad impromptu vigil when the news of Kurt Cobain's suicide came down. A wave of kids, gathered outside, not knowing what to do or what to feel. Me thinking about being twelve and hearing about John Lennon on the radio.

Most of the people who made Muchmusic what it was in those early days have moved on now -- John Martin passed away, Chris Ward's in L.A., the VJ's are no more, Denise Donlon's at CBC, Moses Znaimer, David Kines, and even most of the producers I knew there are all gone.

The strange coda to the first quarter-century of the channel is that a couple years ago, CHUM was sold to CTV Globemedia. Finally, the warring MTV Canada and Much brands are under the same corporate umbrella.

I don't know if that has anything to do with the really strange and insensitive interview the current poohbah gave to the Canadian Press last week:

"We will be doing absolutely nothing for the 25th anniversary," said Brad Schwartz, senior vice-president and general manager of Much MTV Group.

"It's actually really, really important to me. ... You will not see a press release from us, they will not do anything special on air, there will be nothing going on, you will never know that Much turned 25, because for us it's not a story.

"We are in the looking-forward business, we are in the looking-at-today business, we are in the young-person business. We are not in the looking-back business."

The point about the channel needing to look forward and cater to its current audience notwithstanding, It's hard to believe from a P.R. point of view that somebody would cackle about not even sending out a press release to mark a milestone like the 25th anniversary. But then again, maybe it's not so hard.

After all, not only was the guy not there, but marking the anniversary would have to acknowledge the contributions of a whole bunch of people who also are no longer there -- some of whom CTV had a hand in putting out to pasture. Then there's the MTV connection. Maybe it's impolitic to celebrate something that was a mote in the eye of one of your partners for so long.

So is it any wonder that as record co.'s get calls from reporters asking about the 25th anniversary, they're actually getting calls from Much P.R. asking them to play it down?

And they are. In the Record Business these days, you stick close to where your bread is buttered.

Still, in the end, the most tin-eared part of that interview is that it misses the point that a channel like Much is more than what they did, or put out there; it was a conversation that young Canadians had with each other. It's not just their anniversary, it's ours too.

Today's 14 year olds might be Much's focus now, but they should know that once they pass out of the demo, they should turn in their Much stickers and get out. Another case of a Canadian channel not really thinking about the audience.

You might think about that the next time they talk about you helping to "save local tv."

So Happy Birthday Much. Sorry there's no cake. Not even from Cake. Guess you'll just have to make do with this little clip. BTW, one of those DJ's is the former J.D. -- now John -- Roberts. Former CBS White House Correspondent, current anchor of CNN's American Morning.

We all grow up and put away childish things eventually.

"Yo Brian, wassup?"

Classic.

Link to the video at The Star: (if it doesn't format correctly below)