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moth: The first ten minutes of MTV. From Wikipedia: On...

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:10:00 -0500

The first ten minutes of MTV.

From Wikipedia:

On August 1, 1981, at 12:01 a.m., MTV: Music Television launched with the words “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll,”spoken by John Lack. Those words were immediately followed by the original MTV theme song, a crunching guitar riff written by Jonathan Elias and John Petersen, playing over a montage of the Apollo 11 moon landing. With the flag having a picture of MTVs logo on it. MTV producers Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert used this public domain footage as a conceit, associating MTV with the most famous moment in world television history. Seibert said they had originally planned to use Neil Armstrong’s “One small step” quote, but lawyers said Armstrong owns his name and likeness, and Armstrong had refused, so the quote was replaced with a beeping sound. At the moment of its launch, only a few thousand people on a single cable system in northern New Jersey could see it.

Weirdest part for me is Adam Curry’s line at the end: “combining the best of TV with the best of radio.” There’s been a line in Next New Networks’ materials since we began: “combining the best of TV with the best of the web.” No coincidence that Fred was involved with both.

I rarely reblog here, but this clip seemed like a good bet. (Though that last VJ was actually Mark Goodman.)

My mentors: Lilliana & George Seibert

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:02:00 -0500

George & Lilliana Seibert at the Harbor Pharmacy, 1958

Most of the mentors I’ve written about have been work companions and no one I’ve worked with has had the same impact as George and Lilliana Seibert. It would have been their 60th anniversary today (George passed away in 2002) so it’s a great day to honor them.

Yes, Lilliana and George are my parents. And yes, most people can point to their parents as the prime influence on them, but I’m not going to completely bore you with too much personal biography. This blog is focused on work and my folks were my first bosses at their suburban pharmacy. The takeaway from my first work experience has shaped most of what I’ve done since. I picked up my complete love of work with them, and found out that for me “work to live” is not an option. “Live to work” is much more like it. I didn’t become a workaholic —I like my personal time as much as anyone— but I absorbed the real joy of the process of work itself.

I worked* in their store for more than 20 years. Along the way I picked up the building blocks of everything I’ve done ever since (as my parents had from their fathers’ local stores). Of course, there was the simple stuff that lots of kids learn at home, like responsibility and politeness. And small business basics. But working with them side by side went a lot deeper. The measures of an outfit’s viability. The service of a local enterprise to it’s customers and the community.

When I got into the television business it didn’t dawn on me that lessons learned in a mom & pop drugstore would have any direct usefulness. But, one day in 1985 my partner and I were sitting down with the president of Nickelodeon, and I was trying to convey a particular scheduling strategy, where we’d take a bunch of our network IDs that we’d run the sprocket holes off of and just switch them to a different daypart. It would save money on new ID production, and the network would get new dose of freshness.

“How do you know about this stuff?” The president knew I was as relatively new to television.

I explained to her a lesson my mother had taught me at the store. A basket of sale lipsticks had stopped moving, so my mom just placed the basket at the opposite end of the counter. An hour later they were selling again. Transposing the exercise to media placement seemed like a good idea to me, nutty as it was. By the way, it worked on television too, and it was only the first of dozens of surprising tips I could put to good use.

Two decades in the family store netted me oceans more than can recounted here. Not to short shrift our home at all; my two sisters and I had a wonderful, warm life together with my parents. But, suffice it to say, when it comes to work, I was one lucky dude.

…..

* The Harbor Pharmacy opened in suburban New York in 1954, and I started “working” right away. Babysitting was expensive and though most of what was given to me was busywork I took it as seriously as a child could. Stocking shelves was my first important duty, but I rapidly ascended to checking out customers (a classic cash register is way better than a toy for a boy). Accompanying the delivery “boys” (men from 16 to 60) on their rounds was the highlight of my day (not theirs, I’d bet), and my driver’s license led to my next promotion. By the time of my last stint in 1977, I was writing and designing their local Pennysaver ads.

** A quick word about the modern American Gothic photograph up top. Early in our pharmacy’s life a trade magazine was writing a story and sent an art director to supervise the photography. My father, a complete and proud professional, felt the proper attire for a business owner was a shirt and tie, which he wore at work every day for over thirty years. But, the art director thought that the appropriate pharmacist’s attire was the same lab smock it had been for decades. He insisted my father conform. It irritated Dad forever.

Producing records.

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:39:00 -0500

Click here for more posts about music and producing records.

At 19 I was determined to become a record producer rather than a chemist (my plan since I was six). I’d played music since I was seven, The Beatles had infected me at 12, and the excitement of recorded music completely enveloped me by the time I was working at my college radio station. I was the only one to jump at the chance to record visiting jazz musicians, even though my interest was popular music. When Gunter Hampel, a German avant-garde multi-intrumentalist, released an album I had engineered, and put my name of the cover (!), I was was hooked.

It was an explosive era of independent record labels and my new friend, local record retailer Tom Pomposello, and I decided we’d start a label. We’d release great, underappreciated blues and jazz, and not incidentially, Tom’s solo music too. Our 1972 debut album on Oblivion Records came from tapes I’d recorded when Tom guested with country blues legend Mississippi Fred McDowell. We had an great time and released some amazing music. Five more releases and our lack of capital, lack of acumen, and insufficient entrepeneurial zeal closed the label in 1976.

Now I had the bug, and during my short career the demand for my production services grew enough that I produced almost thirty albums (one with a Grammy nomination), many of them for the tiny New York independent Muse Records.

For most of the jazz ‘producing’ was a misnomer, it was actually ‘recording supervision.’ I mean, what was an a rock’n’roll playing, 26 year old kid from the suburbs going to tell a master musician to do? Play faster? Better? The records weren’t always what I would’ve wanted, but they reflected the vision of the artist. That was my job.

All the magazine articles about producers celebrated activist visionaries like Phil Spector, but artist oriented folks Jerry Wexler, George Martin and Alfred Lion were the ones I admired most. They became the kind of models I carried forward with me to filmmaking.

Alas, I never found my way into the pop world I coveted. And therefore, no surprise, I couldn’t make a decent living the way I was going. I slowly, reluctantly, started to morph the dream.

My complete discography

Oblivion Records

Some of my independent record productions

A brief history of Oblivion Records.

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:38:00 -0500

Click here for more posts about music and producing records.

In late 1971 my new friend Tom Pomposello and I decided to start a record company to record his music, and so I could become an instant record producer (it was easier than convincing some big company to let me do it). He was 21, married with a small child, and owned a local hippie record store in Huntington, New York. I was 19, single, a college student in New York City. By the time it was over, five years later, we had six world class releases.

We both emerged from the pop and rock fans of the 69s, but had broadened. Tom loved the blues. I loved jazz, especially the avant garde variety. We both wanted to do more to promote artists we believed in.

And it was the early 70s, the height of don’t trust anyone over 30 and the man can’t bust our music, and indie record culture was starting to flourish again.

It seemed like a smart move not to start with the unknown Tom’s record —especially since we hadn’t figured out exactly what it would be yet— but we had a viable, commercial tape we’d recorded of college concert star Mississippi Fred McDowell (with Tom on bass guitar) at the Village Gaslight in Greenwich Village. With the sales of this sure fire hit, we’d be on our way to the big time of indie labels [wink]. Our agreement was to make blues records for Tom and jazz records for me. We had a passion for underexposed American music and we were certain we’d be the two to bring unknown artists to prominence.

The only question that lingered was where we would get the outrageous sum of $1800 to press the first 2000 copies? Tom came to rescue by bringing in our third partner Richard (Dick) Pennington, a friend of his from, uh, somewhere (I never actually found out). Dick stepped right up with enthusiasm and verve and stayed until our fourth album when he and Tom fell explosively out over something neither of them ever revealed.

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Tom chose the name “Oblivion” off of the back of a Leo Kottke LP and we released Obivion OD-1 —’Mississippi Fred McDowell: Live in New York‘— in 1972; altogether we put out six records in five years (it still feels like 100 records in 1000 years) before we flamed out with musical dignity intact. Tom’s album was our last, so we had fulfilled our mission.

You can listen to the complete Oblivion Records library (and bonus tracks) here and get more of the stories behind the records here.

All the Oblivion records.

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:31:00 -0500

My Oblivion Records partner Tom Pomposello and I were incredibly proud of our discography of releases. We were two young guys in the thrall of the world’s music explosion everywhere around us and we wanted to be part of it. (Just click on the covers and you’ll be able to play the complete collection.)

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Mississippi Fred McDowell Live in New York OD-1 (1972)

Not only our first record, but our most celebrated and successful. Fred McDowell had become a country blues world touring sensation in the late 60s and early 70s, and Tom, budding suburban bluesman, became his pupil and bassist. This was Fred’s last recording before his untimely passing.

…..

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Johnny Woods Mississippi Harmonica o#2 (1972)

Our only single came during Tom’s last trip to Mississippi when he asked Fred McDowell to locate harpist Johnny Woods, Fred’s sometimes duet partner. They found Mr. Woods at his farmhand living quarters, and in true field recording style, Tom took out his trusty Panasonic cassette machine, gave Johnny one of his Hohner harmonicas, and recorded two songs. Then he whipped out his Kodak Instamatic, posed Johnny in front of Fred’s Pontiac. Now we had enough for a record.

…..

Marc Cohen, John Abercrombie, Clint Houston, Jeff Williams Friends OD-3 (1973)

When Marc Cohen (now Copeland) first showed up at my college radio station he played an awesome mainstream alto saxophone. So he shocked me the day he came in with a trio wired up and echoplexed I felt like I’d seen a future first defined by the Tony Williams Lifetime. We made a deal and he brought back a quartet, and before it was branded we called his music ‘electronic jazz.’ No jazz-rock here, just plugged in supercharged jazz.

…..

Charles Walker & the New York City Blues Band" width="100%"/>
Charles Walker & the NYC Blues Band Blues From The Apple OD-4 (1974)

Tom really wanted to discover a bluesman. Which was really hard to do in New York City. So a talented blues hustler called Charles Walker kept turning up musicians and songs and we kept recording them, for more than a year. Our smallest selling album, with one of my favorite tracks.

…..

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Joe Lee Wilson Livin’ High Off Nickels & Dimes OD-5 (1974)

Never paying much attention to mainstream jazz singers, I initially paid no attention to the hubbub surrounding a session I missed one summer in 1972 at WKCR. But then I heard the tape. Joe Lee Wilson was great.

The record caused a sensation and became a turntable hit at the biggest New York jazz station, but we were too inexperienced and broke to work it properly. A great record faded again into oblivion.

…..

Honest Tom Pomposello OD-6 (1975)

Tom Pomposello, my great friend and the artist that inspired our record company. And our final release. Recorded in bits and pieces over four years in dozens of locations, with Tom’s truth telling slogan •file under: Suburban Blues.

Honest Tom Pomposello: Your Candidate for Receiver of Taxes

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:30:00 -0500

Tom Pomposello was my great friend and partner.

HONEST TOM POMPOSELLO
YOUR CANDIDATE FOR RECEIVER OF TAXES

Hi there! My name is Thomas (Honest Tom) Pomposello. I’d like to cordially inform all my friends that I am the Huntington Tea Party’s candidate for Receiver of Taxes in the 1971 local elections. If things are as they seem, this year promises to be one that will be full of surprises in Our Town. So may the best man lose (why should this year be any different?), and I’ll see you all at the polls.

Yours intact,
Honest Tom Pomposello

P.S.: Here are a few of my numerous qualifications - -

• I AM INDISPUTABLY THE LARGEST PERSON TO RUN FOR THE OFFICE OF RECEIVER OF TAXES IN THE LAST 40 YEARS. At 6’0” even in boots with one-half inch heels and 267½ lbs. without those same boots, it would seem that this be more than an unfounded claim. However, in the interest of fairness, upon request I can present factual data. (Actually the closest contender I suppose would be Mrs. Rosemary Bacon who held the office from 1936 - 1938; but even though she did tend a bit toward the chub, in reality she is little competition for me.)

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO HAS THE UNCONDITIONAL SUPPORT OF MISSISSIPPI FRED McDOWELL. I’m not sure what actual value this has since Fred can’t even vote for me (being an out of state resident and all that) but you’ve got to admit, it certainly does look impressive.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO FRED SEIBERT WOULD EVEN CONSIDER PUTTING ON HIS RADIO SHOW. I’ve been of Fred’s show three times now, twice by proxy.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO IS REALLY CLEAN-CUT. My mother says so.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE MATURE ENOUGH TO REMEMBER BOTH THE “RUDY KAZODEE” AND “CRUSADER RABBIT” TV SHOWS. In fact, in college I did my Honors Thesis on this very subject.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO IS NOT ASHAMED TO ADMIT THAT WHEN I TAKE SHOWERS, I DRAW CLOSED THE BATH CURTAINS. Perfunctory.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO REALLY TAKES THIS ELECTION SERIOUSLY. I need not prove this to you further - - simply re-read my above qualifications.

• I AM THE ONLY CANDIDATE WHO WOULD DELIBERATELY PUBLISH A FACT SHEET THAT IS IN ACTUALITY HALF LIES. Perhaps I should re-phrase that. I am the only candidate in this election who would ADMIT to deliberately publishing a fact sheet that is in actuality half lies.

You'll never look at music the same way again.

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:03:00 -0500

MTV: The Making of a Revolution, written by Tom McGrath

By the mid-1990s, a teenager who’d had his mind blown by the music video visual feast was old enough to be a damn good writer and reporter, so Scranton’s Tom McGrath (now the Executive Editor of Philadephia Magazine) decided to literally write the book. MTV: The Making of a Revolution told the whole story (it’s sadly now out of print, maybe since MTV: Music Television has become MTV) behind and in front of the camera.

As I remember, Mr. McGrath’s reporting was fairly complete and, all in all, accurate, in and of itself often a rarity in media reporting. He made me and the work my teams did look good, which made my mother and father very happy. Me too.

My mentors: Nick Moy

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:19:00 -0400

Nick Moy, New York City, circa 1975

To call such a buddy a “mentor” might seem an overstatement (he’ll probably find it silly), but it’s safe to say that I wouldn’t be in the career I have without Nick Moy.

The son of two pharmacists, I entered school planning on a career as a chemist. Six weeks in I turned to my lab partner and said, “I like the Beatles more than this.” And a lifetime obsession was over, synthesized into a new one. Marching over to the college ra dio station, I volunteered and began indulging in media overload. Though my tastes veered towards pop, rock, and soul, the station specialized in classical, folk, news, and jazz. It couldn’t be helped, my knowledge instantly exploded.

Nick, his wife Sherry Wolf, and I have been great friends since we met at WKC R-FM in 1969. When Nick and I became roommates four years later, our conversations ranged from politics to music, and though he was the station’s best announcer and classical DJ, his interests exceeded expansive, with a deep grasp of mainstream jazz, R&B and funk, and a solid understanding and attraction to the avant-garde.

More conservative in life approach than me (understatement; I was an undisciplined jumble of nerve endings shooting off in every direction at once) Nick was always open to new ideas, with non-judgmental encouragement to the dumbest thoughts, and an eager companion to almost anything I would cook up. By 1973, we were rooming together in Morningside Heights, where I was running my half of a record company out of our apartment and the college radio studio. Nick had a real job in the public policy world, working for weasel-to-be Dick Morris, making $5000 a year. I was barely earning a dollar, picking up day work here and there while I tried to make the record company a success, and recording anyone and anything, mainly new jazz musicians, usually for no fee.

Most roommates, even friends, would have thrown me out. But, Nick picked up the rent when I didn’t have it (pretty often), bought the groceries and cooked them up (not a horrible burden; I think I was only eating one meal a day then). My temporary quid pro quo was that every once in a while I’d get us some free passes to a club or a record company showcase (we saw everyone from Tom Waits to Charlie Rich to Cecil Taylor.) I think my credits helped him get the Grammy discount for piles of new LPs every month, which enriched us both. From disco to Bach, our apartment was the required stop for our friends to check out the new culture. (One day, percussionist Andrew Cyrille came by for me to record his African drums for his first album. Luckily, we weren’t evicted.)

For five years, Nick Moy was right there for me. Smart as a whip, he prodded my thinking further than any place it had ever been. Funny and dry, he rarely was without a quip when it was needed. Patient and supportive past measure, he was virtually my patron, giving me the room I needed to develop my skills, insights, and fortitude, the space necessary to make my way in a world that I wasn’t sure really existed.

There’s a straight line from my life with Nick right through to cartoons and the internet. Over the years, we tried to keep track, and eventually (very eventually) I paid Nick back the money he laid out for me. But, just the money, the other stuff was beyond value.

My mentors: Ralph Ginzburg (?)

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:24:00 -0400

Click here to read this ad larger.

It’s hard to call Ralph Ginzburg a mentor of mine. I’m not sure he talked to me more than once, and after a few months on the night shift at his magazine Moneysworth, he had me fired. But a mentor to me he indeed was. Without either of us knowing it, the path I started at Ralph’s would continue for 15 years.

By the time I went to work for his publication in the summer of 1976, Ralph was on his last publication. He was notorious for being convicted and jailed for obscenity relating to his hard cover magazine Eros (though there were some who said he was less obscene than just completely annoying). Moneysworth was to be his last hurrah.

I worked in the production department. Ralph was around often, talking loudly and smartly about everything from design to circulation to advertising. All I had to do was absorb it all. It was the place I saw first hand and up close how design, language, marketing, and promotion worked in the real world.

Ralph showed me (inadvertently) the practical meaning of graphic design (the only things I knew were from reading my girlfriend’s book about Milton Glaser); he talked so much, and so eloquently about Herb Lubalin, I felt like I’d actually worked with him myself. And watching him lay out his trademark full page New York Times ads (like the ones above and below) was an education by itself, about design and typography.

But, it was really in the area of writing, strategy, and direct selling that I got my Ginzburgian education. I won’t belabor the details, but let me tell me you… He’d sit down directly at the typesetting machine (like a big IBM Selectric) and, in real time, type out the kind of ad that’s posted here. He’d intone the sentences out loud as he thought of them. He’d explain why he was writing what, even as he was typing something else entirely. He’d explain his philosophy of selling, direct selling, through the ads, why certain words worked better than others to grab subscriptions, and why he used the extra thick dotted lines around the return coupon.

I made a lifelong friend at Moneysworth. And I learned a lot. It doesn’t get any better even though I was fired. Ralph Ginzburg was a MF, in every way.

Click here to read this ad larger.

Click here to read this ad larger.

MTV: Music Television, The Logo

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 15:12:00 -0400

Click here for my other posts about MTV.

The “first MTV logo, designed by Manhattan Design

The mutating MTV logo, 1981, designed by Manhattan Design

I was the first Creative Director of MTV: Music Television, joining the parent company (then called Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment Company) May 5, 1980. My boss, Bob Pittman asked me to oversee all of the original production and programming for the fledging cable television channel (who had even heard of cable TV as anything other than a service for rural audiences?) though I’d never seen a television camera.

The first job? Establish a vocabulary, “voice,” and look for the thing. The first move? Hire my oldest and best friends, Alan Goodman and Frank Olinsky.

In my MTV office, 1981. Photo by Alan Goodman

As far as I can remember, the article below was the first written on the MTV logo (designed by Pat Gorman, Frank Olinsky & Patti Rogoff); it’s from June 1982, about 10 months after the network launched. My favorite part is the illustration of the what was essentially the “first” MTV logo (illustrated above). Notice the section in the article on Nickelodeon was about their redesign, but that was only two years before Alan Goodman and I oversaw a the next change (designed by Tom Corey and Scott Nash) that lasted over 25 years.

(You can read more about my adventures with MTV here or at The Fred/Alan Archive.

New Network Look: Hairy, Fat

The MTV Network IDs.

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:40:00 -0400

Click here for my other posts about MTV.

Alan Goodman & Fred Seibert, MTV IDs 1981-1983 from fredseibert on Vimeo.

From the very first minute I went to work for Bob Pittman (he was 25, I was 27) at the Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment Company in May of 1980, he told me about the company’s plan for a television channel that would be exclusively rock videos and how he envisioned the TV equivalent of radio jingles: network identifications (‘IDs’) short, wacked out pieces of animation that would reveal the network logo. Not like the staid CBS Eye (“You’re watching CBS.”) but rock’n’roll wrapped up into a little picture explosion.

As soon as we started working on what would become MTV: Music Television a month later I started thinking about these IDs and realized they could be the album covers of the new generation of music fans. For baby boomers the album cover came of age with the first American Beatles album representing every phase of their cultural development. I had bemoaned my lateness to that party, but my self-importance hoped the MTV network IDs could serve the same purpose.

Little did I know they’d achieve an almost equal prominence, and more. For me and Alan Goodman, my first partner in the enterprise (and countless more), they led the way for how we would become the first people to ‘brand’ American cable television networks throughout the 1980s. First as employees at MTV, then for our clients at Fred/Alan, we made over 1000 more of these 10-second visual operas for networks ranging from Nickelodeon and Comedy Central to TMTV in Japan and Lifetime. We worked with some of the greatest indie animators the world had to offer (some we’re still doing projects with today) and started a lot of companies on their way. These IDs might have been the most fun I had during the years we were doing television branding. (And for me, inadvertendly, they began what was to become a late life career change into producing cartoons.)

Click here for my other posts about MTV.

The very first MTV T-shirt.

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:08:00 -0400

Click here for my other posts about MTV.

“You’ll never look at music the same way again.”

Everything’s always hard at a start-up. Even T-shirts. Believe it or not, even at MTV.

The first time doing everything is torture, and in an organization, it’s organizational torment. No matter who’s in charge of what, everyone wants a say in everything. After all, we want to put our best foot forward to the world, don’t we? So, even a T-shirt (maybe, especially a T-shirt) becomes a matter of earth shattering importance.

I don’t think we’d even launched the channel —we’re probably talking July, 1981— when we realized we needed a T for some trade show or other. And honestly, we didn’t know how MTV worked yet. The vibe hadn’t really started, and we hadn’t finished much of any of the actual on-air work yet. The VJ’s were rehearsing and a set had been built (definitely not the vibe), and we had a logo (barely), but we didn’t really know how the logo worked yet. We knew about the changing colors and all, but nothing else. Our network IDs would explain it to us, but they were still being produced, and our promos were still a mess. The graphic identity was unformed and we wouldn’t understand our own work for over a year.

I’m not sure who designed the shirt, maybe Manhattan Design, the visionaries behind the logo. Alan Goodman, my key creative partner, had written the copy (“You’ll never look at music the same way again.”) for our first pitch tape that spring, and in lieu of anything else (“I Want My MTV” was still a year away) it was our key shout out.

This shirt only lasted for a couple of minutes before the “real” t-shirt came into being. (Don’t ask me why the new one was better, but it lasted for a year or more.)

What’s in a T-shirt? Not much, but, really, everything. We all love this thing.

Click here for my other posts about MTV.

More than 75,000 times.

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:53:00 -0400

Click here for my posts about MTV.

This post is about two animated spots during MTV’s first year. One’s the most popular, the other was only played once, and not on television.

“One Small Step” from fredseibert on Vimeo.

There were very few “ideas” for spots I could claim as mine at MTV. Identifying talent and strategy were my strengths, and I felt from there everything else would flow. But this spot was different; it’s the one for which I feel complete ownership.

Bob Pittman wanted there to be a signal identification at the top and bottom of each and every hour of MTV: Music Television, where the VJ would identify the most important music videos in that half hour. We agreed it would be voice over animation, with stills IDing the songs.

But, what should the animation be? It had to be memorable, repeatable, and not drive a viewer completely crazy. After all, it was going to play almost 17,000 times every year. And we had only 90 days until launch.

It seemed to me MTV had the most stuck up and conceited view of ourselves. We were completely enamored of the fact that we had no TV shows on our TV networks (a new “show” every three minutes, when a new video started). That was world changing, right? (Well, not really. CNN beat us to it. But we conveniently forgot about that.)

My mentor Dale Pon had introduced me to the treasure trove of free images and film from NASA, a public government entity which we all “owned” as US citizens. It would be an inexpensive source of public domain video for us. As a start-up —no one was really sure this thing would work except us— we needed all the financial short-cuts we could find.

“Space is very rock’n’roll,” said senior producer Marcy Brafman.

This spot was going to be our most important. There would be over 30 changing video pieces every hour (music videos, promos, VJs, and commercials) and this would be the only thing all day that was constant. It would get a lot of scrutiny.

So, I thought the “top of the hour” spot should do it’s job and reflect our conceit, be inexpensive, and use our ever changing logo. Oh right, it had to have that indefinable rock attitude.

I thought the simplest way to combine all that stuff was to steal the shine from an already existing piece of video. Let’s take the most famous television moment ever and fold, spindle, and mutilate it to our nefarious purposes.

Our brainstorming turned up some famous, or really infamous, stuff. The biggest one we thought about was the Lee Harvey Oswald shooting by Jack Ruby that was live on television in 1963. Aside from it’s wrongness, it occurred to me that it was only an American moment. We were claiming that MTV would be “the world’s first video music channel.” We needed a world moment.

Right then it came to me. In the summer of ‘69 I was traveling behind the Iron Curtain with my family on the day of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. The streets of dirt poor Sofia, Bulgaria were chocked with walkers looking for apartments with televisions to witness this seemingly impossible achievement of man. Truly, the most memorable worldwide event in TV history.

Let’s cop it, I figured. The worst that could happen is that a generation of kids would grow up wondering why NASA photoshopped in an American flag with MTV’s used to be.

Alan Goodman and I enlisted Buzz Potamkin’s Perpetual Motion Pictures (soon to be Buzzco) to put together the spot. David Sameth produced for Buzz, Candy Kugel illustrated and directed (logos originally designed and illustrated by Manhattan Design), and music was by John Petersen and Jonathan Elias at Elias/Peterson.

By the way, this version of the spot never ran. The day before launch the lawyers informed me we needed, and would never receive, permission from astronaut Neil Armstrong to use his quotation. For launch night only —midnight, August 1, 1981— one of our big bosses did a voice over. John Lack, the executive vice president of our parent, Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company, who’s idea had been the seed from which MTV grew, announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen, rock’n’roll.” John, a huge music fan was proud of his role in jump starting this phase of the evolution. And from 1 a.m. until the very end, the rocket blast sounded with only a ‘beep beep beep’ in place of Mr. Armstrong.

The VMA Moonman

The spot ran more than 75,000 times, through variations of animation and music. Now, it’s sense memory DNA is left in the “Moonman” award from the VMAs (the idea of Manhattan Design’s Frank Olinsky, I believe); no one in the audience knows why it exists. It was only retired, tragically, on January 28, 1986, when the Challenger Shuttle exploded in mid-air. The end of the first space era.

“Freddie Buys It” from fredseibert on Vimeo.

This story’s shorter. A couple of months after the network launch, Bob promoted me to Vice President, MTV’s first (a big deal in those pre-title inflationary days); I was probably whining too much about how hard I was working. He put together a huge congratulatory event and asked Alan to make some video just for the party. He asked director Steve Oakes and producer Peter Rosenthal at Broadcast Arts in Washington DC to modify one of the awesome claymation spots they’d made for us. They put a plasticine me in the spot and ignobly ran me over. I got what I deserved.

Click here for my posts about MTV.

The first MTV bumper sticker.

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:52:00 -0400

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I came upon this photo on Flickr of the first MTV bumper sticker (part of a 1981 pre-launch promotional package that included a duffel bag, poster, buttons, and this) and a few trivia things about pricked by attention, completely aside from the fact that it was ‘the first.’

The first approved MTV logo design & colors

• The logo:

Like with everything at the beginning of a venture, everyone thinks they’re an expert. And when it came to the MTV logo, which broke almost every rule in the book, there were even more opinions as to what was wrong with it, and what could be changed to make it right.

In this case, there were many who believed you couldn’t read ‘Music Television’ on the logo design. And that would be tragic; people wouldn’t know what we were! So, they asked me to have the designers to “fix it.” Manhattan Design came up with a decent solution, which was only used this once; expand and extend ‘Music Television’ BIG, for those who couldn’t read.

• “On cable.”:

Almost no one in America knew what cable television was in 1981, and if they did, they thought it was synonymous with HBO (or “the Home Box” as many put it); fewer than 500,000 homes could get MTV when it launched. We had to tell people where to see this weird all music television thing. Was it on CBS? Channel 13? Where?

• “In stereo”:

“A television is a metal box which a crappy speaker in the side,” said the company’s first president.

Hard to believe, but no television sets could play programs in stereo in 1981. We were selling MTV to a generation that only wanted the quality of stereo (hell, we were that generation) and we knew it was a technological must.

We went really far to do this do. “In stereo” was one of the top “promises” we made on the air, producing hundreds of wacky promos to prove our point. Since no TV’s had two speakers, we created our own kit where you could link your stereo record player to your set (“You Can Make Your TV Stereo!!!” named by Alan Goodman), which was sold locally through the cable operator (another way for them to make some dough during a time that was no so assured in the cable biz).

And the music itself. The videos came to us with an believably bad, mono, audio track; it hadn’t mattered to the music companies up until then, the videos were mainly for play on international television stations, even more technically backwards than ours. Andy Setos, the head of the engineering team, went in an re-synced every single one of the clips from a stereo audio master, and, if necessary, took an LP (an LP!!) for the sync. Geez.

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Bumper sticker on my office wall, 1981

Click here for my posts about MTV. On May 5, 1980 I lucked into my first job in television...

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:28:00 -0400

Click here for my posts about MTV.

On May 5, 1980 I lucked into my first job in television —cable television— at Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company (WASEC). Within 30 days programming head Bob Pittman started putting together the team to launch ‘The Music Channel’ (the working name for what eventually became MTV) and had me add to my existing duties as the head of promotion for The Movie Channel and work on music television too.

We had an incredible team to develop the image and vocabulary for the network. Against all odds, the unique logo, network IDs, and promos set the look and sound for the media over the next 20 years. Eventually, my departments included promotion, studio production, programming, advertising, and creative services.

By 1983 the entrepreneurial genes were straining so my longtime creative partner, writer/producer Alan Goodman, and I left the company to form a consulting/advertising/production agency.

Our first client? MTV Networks, until 1992.

Click here for my posts about MTV.

In my MTV office, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, NYC, 1981

My mentors: Michael Mantler

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:28:00 -0400

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Photograph of Michael Mantler by Tod Papageorge, 1968

Another in my ongoing series of horrified-to-be-identified-as-my-“mentors:”

Trumpeter and composer Michael M antler.

Mike was first hand proof that talent, planning, vision, drive, hard work, and sheer force of will could combine to accomplish dreams beyond anyone’s expectations. He didn’t have any particular interest, I think, in showing me much of anything really, but he was an incredible role model, trying to keep his family’s heads above water, struggling against all odds to be viable fringe artists in a highly commercial world. It was a time in my life that would never be repeated, and one that made a huge difference to me.

Mike would probably recoil at the whole idea of mentorship —by now, we’re probably more like friends or something— but I don’t know what else to call it. He was already a young legend in avant-garde jazz when, as a naive 18 year old, I crashed my first professional recording session he was producing, his then wife Carla Bley’s “Escalator Over the Hill,” He patiently figured I was a friend of one of the superstar orchestra’s if he even noticed my presence. I went on to play their records on college radio, and then he and Carla trusted me right out of school to work at their innovative artist record distribution service (itself an outgrowth of their incredible, idealistic collective, the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, JCOA). I wasn’t too impressed with the job I did, but a few years later Mike asked me to be the sound man and assistant roadie on Carla’s first big band tours. It was an unforgetable experience not only for the music, but for the pride with which Mike managed the unruly, artistic bunch they’d gathered. I repayed them after a year by ducking out days before our first European tour (a real loss on my part), but it didn’t stop us from staying friendly for the 30 years since.

Thanks Mike, you made a real difference in my struggle to become a professional adult.

……
It wouldn’t be right to talk about Mike without mentioning some of his stunning work. His music isn’t for everyone (on his website he quotes one reviewer saying “’Silence’ is possibly the least listenable record I have ever heard”) and requires a dedicated listener, but the rewards are great. Aside from his playing and composing, Mike was no slouch as a producer either. He always knew to not only get the very best musicians, but that it didn’t hurt if they had name value for sales (check out Robert Wyatt, Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, Jack DeJohnette, Pharoh Sanders, Cecil Taylor, and Don Preston, among many others). Here’s a few worth checking out:

One of my favorites of Mike’s pieces features a jazz avant-garde superstar orchestra, from the 1968 “The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra”:

The Jazz Composer’s Orchestra > Preview

(Composed & conducted by Michael Mantler;
Soloist: Pharoah Sanders)

My mentors: Joe Fields

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:27:00 -0400

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Jazz recording entrepreneur Joe Fields

I’ve been posting quite a few of the records I produced or engineered at the beginning of my career, and lately in particular, the Muse records. Which has gotten me thinking about the incredibly important role Muse founder Joe Fields didn’t mean to play in my work life.

Somehow or other I ended up in Joe’s office (above the West 71st Street Bagel Nosh) in 1976 asking for a gig “producing” records (like I even knew what that was). Joe, in his always enthusiastic way, happily gave me an immediate assignment (I think it was the first Linc Chamberland LP), and for the next three or four years I was a willing student in his unintended record business class.

(For those who won’t read the Wikipedia entry, Joe started Muse in the early-70s after a long stint at Buddah Records where he started an in-house jazz label Cobblestone. It was a label of jazz “blowing” sessions, meaning it was primarily mainstream jazz artists who’d come in the studio and in two union sessions –six hours– record enough material for a complete album. Muse Records was among the last of its breed, in a day where the most revered mainstreamers had gone corporate. The result was an unparalleled 20+ year archive of jazz in America from 1972-1995. And Joe continues to add to the legacy with HighNote Records.)

I won’t bore you with all the things I got out of those “lessons,” but suffice it to say that Joe had forgotten more than I would ever know. How to pick an artist? How to promote? What to ignore? How to negotiate? What’s important, what’s not? When’s a good time to take a chance? Who was Juggy Murray? What was ‘producing’ anyhow?

A few of my Muse Records productions
'Bop Redux" width="100" height="100"/> Groovin' High" width="100" height="100"/> The Gator Horn" width="100" height="100"/> A Place Within" width="100" height="100"/> Movin' Up!" width="100" height="100"/> Hot House" width="100" height="100"/> Double Exposure" width="100" height="100"/> Good Cookin'" width="100" height="100"/> Now" width="100" height="100"/>

Joe introduced me to the real world. Without him I never would’ve gotten to work with 24 track recording, or get to meet the legendary Rudy Van Gelder. To say nothing of the artists like Hank Jones, Willis Jackson, Jaki Byard, or the others. And, he didn’t mean to change my musical tastes —I’m sure it was of no consequence to him whatsoever— but I walked in dedicated avant gardist and walked out a lifelong soul jazz devotee. (Soul jazz didn’t only sell better and longer, but was a lot more fun.)

There was a lot of history in Joe that I just soaked up and it was always fun dropping by the office just to listen to him on the telephone, working it with an artist, a studio, or maybe a distributor or radio station. Things that were second nature to him were golden to my uneducated ears, and I just couldn’t get enough. My only complaint is that I wanted more. More projects, more time, and more money. Mainly more projects, because they were just so much fun. But, I was going broke on the $250 a record he was paying me, though I now know if he paid me anything more he would’ve gone out of business. Lesson #1, being a survivor in the independent record business is never easy, and probably requires you to disappoint almost everyone wanting a better payday.

It was at a disastrous Muse session in Brooklyn that I called my friend, Muse liner note writer, and future partner Alan Goodman to come and help me figure out whether to stop trying to make a living at record producing and try my hand in the then revolution of cable television. You know who won.

Working with Muse Records was a once in a lifetime, unforgetable experience. Not all the records I worked on for Joe were wonderful. And some were beyond fantastic, truly world class. But, no matter the project, it was a rare privilege Joe Fields allowed me.

Joe was, and continues to be, a generous man. Thanks guy, I couldn’t be a producer without you.

"We look before you buy!"

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:08:00 -0400

A little known fact about MTV Networks (originally called Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment Company, a second little known fact) was that its original strategy called for the eventual launch of ten networks. They thought about games and sports, in addition to music, movies, and kids; their fourth one was to be shopping. As the company’s creative director, my team went to work in the Spring of 1982.

Before Home Shopping Network there was to be ShopAmerica, the world’s first all shoppping TV channel. After all, the half owner of the company was American Express; that’s why they invested in cable television, after all.

There are a lot of network development levels that are too boring to go into (and the minute HSN launched it was clear how our strategy would have failed), but since I’ve always loved working on logos and branding I hung onto our attempts for ShopAmerica. George Lois and my mentor, Dale Pon, art directed for their agency LPG/Pon.

"Mee, mee, me, meeee!"

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:32:00 -0400

More about MTV Networks Online

Dwight Yoakam, Sting, Kelis

Sonicnet from fredseibert on Vimeo.

MTV got Sonicnet in the middle of another transaction they thought would be more important. But as the internet heated up in the business world’s consciousness, Sonicnet.com became something they thought to pay attention to. Which meant that, as president of MTV Networks Online, I was trying to help make the thing successful.

MTV had also acquited a then-unique personalized radio application. Coupled with Sonicnet, we decided an ad campaign would supercharge the site, something large media folks like us thought was necessary. It wasn’t.

Sisqo, kd lang, Moby, Johnny Resnick, Don Henley, Beenie Man, Sheryl Crow

Sonicnet from fredseibert on Vimeo.

Over a few objections, I hired my brilliant, challenging mentor Dale Pon to create our campaign. Dale had done our the iconic “I Want My MTV” for me in the early 1980s and constantly proved himself to be the most creative and effective media ad man in America. The stunningly talented director Tim Newman was already on my online staff (after turning his back on a career that included some of the greatest music videos of all time), so he was tapped to shoot the spots.

Gang Starr, SheDaisy, Blink 182, Moby, Charlotte Church, Ruff Ryders, Eve, Sting

Sonicnet from fredseibert on Vimeo.

You can see for yourself that Dale knew how conceive big ideas to bring out the best from stars, and, he really knew how to reach for the stars (like Isaac Hayes, James Brown, Joshua Bell, Jewel, Pat Metheny, Sheryl Crow, Beenie Man, Gang Starr, Faith Hill, Lindsey Buckingham, Don Henley, Al Jarreau, Alice Cooper, Blink 182, Kenny Wayne Shephard, Bon Jovi, Buck Cherry, Charlotte Church, Christina Acquilera, Dwight Yoakam, The Ruff Ryders, Eve, Johnny Resnick (The Goo Goo Dolls), kd lang, Buck Cherry, Kelis, Lindsey Buckingham, Melissa Etheridge, Moby, Seal, Sisqo, Static X, SheDaisy, Hillary Hahn, Charlotte Church, Yo Yo Ma, and Sting.)

James Brown, Christina Acquilera, Sting, Yo Yo Ma, Dwight Yoakam, Isaac Hayes, Sheryl Crow, Blink 182

Sonicnet from fredseibert on Vimeo.

This campaign, like every other one I’d worked on with Dale over the decades, was a hoot. One of the best things to come out of my one year in the corporate internets.

Into the new media. Again.

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 17:52:00 -0400

More about MTV Networks Online

James Brown, Christina Acquilera, Sting, Yo Yo Ma, Dwight Yoakam

Sonicnet.com 17 from fredseibert on Vimeo.

At the time, it seemed like a horrible mistake. And like mistakes sometimes can, it led to a new, uncharted, wonderful life.

It was the beginning of the peaking of “the internet” 1.0, which, honestly, I wanted nothing to do with “the internet.” I liked email, I liked Amazon.com. But I also liked the career I had staked out producing cartoons and media consulting. I was 48 years old, gotten married again, had a couple of kids. And felt like I’d finally settled into to doing something pretty well. I didn’t really want to start over with something new, no matter how exciting. Really.

However, to make a long story short, I succumbed. In 1999, after seven years in Los Angeles, my family and I moved to New York, and I became the president of MTV Networks Online, which included MTV.com and Nick.com. Joining a constantly innovating media as part of an established media company —no matter how fresh they may have been back in the day— was exactly the wrong way to go. And “go” I did. Within a year I was back to producing and consulting. But, I’d never be the same again —the whole world wouldn’t be— and, at least I got a head start on all of my old media pals.

But, great things came out of the experience. For instance, the campaign for MTV’s website Sonicnet.com (which I’ll write about elsewhere). I got some new friendships, especially my partnership with engineer/thinker Emil Rensing (which eventually led to us founding Next New Networks). Most importantly, I gained a new perspective on everything media, right into the belly of the beast of the new I tried to avoid. My innate curiosity paid off once again.