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Without the luxury of cable service during college and the collapse of MTV afterward, music of that era was almost exclusively an aural experience, so those streamers I mentioned the other day led me down a rabbit hole with many period treasures like this Anton Corbijn-directed classic (other versions turn off the video for twenty seconds about halfway in), though his promo for the equally memorable B-side is nowhere to be found. Interesting that the genre’s referred to as electronic body music (“commonly abbreviated as EBM”, which is worse), which must also betray the blindness of its participants to historical perspective.

Twitch’s algorithm recommended a streamer who plays mostly 80’s videos from the UK, and enough of them were right up my alley (well, that particular alley) I tuned in to see some that I must have missed on MTV or have only the faintest memory of, including the catchy Propaganda hit above and this Secession single. Why does it seem acts named themselves back then by taking whatever words happen to be available? I’m unsure how he skirts the obvious copyright violations, other than not having the audience to draw attention to them, but I wonder if, technology willing, the videos were actually being mixed could these broadcasts be justified as DJ-like performances, where instead of just transitioning into one another, clips or images from the next in queue are spliced in towards the end?

Quite possibly the most gratifying moment in my many years of genre television:

I couldn’t help but think that this very same series (with minor changes for continuity) might have served as a return to the Prisoner back in the 70’s or early 80’s, depending upon McGoohan’s fitness to return for the role.

Edit: I was right.

Mädchen Amick and the track which I just realized reminds me of Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” take me back to 1990 Seattle.Update: Showtime’s since put the first couple of episodes up for free viewing, but they don’t allow embedding with a timecode, so I’ll have to settle for a link.

Sure, True Detective’s second season sucked, but Fargo’s more than made up for it, and with Game of Thrones arguably reaching its zenith, Mr. Robot thankfully returning in a month and the implausible takeover of a network by comical DC characters, it begs the question, why return to a relic that was itself put to pasture by the very Law and Order franchise which has been a season from retirement for the better part of a decade? Syndication, of course, and though there’s a lot less of it, my stubborn refusal to (re)join the Netflix generation but forgo further investment in hard copies has created an interesting delivery model that’s representative of most my preoccupations as of late.

Took 14 years, but I finally found this commercial:.

How long will this alternative to YouTube last copyright purges? Tonight, at least, I got to revisit one of my favorite audio recordings off a rerun of SNL, which, like Devo’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives”, always outdid the studio version I later acquired.

Not sure how these full-album uploads get away with it, but I’m grateful for this sentimental trigger; “The New Stone Age” also sounds like Proustian involuntary memory, too, though that might be the way it takes that turn at the end like Underworld’s “Cups” from Beaucoup Fish did so much later.

I got a lump in my throat when I saw this scene tonight. Birth of the Multiverse.