Tube Dreams

Hey, remember when MTV still played music? I don't. Not really. When I got old enough to really care about MTV, they had already started phasing out the music video, relegating it to the morning hours when nobody but kids faking sickness would be home to watch. The Real World, Beavis and Butthead, and The Grind were already starting to take up the afternoon hours. Stuart and I still had our phase of keeping up with videos, though (and Sunday nights were still good with 120 Minutes), but we ultimately shifted to VH1 for a while until that channel also decided that actual music on a music channel didn't make any sense.

The reason I'm taking this side trip into basic cable history is that Gerritt, Melanie, and I stumbled onto a really cool channel on our digital cable: The Tube Music Network. It's Channel 804 on Cox up here and 207 on Comcast. We were channel surfing when we stopped on an image of a sweaty, toothy Freddie Mercury banging through a song in some enormous stadium while the other members of Queen rocked around him. That set us on a discussion of what Mercury's real name was (Farrokh Bulsara, according to Wikipedia) and how he died (complications from AIDS). Before I had a chance to change the channel, however, a string of more live performances and videos from the likes of Joe Walsh, KT Tunstall, Fleetwood Mac, and Dave Matthews convinced us to stay. Rod Stewart's video in the purple tights almost convinced us to leave, but we persevered.

You see, the retro concept of The Tube is to be a music network that actually plays music. Live concert footage, officially released videos--you name it. What's more, there are no commercials - just Tube promos that tend to run a little too long, but that's a small price to pay for actually getting some content. The channel probably trends to the more popular musicians, but we did see the actual video for Enigma's "Sadeness - Part 1," so I'm sure there's plenty of variety. You might not see the latest indie media darling's video on there, but then again, their vault seems to be sizeable. For me, it hearkened back to the days when Stuart and I could catch 70's bands dancing weirdly on old reruns on VH1 so we could laugh at how they looked while listening in awe to how they rocked. This makes sense, because the founder of The Tube, Les Garland, was also a co-founder of MTV and VH1.

"The Tube presentation is honest, intelligent, and respectful of music and the people who love it." If that isn't a marketing slogan that will draw me in, I don't know what is. Check it out if you've got it.