Old Videos

My album-oriented-adult-quality-music-from-then-and-now radio station was hyping a new service today : Videos you loved when you were growing up. Log on and watch even the really old ones.

The really old ones? Like from when they were invented when the Cuters were in middle-school? Like yesterday? Like, I mean, c'mon.

Middle Brother and I used to wake up at 5am when we were very young. We'd curl up in the afghans Grandma had crocheted for us (the red and yellow ones with the flower pattern) and watch the end of Modern Farmer while waiting for Crusader Rabbit and Mighty Mouse to start. If we got up too early, all we could see was the test pattern on two of the stations and the waving American Flag on the third.

We didn't have just video. We had Audio-Video. A/V meant slide shows with a reel-to-reel tape deck almost-but-not-totally-synced to the automatic slide advancer. There were slide shows on Navajo sheep farmers and the building of the Panama Canal and on health topics better discussed in single-sex classrooms. No scantily clad dancers, no special effects, no memorable tunes. The only home-made A/V productions were 8mm family movies or slide shows of the neighbors' trip to Florida. Silent movies and slide shows - without imported Top 40 soundtracks - those were our videos.

Audio and video were stationary then. Daddooooooooo brought home one of the first transistor radios when I was in the 6th grade. Before that, music lived on the record player in the Hi-Fi in the living room or inside the console radio in the kitchen. Portable video? That was just for Dick Tracey and his wrist watch/camera/communicator.

The really old music videos...... yeah, right.




"James James Morrison Morrison Weatherbee George DuPree
Said one day to his mother, "Mother, " he said, said he,
"You must never go down to the end of town
Without consulting Me"
A.A.Milne When We Were Very Young