MTV’s Amp

Sunday March 14, 2010 · By

Last week we looked at some retro-style videos. The only proper response to that is to have a week of ACTUAL retro videos. And you can’t talk about old electronic music videos without talking about MTV’s Amp.

In the late 90s, after MTV started going reality-show crazy but before the advent of M2, there was one bastion of good music video-watching: late at night on the weekend (of course). You’d start off with 120 Minutes, seeing what interesting alternative stuff Matt Pinfield (and later, Dave Holmes, the first “Wanna Be a DJ” “loser”) had to offer. It was good.

And when 120 Minutes was over, there was Amp. It was the only place in the country that you could see a Chemical Brothers or Orbital video. It was required viewing if you cared at all about electronic music. It was instrumental in introducing a small generation to the very genre of electronic music.

ELVAD’s love of electronic music was seeded by Amp. For those familiar with the program, enjoy this look back. For those unfamiliar, it may be difficult to understand the cultural context of why these strange videos were important. Hopefully each post will be able to convey that to you.