There were, of course, more videos than just these ten. Some didn't make the list because there wasn't enough room, but there were those rejected for the simple plain reason of being bad.

The dubious honor for Bad Video of the Day goes to Kate Bush, for this piece of work. She was trying to be artful, I guess, but...yikes. I've included thirty seconds of video footage in case the picture has made you curious. Roll over, Sanjaya!

I thought the video for Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight" was a better example of an arty video. Much of it is just his black-and-white shadowy lip-synching face, but it fits the mood of the tune very well.

When I was young I saw the video for a song which I still do not have the name to, so I will just call it "Whoa-oah here she comes! Watch out for her! She'll chew you up!" Later in the week that same song came on the radio as I and Mom were in the car. Eager to display my new knowledge gained from the video, I told her "DIDJA KNOW THIS SONG'S ABOUT A PANTHER?" Mom, who believed a lot of things she was told, said "Really? I didn't know that."

I wouldn't have guessed the John and Mary in "Ballad of John and Mary" were actually mimes either, if I hadn't seen the video first. DIDJA KNOW THEY'RE MIMES?

Carly Simon had a video on the first day. There are big lips that are attractive, and then there are big lips that are frightening. That's all I have to say about Carly.

Here's another great one. This video comes from "Rainbow" and it hits all the right notes and then some. Keep in mind computer editing software didn't exist, so all the gratuitous cuts in this thing had to be arranged by hand. It's an amazing effort for Day One.

I don't have anything about this band to share with you. Wikipedia defines Rainbow as "an optical and meteorological phenomenon that causes a nearly continuous spectrum of light to appear in the sky when the Sun shines onto droplets of moisture in the Earth's atmosphere."

Before Office Space, there was this video for "Mr. Briefcase," wherein Lee Ritenour is harrassed by a meeting room full of suits (and one of them is a vampire; Mike Judge never went that far). Though sometimes, he does the harrassing. They couldn't get much work done if he was lying there yelling into an unplugged rotary phone, so the way I see it, they had to do something about him.

The lyrics repeatedly and symbolically ask, "What have you got in your briefcase?" One guy has a playable piano in his (plus some money). Towards the end of the song, PEOPLE are stuffed into briefcases, Comfort Inn style. Yes, this is a strange one, but not as strange as Kate Bush.

Did you ask for more Ph.D? You got it! "Little Susie's on the Up" has everything, including an old guy with a pirate eyepatch that frequently gives number ratings to whatever he sees happening. Plus, the butcher up there waltzes with a dead pig. And pickled eggs show up in the CRAZIEST places!

I don't know anything about these guys either. Wikipedia defines Bootcamp as "the police force of the island nation of Jamaica. The police force has manpower of approximately 8,000. The current commissioner is Lucius A. Thomas of Saint Ann. In early 2005, politician Edward Seaga called for the merger of the Jamaica Constabulary Force and the country's military, the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF). This has not garnered any support among government officials, however."

The police force of the island of Jamaica makes good music videos; I'll give them that. The first two minutes take place in the most corrupt kangaroo court ever, where bribery takes place mid-trial, and the lawyers climb onto the judge's desk without wearing socks. After the defendant is declared guilty and taken away, the rest of the video consists of the band playing and posing in jail cells. I didn't think that was as interesting, so I only uploaded the court portion.

What a finale! There is nothing the video for "Love Stinks" does not have.

It has a guy playing two trumpets at the same time while jumping up and down on a pogo stick
(this is my favorite image from any video I've ever reviewed so far).

Psycho Mantis on his wedding day.

A tomato getting chopped in half.

An old lady in cheesy sunglasses who can swallow her chin.

A scene where a member of the band sleeps with a fish.

A chimpanzee. This is how hardcore the production is: they hired a chimpanzee just for filling up the bottom half of three seconds of screentime. This video has everything!

On top of that, the audience is encouraged to sing along. This is the ultimate end to the ultimate day; the first day of MTV would shape the future of television for many years to come. It was both a good and bad thing.

Want to see more MTV classic video articles? Then the future is in your hands....if you have in your possession any portion of the good years of this network on videocassette (or more preferably transferred to DVD), send me a line and we'll talk.

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