The sky's the limit. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played new music from Chat Pile, Mclusky, Weird Nightmare and Ratboys in hour 1 and songs about skies in hour 2. It helped that I wasn't the keymaster.
This playlist must prepare for the coming of Gozer:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Chat Pile - Masks/Single
Mclusky - I Know Computer/I Sure Am Getting Sick of This Bowling Alley
Weird Nightmare - Might See You There/Hoopla
Sugar - Long Live Love/Single
Ratboys - Light Night Mountains All That/Singin' to an Empty Chair
GUV - Warmer Than Gold/Warmer Than Gold
Radium Dolls - Daddy/Wound Up
The Bret Tobias Set - Sepviva Shuffle/Tuneless Blues
Joyce Manor - The Opossum/I Used to Go to This Bar
Plasma Driver - It/Night Whispers
Greg Freeman - Salesman/Burnover
Jim E. Brown - Toxic/I Urinated on a Butterfly
Sleaford Mods - Don Draper/The Demise of Planet X
Just Mustard - Endless Deathless/We Were Just Here
Sharp Pins - Fall in Love Again/Balloon Balloon Balloon
The Dears - Deep in My Heart/Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful!
The Lemonheads - Marauders/Love Chant
Hour 2: Skies
Frank Black - Pie in the Sky/Teenager of the Year
INXS - Guns in the Sky/Kick
U2 - Bullet the Blue Sky/The Joshua Tree
Max Webster - Paradise Skies/A Million Vacations
Van Halen - Light Up the Sky/II
Motorhead - No Voices in the Sky/1916
Sloan - People in the Sky/Twice Removed
The Replacements - Skyway/Pleased to Meet Me
Fontaines D.C. - Dublin City Sky/Dogrel
Superchunk - Detroit Has a Skyline/Clambakes Vol. 10: Only in My Dreams - Live in Tokyo 2009
Shudder to Think - Lies About the Sky/Funeral at the Movies
Queens of the Stone Age - The Sky is Fallin'/Songs for the Deaf
The Who - Armenia, City in the Sky/The Who Sell Out
The Kinks - Big Sky/The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
Pink Floyd - The Great Gig in the Sky/Dark Soundboard of Philadelphia 3/15/73
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Fashion (1980)
For those of us old enough to be sentient in 1980, there was a noticeable shift as the '70s ended and a new decade began. Obviously, just flipping the calendar to a new page doesn't automatically change anything other than the date, but the vibes were definitely different. The ramshackle feel of the '70s was replaced by a more uptight mood in the '80s, which was underlined by the rise of conservative leaders like Reagan and Thatcher.
For the purposes of this feature, music video was changing as well. More artists were promoting their music by making videos, although the vast majority were straight performance clips--either live or mimed in a studio.
One artist who wasn't afraid to take some chances was David Bowie, who had risen to prominence in the '70s with a string of excellent albums. He also dabbled in acting and was very creative when it came to his look and his image. Despite the critical success of his music, his late '70s "Berlin Trilogy" of albums made with Brian Eno didn't make a big splash commercially.
Bowie's 1980 release Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) was less ambient and ambitious than the Berlin albums, and its lead single "Ashes to Ashes" revisited the Major Tom character of his first hit, 1969's "Space Oddity." The accompanying video was epic and expensive, but since I already wrote about it and the song in depth, I'm going to focus on the second single and video, "Fashion."
The song both celebrates and criticizes the world of fashion, which Bowie saw as becoming regimented and strict. Calling out "fascists" and the "goon squad," "Fashion" features a memorable guitar riff from art-rock legend Robert Fripp. Of course, the line "We are the goon squad and we're coming to town" takes on a much different meaning in 2026.
The video was directed by David Mallet, who worked with Bowie on "Ashes to Ashes" and also directed tons of videos for artists including Blondie, Boomtown Rats, Joan Jett, Def Leppard, Rush, the Rolling Stones, Iron Maiden, Tina Turner and AC/DC.
Filmed at the NYC nightclub Hurrah, the video features Bowie and his bandmates (including rhythm guitarist Carlos Alomar, drummer Stephen Goulding and lead guitarist G.E. Smith of Hall & Oates and later the SNL house band) performing. It cuts between them and shots of dancers rehearsing and a bunch of New Romantic types outside a soup kitchen, one of whom was May Pang, ex-girlfriend of John Lennon and future wife of Bowie producer Tony Visconti.
The dancers start imitating Bowie's dance moves, a commentary on the copycat nature of fashion trends. One of the dancers was original MTV VJ Alan Hunter, a year-plus before MTV launched in August 1981.
The song peaked at #5 on the U.K. Singles chart and #70 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and #21 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart).
Although I was familiar with songs like "Fame" and "New Americans," "Fashion" and "Ashes to Ashes" were my real introduction to Bowie at age 12. They were interesting and weird and fun, which are all pretty good descriptors for Mr. Bowie himself. And the visual flair of their videos was certainly influential on the rest of the music world as we moved into the '80s and the power of the video became more apparent.
We're in the dog days of winter, people. The best thing you can do is hunker down and distract yourself with entertainment that doesn't involve doomscrolling. Here's something: On Stuck In Thee Garage this week, I played new music from GUV, Plasma Driver, Joyce Manor and Girly in hour 1 and primo 21st century riffage in hour 2! It's the best in show (RIP, Catherine O'Hara).
You don't forget the best:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
GUV - Let Your Hands Go/Warmer Than Gold
Plasma Driver - Dose/Night Whispers
Joyce Manor - I Used to Go to This Bar/I Used to Go to This Bar
Girly - What If They Knew/Single
Juliana Hatfield - All I've Got/Lightning Might Strike
La Luz - News of the Universe/Extra! Extra!
Greg Freeman - Gone (Can Mean a Lot of Things)/Burnover
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Manny's Ready to Roll/Pogo Rodeo
Dry Cleaning - Rocks/Secret Love
Water From Your Eyes - Nights in Armor/It's a Beautiful Place
Weakened Friends - Lightspeed/Feels Like Hell
Guerilla Toss - Red Flag to Angry Bull/You're Weird Now
This is Lorelei - I Can't Fail/Holo Boy
Glitterer - Victory Lap/erer
Steel Beans - Stowaway/Steel Beans
Middle Mass - White Silk/Songs for the Sapphire Hare
Gouwzee - Chemical Shortcut/Gouwzee
Hour 2: 21st Century Riffs
Death From Above 1979 - Always On/The Physical World
Ty Segall - Break a Guitar/Ty Segall
Arctic Monkeys - Brick by Brick/Suck It and See
The Dead Weather - Treat Me Like Your Mother/Horehound
Queens of the Stone Age - Misfit Love/Era Vulgaris
Hot Snakes - Retrofit/Audit in Progress
Mission of Burma - Dirt/ONoffON
Thee Oh Sees - Rogue Planet/Mutilator Defeated at Last
Parquet Courts - Borrowed Time/Light Up Gold
Ben Folds - Rockin' the Suburbs/Rockin' the Suburbs
Sloan - Gimme That/Action Pact
Oceanator - The Last Summer/Nothing's Ever Fine
PJ Harvey - This is Love/Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea
St. Vincent - Birth in Reverse/St. Vincent
The Hold Steady - Constructive Summer/Stay Positive
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Dream Police (1979)
There was a lot going on in 1979. Disco was big on the charts, with Donna Summer and Earth, Wind and Fire doing well, but the backlash was growing. New wave was gaining momentum, with acts like the Cars, the Police, the B-52s, Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson getting radio airplay, and punk acts like the Clash and the Jam were transcending the genre.
It was also a breakthrough year for Cheap Trick, a power pop act out of Rockford, Illinois, that released its debut album in '77 to little fanfare. Two more excellent but under-the-radar albums came out before the band went to Japan in the spring of 1978 to play a few shows. The reaction was over the top and Cheap Trick recorded the shows for a live album called Cheap Trick at Budokan, which was released in early '79. The album was a monster hit, with "I Want You to Want Me" becoming a top 10 single.
The band had a visual gimmick, contrasting the handsomeness of singer Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson with the dorky, goofball looks of guitarist Rick Nielsen and drummer Bun E. Carlos.
The band didn't waste the momentum, releasing their fourth studio album, Dream Police, on my 12th birthday (Sept. 21). The title track served as the lead single and video, with its lyrics describing a Big Brother situation where the government polices your dreams.
The video opens with the four band members in a police lineup, pleading their cases for why they shouldn't be prosecuted.
Zander: "I didn't do it. Five years ago, I had no idea I'd be here. Who are you anyway? What do you take me for? I must be dreaming."
Carlos (after fumbling through his pockets for a piece of paper): "Pardon me. Listen, I'll never eat a double cheeseburger before bed again, really."
Petersson: "I'm telling you, I didn't do it. But if I did do it, it was an accident." (A direct quote of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious' comments to the police after his girlfriend Nancy Spungen was found dead in their hotel room in the fall of 1978.)
Nielsen: "In promulgating your esoteric cogitations and articulating your superficial sentimentalities, amicable, philosophical, and psychological observations, beware of platitudinous ponderosities. Are we really the Dream Police?"
The foursome then walks offscreen and dresses in the all-white garb of the Dream Police before the video switches to a band performance, complete with Carlos with a lung dart hanging from his lips as he nonchalantly pounds the skins. The song is a pulsing rocker that's abetted by a string section as a paranoid-sounding Zander sings: "The dream police/They live inside of my head/The dream police/They come to me in my bed/The dream police/They're coming to arrest me/Oh no."
The added ELO-style instrumentation expands the group's sound, elevating the paranoia as the song builds up to a feverish crescendo. "'Cause they're waiting for me/They're looking for me/Every single night/They're driving me insane/Those men inside my brain."
Nielsen takes the mid-song spoken word part: "I try to sleep/They're wide awake/They won't let me alone/They don't get paid to take vacations/Or let me alone/They spy on me/I try to hide/They won't let me alone/They persecute me/They're the judge and jury all in one."
As the band plays an instrumental section before the final chorus, the video shows each member's mug shot alongside them in their Dream Police gear.
This was one of those songs I couldn't get enough of as a 12-year-old rock fan. I bought the 45 and played it constantly.
Cheap Trick parlayed the success of the Dream Police into headlining arenas and their next album, 1980's All Shook Up, was produced by none other than George Martin. The '80s and '90s proved a bumpy ride for the band, however. The early '80s saw their popularity dwindle (I saw them headline a festival show in Kingston, NH, in July 1984; after second-billed Ratt played their set, a good chunk of the packed audience went home), only to bounce back in 1988 with a #1 hit ("The Flame") and a #4 in their cover of "Don't Be Cruel."
Zander, Nielsen and Petersson are still recording and touring as Cheap Trick, with Nielsen's son Daxx on drums. Cheap Trick parlayed their visual flair into a memorable image long before MTV became a thing and have continued on (in a less prominent but still rocking) way long after videos were essential for band success.
A lot can happen in a decade. New technology, the endless march of time, the rise of fascism. You know, basic stuff. For some reason, there's been a recent obsession with 2016, so this week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played new hotness from Crooked Fingers, Kim Gordon and Brigitte Calls Me Baby in hour 1 and songs from 10 years ago in hour 2!
This playlist is nice, guys:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Crooked Fingers - Cold Wave (feat. Mac McCaughan)/Swet Deth
Brigitte Calls Me Baby - Slumber Party/Irreversible
Kim Gordon - Not Today/Play Me
Greg Freeman - Gulch/Burnover
Jim E. Brown - Every Time I Speak I Regret It Immensely/I Urinated on a Butterfly
Sleaford Mods - No Touch (feat. Sue Tompkins)/The Demise of Planet X
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1978)
It's very rare in the world of music that something truly different comes along. In 1978, things were getting interesting: Disco and arena rock were ruling the roost, but punk and new wave had emerged. But even with acts like the Police, the Ramones and the Cars making waves, the real difference makers were Devo.
Formed at Kent State University in the early '70s, Devo eventually caught the attention of David Bowie, who helped them secure a contract with Warner Music Group. The band recorded a cover of the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in 1977 that they self-released, and then re-recorded it with Brian Eno producing as part of the sessions for their debut album, Q. Are We Not Men? A. We Are Devo!
Of course, it was no rote cover. The band developed it during jam sessions, a robotic funk sound that was originally paired with the lyrics of the Stones' "Paint It Black" before switching to "Satisfaction." Gone was Keith Richards' iconic riff from the original, but the band realized that the lyrics about consumer consumption and sexual frustration was a good fit with the "de-evolution" concept. They even got Mick Jagger to sign off on their version.
From the beginning, Devo put an emphasis on visuals. They took their $5,000 promotional budget and spent it on making a video for "Satisfaction." For wardrobe, the band's Gerard Casale bought yellow hazmat suits that were certainly the antithesis of the typical rock star get-up.
Most of the video is performance, but the band's movements are herky jerky and truly unlike anything else going on at the time. About halfway through, the video cuts to Mothersbaugh and a date cuddling on a couch watching the band perform on TV before they're interrupted by an angry mom. There's also a cut to Booji Boy, Devo's unofficial mascot (played by Mothersbaugh), sticking a fork into a toaster, and also to dancer Spazz Attack, whose signature move involved flopping onto his back. It was a perfect storm of weirdness and it was awesome.
The video was groundbreaking, although it didn't really hit the mainstream until a few years later when MTV debuted and started playing "Satisfaction" regularly. But the cover got some traction in October 1978 when Devo appeared on Saturday Night Live. The band's manager, Elliott Roberts, was able to get Lorne Michaels to agree to feature the then-unknown band by promising one of his other clients, Neil Young, would appear at a later date.
Devo came out in the hazmat suits and performed the song perfectly, complete with robotic movements. They later played "Jocko Homo," ripping the jumpsuits off in the middle of the song. The studio audience didn't quite know what to make of the band, but the SNL appearance helped turbo-charge Devo's career. They made more TV appearances on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, American Bandstand and Fridays (ABC's take on SNL that aired, appropriately enough, on Friday nights) and began playing theaters and touring overseas.
Their third album, 1980's Freedom of Choice, featured the group's biggest hit, "Whip It," which reached #14 on the Billboard Hot 100. The music video for that song also became popular on MTV, featuring the band wearing their "flower pot" energy dome hats.
Devo continued on through the '80s but were dropped by Warner Bros. after the poor reception to 1984's Shout. Mothersbaugh began composing music for the Pee Wee's Playhouse TV show. The band took a hiatus for a few years before reforming in 1987 and releasing two more albums before breaking up in 1991. They reunited in 1996 and have toured occasionally since, releasing a new album in 2010.
Devo's influence on music is immense, especially on the visual side of rock. Their endless creativity made music videos much more interesting than just a bunch of dudes playing on a stage.
Hey, you don't have to tell me twice. Things are pretty insane right now. I'm not telling you to listen to hott rock music to distract from the shittiness of the world, but it's not the worst idea. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I play new hotness from Sleaford Mods, Juliana Hatfield, Jim E. Brown and Fcukers in hour 1 and great title tracks in hour 2. Take off, eh?
I wanna see my lawyer, eh?
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Sleaford Mods - Elitest G.O.A.T. (feat. Aldous Harding)/The Demise of Planet X
Juliana Hatfield - Long Slow Nervous Breakdown/Lightning Might Strike
Holy Void - Fear in Your Mind/All Will Be Revealed in Time
Jim E. Brown - The Queue at Greggs/I Urinated on a Butterfly
Dry Cleaning - Evil Evil Idiot/Secret Love
Greg Freeman - Point and Shoot/Burnover
Fcukers - L.U.C.K.Y./Single
Sword II - Sentry/Electric Hour
This is Lorelei - Mouth Man/Holo Boy
Jean Dawson - Prize Fighter/Rock A Bye Baby, Glimmer of God
Bill Janovitz - Gentle/Way Back to the Dawn
Phantom Wave - Woozy/Echoes Unknown
Black Helicopter - Red, Gold and Green/Balancing Act
Water From Your Eyes - Blood on the Dollar/It's a Beautiful Place
Sharp Pins - (In a While) You'll Be Mine/Balloon Balloon Balloon
They Are Gutting a Body of Water - Violence III/Lotto
Militarie Gun - Kick/God Save the Gun
Hour 2: Title tracks
PJ Harvey - Rid of Me/Rid of Me
Radiohead - The Bends/The Bends
Art Brut - Bang Bang Rock & Roll/Bang Bang Rock & Roll
Fu Manchu - King of the Road/King of the Road
Screaming Trees - Uncle Anesthesia/Uncle Anesthesia
Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend/Girlfriend
Frank Black - The Cult of Ray/The Cult of Ray
Tin Machine - Tin Machine/Tin Machine
Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance/The Modern Dance
Fugazi - Repeater/Repeater
The Lemonheads - Hate Your Friends/Hate Your Friends
Genesis - The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway/The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway
T. Rex - The Slider/The Slider
Ty Segall - Manipulator/Manipulator
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema/Twin Cinema
PUP - Morbid Stuff/Morbid Stuff
Superchunk - What a Time to Be Alive/What a Time to Be Alive
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Modern Love (1977)
When it comes to musical innovators, one artist who never gets enough credit is Peter Gabriel. Whether it was his prog-rock musings and way-out-there stage costumes with Genesis, or his solo career explorations into art-rock, or his embrace of world music sounds, or his work with human rights organizations, Gabriel has never been one to rest on his laurels. He also was an early adopter of music video as a medium, starting with his 1977 self-titled solo debut (later referred to as Peter Gabriel 1 or Car because he called each of his first four solo albums Peter Gabriel).
The album's first single was "Solsbury Hill," which went to #13 on the U.K. singles chart and later became iconic through its use in movies and commercials. The second single was "Modern Love" (not to be confused with the David Bowie megahit of the same name that was released in 1983), a ripper of a power pop song that featured Gabriel musing on the difficulties modern love while backed by the legendary Robert Fripp and Steve Hunter (known for his work with Alice Cooper and Lou Reed) on guitar.
Gabriel had originally wanted to release the innuendo-laden song as the first single. Still, the video is classic Gabriel: Weird and full of crazy imagery. It was directed by Peter Medak, who went on to direct movies like The Changeling, The Krays and Species II and episodes of TV shows as varied as Hart to Hart, Magnum P.I., The Wire and Breaking Bad.
Parts of the video were filmed at a mall in Shepherd's Bush, a London suburb, with Gabriel dressed in a fencer's mask and wearing athletic gear and jumping around on a moving escalator, singing, "Ah, the pain, modern love can be a strain." As the story goes, during the recording of the song, producer Bob Ezrin felt Gabriel wasn't getting enough emotion into that line, so he had an engineer hoist Gabriel up a ladder and duct-tape his armpits to a pillar in the studio. That seemed to get the desired result.
In the video, Gabriel is at first seen approaching a group of models and then later sings while surrounded by cutouts of another model. "Hey, I worship Diana by the light of the moon/When I pull out my pipe, she screams out of tune/In Paris my heart sinks when I see the Mona Lisa/She gives me the wink, then she shows me the freezer/Ah, the pain, modern love can be a strain."
Of course, if you lived in the U.S. in the summer of '77, you probably didn't see this video. There was no MTV for another four years and Gabriel was much more prominent in the U.K. at the time. There were different programs over there that would air videos. I never saw the video until a few years ago on YouTube; if it aired on MTV, I never saw it.
But Gabriel would obviously keep making videos that fared better. "Games Without Frontiers" and "I Don't Remember" from his 1980 album (often called Melt) and "Shock the Monkey" from 1982's Security, which became a hit on MTV. Everything blew up for Gabriel with his 1986 album So and its lead single "Sledgehammer," which had an innovative video that combined live-action and animation and absolutely dominated MTV. The song hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the video won nine MTV Video Music Awards. Gabriel became a superstar, primarily thanks to that video.
That momentum was derailed when it took Gabriel six years to release the follow-up album, Us, in 1992. It fared well and had videos that got a fair amount of MTV play with "Digging in the Dirt" and "Steam," but the success paled in comparison to So. Plus the rock world was fully in grunge mode by that point.
Over the last 30-plus years, Gabriel has retreated into more of a low-profile role, releasing only three more studio albums, the most recent of which is 2023 I/O (although he's got a new release coming out in 2026). He's also done soundtrack work and has remained active in political and human rights initiatives. I enjoyed his most recent album, but if you only know Gabriel from his more popular stuff, you should check out those first four solo albums. They're all excellent and interesting.
Gabriel was a well-known figure in the rock world long before his video stardom, but his first foray into video was certainly memorable, even if not that many people remember it.
Life can be pretty boring at times. It's unrealistic to expect that you're going to be captivated by whatever you're doing most of the time. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage, I played new music from Bill Janovitz, Dry Cleaning and the Lemon Twigs in hour 1 and songs about boredom in hour 2! It'll shake you out of your doldrums!
This playlist has some red on it:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
Bill Janovitz - Bravehearted/Single
Black Helicopter - Skippy D/Balancing Act
Guided By Voices - Our Man Syracuse/Thick Rich and Delicious
Dry Cleaning - Cruise Ship Designer/Secret Love
The Lemon Twigs - Friday (I'm Gonna Love You)/I've Got a Broken Heart
Water From Your Eyes - Born 2/It's a Beautiful Place
The Afghan Whigs - Downtown/Single
This is Lorelei - Holo Boy/Holo Boy
Pigeon Pit - Cherry/Leash Aggression
Cameron Winter - Love Takes Miles/Heavy Metal
Glitterer - Who Owns This Mountain?/erer
Sharp Pins - Popafangout/Balloon Balloon Balloon
S.C.A.B. - Red Chair/Somebody in New York Loves You!
The Dears - Babe, We'll Find a Way/Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful!
Just Mustard - Pollyanna/We Were Just Here
Ex-Hyena - Edge of Mirrors/XX Your Love
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - The Real Contra Band/Pogo Rodeo
Hour 2: Bored
Iggy Pop - I'm Bored/New Values
Sonic Youth - Satan is Boring/Bad Moon Rising
The Gutter Twins - Idle Hands/Saturnalia
Vanity - Yer Fucking Boring/Single
Gateway Drugs - Boring/PSA
Kal Marks - Bored Again/My Name is Hell
Los Campesinos! - Romance is Boring/Romance is Boring
Papercuts - A Dully Boy/Baxter's Bliss
Alvvays - Bored in Bristol/Blue Rev
Ben Folds Five - Battle of Who Could Care Less/Whatever and Ever Amen
Moe Berg - Butterknife Dull/Summer's Over
Government Issue - Bored to Death/Four Old Seven Inches
Torgo - Dull/The Lengths That I Will Go To
The Murder City Devils - Idle Hands/In Name and Blood
The Raconteurs - Bored and Razed/Help Us Stranger
Smashing Pumpkins - Plume/Pisces Iscariot
Judas Priest - Breaking the Law (Live in Long Beach 5/5/84)/Defenders of the Faith 30th Anniversary Edition
Videodrone is a weekly feature looking at music videos from the last half century.
Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright) (1976)
If you've been on social media in the last month or so (and who could blame you if you weren't?), you may have seen folks lamenting the so-called death of MTV on New Year's Eve and writing epitaphs to the once-dominant music video cable channel. As with many things on social media, this wasn't actually the case.
While it's true that MTV doesn't play music videos anymore, that's been the case for a long time now in the U.S. In the U.K. and Australia, MTV still ran some music-only channels that were shut down at the end of 2025. But let's face it, reality TV has been the name of the game at MTV for the last two decades.
MTV launched in August 1981, playing music videos 24/7 and introducing a new way for fans to experience music and a new way for artists and labels to market their wares. MTV was a cultural touchpoint throughout the '80s and '90s, and to a lesser degree in the '00s. Artists were able to become big acts thanks to a popular video and labels would drop big bucks on conceptual clips (that of course would be recouped as part of the onerous contracts artists used to sign).
But as is well-documented in the excellent book I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution, MTV quickly realized that just showing videos 24/7 (and later adding specialty programs like TRL, 120 Minutes, Yo! MTV Raps and Headbanger's Ball) wasn't a great way to make money. Starting in the late '80s with game shows like Remote Control (which was great, btw), reality TV shows became more attractive for sponsors. The Real World debuted in 1992, in which seven 20-somethings were picked to live in a New York City loft for three months and their every move was documented on video. It was clearly heavily edited and drama was often manufactured, but it was a big hit and ended running for 33 seasons. Other shows followed, like Road Rules, Jersey Shore, 16 and Pregnant, Jackass, Punk'd, filling the station's prime programming hours. By the 2010s, videos were an afterthought on MTV.
The other factor, of course, was the internet and specifically, the 2005 debut of YouTube as a place where users could upload videos that anyone could view on demand. It took a while for the video quality to move beyond super-grainy VHS clips of vids recorded off MTV in 1982, but eventually you didn't need MTV to find videos. Labels began uploading new videos from their artists, fans using their smartphones could record live music and upload it immediately, and YouTube became the place to find just about anything (including tons of non-music-related content).
Also, the music industry obviously has changed in a big way since the dotcom boom of the late '90s. File-sharing sites like Napster ended up taking a big bite out of music sales of physical media like CDs. Streaming has started to turn things around, with $5.6 billion in revenue generated in the first half of 2025, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The artists aren't seeing much of that revenue.
Music videos are still made by most artists as a promotional tool, but there's no guarantee anyone beyond diehard fans will see them. Still, with social media, if a video gets popular on TikTok or elsewhere, it can generate some buzz.
All of that is a long-winded intro to this weekly feature, in which I'm going to look at one video per year for the last 50 years. While they weren't necessarily commonplace, music videos were made by artists all the way back to the '60s. Mostly performance clips, but you'd get the occasional conceptual video, like Bob Dylan's iconic 1965 clip for "Subterranean Homesick Blues," in which he displays cue cards based on phrases in the song.
In 1976, which is our arbitrary beginning point, the music scene was in a state of flux. There was a lot going on, including stadium rock, AM gold soft rock, early disco. Rod Stewart was adept at all of these styles. He got his start in the early '60s but broke out in '67 as lead belter of the Jeff Beck Group. A few years later, he joined the Faces and also began a solo career. Those Faces albums are pretty great, hot slabs of blues- and R&B-oriented rock (my take on the Faces classic "Stay With Me"), but the success of his solo career and growing band tensions led Faces to split up after four releases.
Stewart's seventh solo album, A Night on the Town, was released in June 1976 and was a huge hit, hitting #2 in the U.S. and #1 in several other countries. "Tonight's the Night (Gonna Be Alright)" was the first single and it ended up spending eight weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The song proved controversial in the U.S., as Stewart spends the entire 3:56 talking his girlfriend into having sex. The BBC objected to the line "Spread your wings and let me come inside," but there were arguably worse ones. In the U.S., the Rev. Jesse Jackson protested the song as leading to loose morals in America's youth.
The video probably didn't help matters, as Stewart sings to girlfriend Britt Ekland by a fireplace. He pretends to play an acoustic guitar at first and then focuses on selling Ekland on doing the deed. Wearing a cheesy bow tie and his patented shag mullet, Stewart succeeds in convincing Ekland to go upstairs. The clip ends with Rod the Bod and his lady getting ready to get it on as Ekland's breathy French spoken-word outro plays.
Stewart was an early video adopter, filming many clips for his songs in the '70s (including "Hot Legs" and "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?"), which served him well when MTV came along and was desperate for content to fill its 24-hour broadcast day.
"Tonight's the Night" was a good predictor of Stewart's career path in the late '70s. It got progressively cheesier as Stewart delved into disco, new wave and then went into full-on MOR soft rock mode. By the mid-80s, he was churning out crappy soundtrack ballads, the most egregious being 1993's "All for Love" with Sting and Bryan Adams for the Three Musketeers soundtrack. In recent years, he's been cranking out "American Songbook" albums of standards and touring constantly.
For me, Rod Stewart is a classic case of a guy with all the talent in the world who did what he wanted and was successful, but wasted what made him cool in the first place. But at least he left behind a wealth of cheesy music videos for us to enjoy and/or ridicule.
Fifty years is a long time, but right now, 1976 feels like it happened a few thousand years ago. Everything's so compressed now. This week on Stuck In Thee Garage's first show of 2026, I played more recent music from the Afghan Whigs, Bill Janovitz, Black Helicopter and Glitterer in hour 1 and then songs from 1976 in hour 2! It's what's happening!
Peep the playlist:
Hour 1
Artist - Song/Album
The Afghan Whigs - Fake Like/Single
This is Lorelei - SF & GG/Holo Boy
Water From Your Eyes - Life Signs/It's a Beautiful Place
Bill Janovitz - Days of Heaven/Days of Heaven
Black Helicopter - Charlestown's Burning/Balancing Act
Glitterer - Until/erer
Sharp Pins - Talking in Your Sleep/Balloon Balloon Balloon
The Dears - Tears of a Nation/Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful! Life is Beautiful!
S.C.A.B. - MK/Somebody in New York Loves You!
Peel Dream Magazine - Venus in Nadir/Taurus
Snocaps - Heathcliff/Snocaps
Jeff Tweedy - This is How It Ends/Twilight Override
Wednesday - Townies/Bleeds
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Born in the ADs/Pogo Rodeo
Big Bill - The Terrible Truth/Sick Myth
Tony Molina - Livin' Wrong/On This Day
Cameron Winter - Nausicaa (Love Will Be Released)/Heavy Metal
Hour 2: 1976
The Modern Lovers - Roadrunner/The Modern Lovers
Blondie - X Offender/Blondie
David Bowie - TVC15/Station to Station
Lou Reed - Coney Island Baby/Coney Island Baby
Aerosmith - Sick as a Dog/Rocks
The Runaways - Cherry Bomb/The Runaways
Queen - Tie Your Mother Down/A Day at the Races
AC/DC - Jailbreak/Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Rush - The Twilight Zone/2112
Blue Oyster Cult - The Revenge of Vera Gemini/Agents of Fortune
Led Zeppelin - Royal Orleans/Presence
The Ramones - 53rd & 3rd/Ramones
Chris Spedding & the Vibrators - Pogo Dancing/Single
