120 Minutes Flashback

Hey now! It's a new weekly feature called 120 Minutes Flashback. Digging through the old 120 Minutes playlists I decided it'd be rad to post some of the old classics they played. For those who don't know, 120 Minutes was a two hour (hence the name) weekly show broadcast at 12am Sunday nights on MTV starting in 1986. It was a bastion of alternative and indie rock in the sea of crap MTV shoveled throughout the rest of the week.

While I still keep up with what's going on in the indie rock scene I am not ashamed to say that I am one of those kids that live in the past. Truthfully, my daily musical selections are closer reflected by 1990's 120 Minutes playlists than by anything Pitchfork is talking about these days. And to celebrate the launch of this new feature I'm serving up a double shot.

I actually wanted to start this new feature with the Harnessed In Slums video by Archers Of Loaf. It's a fantastic song off of one of my favorite records of all time, Vee Vee. Believe it or not, though, an amazingly influential and unbelievably awesome band like Archers of Loaf only appeared on 120 Mins once and it was the video down below.

I for one am quite surprised by this. Harnessed In Slums was a much bigger indie radio hit than Web In Front, but I guess MTV is MTV. Oh well. Presenting:

Archers of Loaf - Web In Front (premiered July 10, 1994)


And for the double shot: The Jesus Lizard. Now, JL are not big fans of MTV. Perpetually slurring lead singer David Yow has talked extensively throughout interviews about his thoughts on the network and the bands' troubles with it. All in all Jesus Lizard appeared on 120 Minutes twice and both times the videos had to be extensively re-shot and/or re-cut to meet the networks acceptance standards. Here's their second appearance.

Jesus Lizard - Destroy Before Reading (October 2, 1994)