The MTV Alternative Rock Show Was A Sunday Night Immersion In Music That Wasn’t Played On Main Line Radio, It Gave Wide Exposure To The Unusual, The Offbeat And The Downright Iconoclastic, And Made A Dedicated Fllowing.
The MTV alternative rock show was a Sunday night immersion in music that wasn’t played on mainstream radio. It gave wide exposure to the unusual, the offbeat and the downright iconoclastic, and made a dedicated following. The rest of the week was devoted to Madonna and Def Leppard ; for fans of the Elves, Hsker D, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine and other alternative favourites, there were only those precious two hours.
“’120 Minutes’ has always stood for something important,” claims Matt Pinfield, 44, who hosted the show in the mid-’90s and became its most familiar character. “It’s about going past the conventional and showing you that there was other great music out there that you won’t know. And always presented with enthusiasm, rather than hipster cynicism.”
It was Pinfield who brought much of that passion. The excitable, bald-headed radio vet, who commenced his career at Rutgers’ WRSU-FM, looked nothing like a normal MTV veejay. That merely made him relatable. Pinfield was the fellow down the hall in the college dormitory the one whose formidable collection of cassettes and vinyl appeared to grow by the day.
Pinfield, who is living in Harrison, never lost his on-camera glee or his admiration for musical lead runners. And he cultivated a simple rapport with musicians, which made for some of the most relaxed, natural interview segments in the network’s history.
Pinfield left “120 Minutes” in 1999 ; in 2003, it was canceled. The show’s amalgam of offbeat videos, choice classic cuts, clockwork imagery and interview segments was now and then copied by other video programs. But no inheritor to “120 Minutes” ever emerged. It is debatable that YouTube and other free video-sharing sites on the internet are that inheritor, and that “120 Minutes” is no longer necessary.
Last week, though, MTV revived the show and placed Pinfield back in his normal command position. It has even put the deejay’s name in the show’s handle. “120 Minutes with Matt Pinfield” will air monthly on MTV2 at 1 a.m. On Saturdays, and episodes will stream afterward on mtvhive.com. (The first episode, which was shot in part at the Arlene’s Corner shop nightclub in Manhattan, is at present on the site.)
Pinfield, who deejayed at the Tune Bar in New Brunswick in the early ’90s, is glad about the opportunity. He suspects the time is good for the program’s resurrection.
“In the old days of ’120 Minutes,’ unless you had some unimaginable cutting-edge rock radio stations in your neighborhood, you couldn’t hear these songs,” says Pinfield. “Now it is the opposite problem. There’s so much info. What’s required is a curator, a filter, a trusted place to go.”
A TV program, he suggests, fits the bill better than a music blog or an algorithm-driven service like Pandora.
“A lot of those sites lack that private thing. Who has a year, or a week, to go through one thousand websites?”
Ahead Of HIS TIME
Pinfield’s decision to leave “120 Minutes” after 5 successful years on the program was precipitated by his need to continue looking forward. He was one of the originators of farmclub.com, a fleeting website tethered to a reality show on USA that tried to match ambitious musicians with record labels.
Pinfield sees likenesses between farmclub.com and social networking platforms like Myspace and Bandcamp, which at last did change the relations between imprints, artists and fans.
“It was one of the first composite projects,” announces Pinfield, who relocated to Los Angeles to work on farmclub.com. “I did that with Jimmy Iovine, and I learned so much in those years. It was ahead of its time, really.”
It was also alike in scope to “120 Minutes.” At base, farmclub.com attempted to do the same the alternative video show did : introduce underexposed music to a mass audience. Pinfield was galvanized by the same need that prompts pop fans to play their new discoveries for their friends, or that compels all good deejays to break out fresh vinyl. He is privy to something rare, unusual, and perhaps even shocking, and he is determined to share it with as many folk as practicable.
“Everything’s become so subgenre-fied,” says Pinfield. “Pop radio has its formula, and that true fervour of distinctiveness gets lost. There must be a destination on telly and online for musical creativity.”.
The first “120 Minutes” was controlled by white men in rock and roll bands, but on this occassion, hip hop will have a place at the table, too. The first version of the show featured interviews with Alexis Krauss of New York fuzz-pop act Sleigh Bells ( a group heavily influenced by the first wave of “120 Minutes” bands ) and Brooklyn rap ironists Das Bigot. Emcees Lupe Fiasco and Theophilus London both of whom have new albums out this summer also rapped with Pinfield. As per Pinfield’s genre-bending mission, London called Smiths frontman Morrissey “one of the illest rappers.”
“The diversity has always made the show special,” says Pinfield. “It stayed true to what was great about free-form radio in the ’60s and ’70s. It was open season, and anybody who was driving their own ship was welcome. It might be hard rock or some laidback, folky thing. The bands could be huge or absolutely unknown. We usually want to give the underdog a shot.”
That said , there’s not as much room on “120 Minutes” as there used to be.
On a typical show in 1988, twenty to twenty-five videos would be aired. “120 Minutes with Matt Pinfield” cuts the expected number of clips down to 12 to fourteen. The rest of the time is filled up with interviews, which are busy with jump cuts and even occasional cheeky flash animations. A programme already noted for its speed has picked up speed.
“You still see the full videos,” announces Pinfield. “The show hasn’t lost the music info or the great stories from bands. I appreciate the pacing as it keeps things exciting.”
EXILE FROM WRXP
The resurrection of “120 Minutes” comes at a difficult moment for Pinfield.
The deejay had been the first on-air character at WRXP 101.9, the radio station that brought the alternative rock format back to the Big Apple urban area.
Early this summer, WRXP was sold to an out-of-town radio establishment that right away converted the station to a talk format.
All of the station’s rock deejays were given their walking papers.
“It’s intensely disappointing,” announces Pinfield, “and I know our listeners are bummed out now that they don’t have a radio station to hear new artists. Still, those 3 years at RXP were wonderful, and I am thankful for them. These things happen in the radio business.”
Pinfield insists the sale and conversion of WRXP had very little to do with sales or ratings. For the veejay, the success of RXP, however brief, demonstrated that an alternative rock station can work in NY City.
“What I’m hoping for is that somebody else with a signal will see our ratings, and make a decision to move into the market with a new rock station,” says Pinfield. “I’m ready to go. I could be waiting for that call” as reported tagza.com.
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