Pieces of Me
This Ashlee Simpson (not to be confused with Ashley Olsen) song has been going through my head all morning. My latest torture.
I watched the Ashlee Simpson show for the first time a couple of nights ago. The episode that I saw was taped after the Saturday Night Live incident. In one public appearance in the show, the song "Pieces of Me" started playing as she walked out, and she immediately (and laughlingly) complained that the wrong song was being played. At least she's trying to turn a negative into a positive.
However, she spent much of the episode obsessing about her hair. She had just gotten a shorter haircut, which her mother didn't like. As mothers do, she told Ashlee that she could do what she wanted, but Mom made it clear that she didn't like the haircut. However, Ashlee believed that the haircut expressed who she was. Whether this is a triumph of style over substance I'll leave for you to judge, but you have to remember that people with much greater musical pedigrees (Frank Zappa for example) also cut their hair.
The episode also covered the filming of her video for her song "La La" (the one that the audience loved during the Orange Bowl). The mood of the video was again important in defining who she was as a person, and she praised the reality of the video (specifically the "party" scene at the end). For her, part of the reality was the fact that a few of her friends were able to join her in the video shoot.
The next show on MTV was one featuring Ashlee's sister Jessica Simpson getting ready for a dentist appointment. I left.
I still remember MTV from over 20 years ago, back when it truly was Music Television. Karma Chameleon and the like. And, of course, those were the days of the original MTV VJs - Martha Quinn, J.J. Jackson, Mark Goodman, Nina Blackwood, and Alan Hunter.
McEdwards: Speaking of, you know, back to the days when do you first started out there. Tell us about your first audition.
Hunter: It was about like this. It really wasn't very good. You know, staring into a dispassionate camera that gives you feedback. It doesn't nod, it doesn't shake, or it doesn't say, hey, you're doing good. I really was bad, I had two bad auditions in a row, and then they gave me the job.
McEdwards: How did you get the job?
Hunter: I think it was payola. I think I paid somebody. Well, I don't know. I must have fit the demographic that they needed. Actually, my opinion is that they were coming down to the wire, MTV was about to launch in three weeks, and they didn't have a fifth deejay, and they said, just hire that guy, he can speak, albeit with a Shakespearean accent, because I was an actor.
McEdwards: How did you grow into it, though? I hear cartwheels on the set?
Hunter: Yes, I was breaking teleprompters right and left.
McEdwards: What did you do?
Hunter: You know, it took me six about months to really get the gig. I really didn't have a handle on what it meant to be myself in front of a camera, because as an actor, I didn't have a self, you know. But finally, I think it was breaking the teleprompter one day. I was doing some antic, because the producers were saying just, you know, just, you know, throw it out, throw it out the window, forget the script, just do something funny, and I did a cartwheel. The teleprompter went down. You break stuff and you don't read the script. That's the key. That was really kind of MTV's whole thing.
McEdwards: And what did producers say about that?
Hunter: They were giving me the big thumbs-up.
McEdwards: They liked it, right?
Hunter: Well, the funny think about the early days of MTV is just that no one knew what they were doing. Maybe it was like the early days of CNN. We're going live somewhere, what, what, there's TV cameras? And it made for a really great chaotic situation that I think really sets a good stage for MTV.
McEdwards: Did you think it would work? When you heard 24-hour music television back then, did you think it had a chance?
Hunter: Well, you know, I was in a David Bowie video about two months prior to getting the gig. I was just an actor getting 50 bucks a day being in Bowie video called "Fashion," and so, to me, videos at that point in time were nothing but a disappointment, because the act didn't show up live. It's like Paul McCartney and Wings tonight on "The Midnight Special," and they weren't there, here's my video instead. We had no clue. But about three months into it, we went to record store appearances in Idaho and Toledo, and 1,000 kids would show up to get the VJs' autographs and we thought, this might do it....
Some of you probably know that one of the original MTV VJs is no longer with us. He died in March 2004:
J.J. Jackson, remembered as one of the first faces of MTV, died Wednesday night in Los Angeles of an apparent heart attack, according to friends and former business associates. He was 62.
Jackson helped define the term "VJ" as one of the first on-air personalities on MTV when the channel launched in 1981. During his five-year tenure with the network, Jackson interviewed some of the top names of the day and was part of some key music milestones. Jackson covered the 1985 Live Aid benefit concert in London and helped to "unmask" Kiss during a 1982 interview. He also hosted the debut episode of MTV's long-running "120 Minutes" in 1986, and brought music titans like Robert Plant and Pete Townshend to the then-fledgling channel....
Mark Goodman, another of the original VJs who helped blaze trails with Jackson in the '80s, said he was floored when he heard the news. "I was at home, I actually got a call from Martha Quinn," Goodman said Thursday from his home in Los Angeles. "I almost couldn't understand what she was saying, she was so upset."
Goodman said that even though the on-air tenure of MTV's original fab five ended almost two decades ago, they remained a tight-knit group.
"I think the kind of bond I had with J.J., the original five of us, it's kind of like soldiers who share a foxhole," Goodman said. "It's a bond that has only gotten deeper through the years. It's worse than a family member dying. It's hard to comprehend. None of us would have expected it. It's too soon. It wasn't supposed to happen now. He's too young. It's kind of scary.
"I knew he a had a bad heart," Goodman added. "He had heart surgery a couple of years ago, but he was in great shape, he'd lost weight. He was in a great state of mind, feeling really positive about what was going on. I just saw him last week."
Goodman said the two were about to be co-workers again, at Sirius satellite radio. Goodman already has a position there and was looking forward to his friend J.J. starting soon....
"J.J. was really a gentle man," he remembered. "He was smart. As I think of him, I think of him laughing. The guy had this huge laugh. He was a rabid music fan. Rod Stewart was a friend of his, guys in Led Zeppelin were friends of his. He championed these bands early on when they were kind of just getting going. He did Bruce Springsteen's first television interview. J.J. was a great guy. For the five of us, he was the wise DJ. He was the guy who had been through it all and was able to always put a mature perspective to things. He wound up handling the spotlight that was thrust on us better than any of us."
Besides his endeavors in television, Jackson also logged a thick résumé in radio. Prior to his MTV days, Jackson was a rock-radio staple, first at WBCN-FM in Boston, and later at a few stations in Los Angeles. His voice even made it to the big screen, as a DJ in the 1976 movie "Car Wash." After his VJ days, Jackson returned to radio in the Los Angeles area.
On Thursday (March 18), Paul Goldstein, program director of L.A.'s KTWV-FM, said "J.J.'s tenure with the station ended just six months ago. He was a wonderful man and will be very missed."
Two words: THE WAVE?!?
As for the others:
- Nina Blackwood is still going strong and can be heard on Los Angeles' Indie 103.1.
- As mentioned above, Mark Goodman is on Sirius, and joined two of the four living VJs (Blackwood and Hunter) in a show marking the release of the Live Aid video.
- Martha Quinn was a Brady, a movie actress, and a television correspondent after she left MTV.
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