Re: Amp--something of an update

Mark Turner (mturner@netcom.com)
Sun, 26 Jan 1997 22:32:56 -0800 (PST)


Bil Dwyer sez:

> As something of an update to a query some time ago, Amp on MTV seems to
> have become a regular. I checked the TV schedule when someone first
> reported on this program and didn't find it. Last week, however, I read a
> review of the program in Monday's New York Times. I can't recall specific
> details other than that the president of MTV commented that the show gets
> 350,000 viewers which, she says, should be compared to the 50,000 viewers
> for any other shows in their schedule. I looked at the TV guide again and
> found shows at 2 am Friday night (or Saturday morning, if you prefer) and
> at 1 am Saturday night, just as the NYT article said. I wasn't sure if
> these were different shows or the same but watched both this weekend and
> they're different.

Saturday night's show is repeated the following Friday night.
The difference in those viewer numbers is staggering! Maybe
they should just replace MTV with AMP-TV, 24 hours a day?
Sounds like a good idea to me. ;-)

> Friday night's show included Portishead and the Future
> Sound of London, who also were on the Saturday night program.

Yes, the Portishead track on Friday was the video for "To Kill
a Dead Man." Does anyone who saw this know if it was the complete
video? It was about 9-10 minutes, and looked complete to me, but
AMP is notorious (already) for only showing excerpts from the
videos. Sometimes this can be interesting, like a few weeks ago
when they played Eric B & Rakim's "Paid in Full," cut to an Ofra
Haza video when the samples came in, then wound up with "Pump Up
the Volume," which also contains the Ofra Haza sample. But
considering most of these videos are being presented for the first
time on US television, it would be nice to see the whole thing
at least once.

> Saturday
> night's program included Alex Reece, Howie B. The music is heavy into the
> techno/electronic side of things and, for me, the best part is the
> imagery in the videos, much of it great computer graphics. But I
> especially liked the Tibetan documentary footage in a video by Banco de
> Gaia and a track called "the last train to Llase," I believe it was--a
> strong political statement. ^^^^^

That's "Last Train to Lhasa." Title track from the album of the same
name. I enjoyed that video too.

-- 
 Mark Turner
 mturner@netcom.com