“In My Mind and In My Car”
“And now we meet in an abandoned studio
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago
And you remember the jingles used to go…”
The above quote is from a song by a group from the UK called “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles. This particular line is from about the 1:04 second mark in the 3:20 minute song. Maybe some of you are familiar with it. Somehow, I doubt it. It was a hit in the UK in 1979, but got very little airplay in the US until 1981 when it was the first video on MTV. Some of you may recall that, I’d still be a bit surprised.
I was in my freshman year of college. Most of this audience was into their adult lives by then. There is not much of a need to look backward into what the kids are doing. I know I don’t do it now.
This song wasn’t the sort of a tune that am 18 year old guy would claim, but it was catchy. You couldn’t help but memorize at least part of the lyrics. You were bound to hear it often. “In my mind and in my car.” It was one of those songs that was going to be played often.
For those kids who “read too much into things”, it had some curious lyrics. It sparked the imagination, though there was no easy way to discover just what an artist meant by his curious titles or literary allusions. English majors thought about things like those. “In my mind and in my car.” Whatever that is, it certainly had something to do with individuality, perhaps even isolation.
As it turns out, the song was written about an opera singer, “the radio star”.
“I heard you on the wireless back in ‘52
Lying awake intently tuning in on you
If I was young it didn’t stop you coming through…”
The lead singer sings in a voice, and with a style that mimics radio broadcasts from the 1930s. It has a unique sound, if not a bit campy. It has a silliness about it, and the video is like a time capsule from the early 1980s, with all of its shiny, plastic-y, assertive newness. The image, though, belies an intriguing story and message. The message is about technology, change, obsolescence, and alienation.
“They took the credit for your second symphony
Rewritten by machine on new technology
And now I understand the problems you could see…”
Change. It’s big. The change I am referring to here is the concept of change, and the effect. We surround it and we are surrounded by it. Depending on one’s placement, change is either favorable, unfavorable, or barely noticed. Like it or not, we do eventually all have to deal with it.
One of the cool things about change, as I see it, is how things like art, music and literature can affect you in different ways with time as a factor. In scientific terms it is referred to as the delta. Maybe that is more mathematical than scientific…perhaps both, but you get my drift. The experience on day 1 versus the experience on day 14,965, can reveal things not seen at the beginning. This does involve some thinking, and I know some are opposed to that, but it reveals something about that too. Who doesn’t want change?
“Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star
Pictures came and broke your heart…”
As I mentioned earlier, this was the first video played on MTV. I suppose they felt it was appropriate as an introduction of a new medium in the music business. MTV’s use of the lyrics, along with the timing of the new kid on the pop music block change a way to look at a song that was originally about the change from radio to television, and an opera singer. The interpretation of art made a new thing. It is the change in experience and context, the delta, that made that possible…and thinking, of course.
“And now we meet in an abandoned studio
We hear the playback and it seems so long ago
And you remember the jingles used to go
You were the first one
You were the last one…”
And while I listened to this song years ago, over and over, “in my mind and in my car…”, this portion was uniquely interesting. “You were the first one. You were the last one.” Does that mean anything to anyone? I know the song is about an opera singer, and technology, and change, and alienation, but there have been more than one opera singer. 1979 was not the beginning and the end of opera singers. The alpha and the omega. That’s easily a Jesus reference, even if just for fun. (You know, if you find thinking fun).
So, who is meeting in an abandoned studio? Did the song writer meet an opera singer in an abandoned studio? Perhaps. My imagination says this is Pontius Pilate talking to Jesus about who he is. This, according to my professors, is supposed to be the quintessential existential moment in history. “Video killed the radio star”, hmmm. “Pictures came and broke your heart…”, hmmm.
We all know how that trial went for Jesus. Pilate asked him if he was God. Jesus said, “I am who you say I am…”, whatever that meant. It could mean many things. I suspect it meant one thing to Pilate, and another thing to Jesus. I also think Jesus was well aware of what it meant to Pilate. That is what made it dangerous for Jesus. Pilate famously “washed his hands” of it. “Put the blame on VCR”. He declared that Jesus had chosen his own fate. That is what I find valuable about Jesus’s choice. He stood on principle at the cost of his life.
That meeting in the “abandoned studio” between Pilate and Jesus was part of that clash of the past with the present/future. It involved the alienation from the group, and the struggle with individuality. And perhaps most importantly, it involved what the power in Pilate perceived as a threat from power, and power concedes nothing. Jesus hewed to the principles of justice and authenticity. He essentially said, I am the person you seek. Define me as you wish.
I don’t have much time for the hocus pocus in the story of Jesus. Many, perhaps most consider what I refer to as the hocus pocus as the most important part. They would be the religious. In so doing, I think they miss the real heroic aspect of Jesus in the way he stood for truth, and then died a real death for it. The value of that act is in knowing that death is permanent. That is my view.
“In my mind and in my car
We can’t rewind, we’ve gone too far
Pictures came and broke your heart
Put the blame on VCR…”
It is a bit of a silly song when you hear it.
But, it can be fascinating…if you think about it.
ArtWStone
01/22/2022 @ 11:39 am
I had to think about this a bit, which was getting me nowhere fast, so I looked up the video.
It isn’t the first video I remember on MTV. That would be something about “rockin’ the Casbah”.
It was exciting to see that music videos were going to find a niche. In the early ’70’s a video pioneer by the name of Nam June Paik was the inspiration to the students around me in TV production classes at UofO in Eugene. We strove as much as possible to surge ahead. Indoors we were confined by the university’s budget, producing our own videos on ancient equipment such as were used in black and white television. The big cameras called RCA TK-14 by model were pushed to their limits. I had a video, split screen which was edgy then. I played rhythm on one side of the screen and lead guitar on the other side. It was played more than a hundred times on the university channel and then fed to the community on cable. It was a Big Bill Broonzy number called “Key to the Highway”, A real toe tapper.
Outside we could use a new device for “filming”. It was a Sony Porta-Pak which was a fairly large camera accompanied by a larger recording device carried in a backpack. The goal was to learn to produce news. Usage required first submitting a script, hand drawn story boards, goals and objectives of the video etc., before being allowed to check it out for 24 hours. I produced one about hand signals for bicycling with a target audience of 6 to 8 years old. I wish I still had it.
In the video which is the focus of your writing there are images of radios floating about.
There is a movement that has been going on for years amongst musicians striving to replicate and emulate the sounds of the 1930’s,’40’s and 50’s. Solo and duo acts have been making their own microphones from bits and pieces of those times by placing condenser mics in older objects. Popular holders are the clunky boxes that clipped over a window at a drive-in movie. Very popular are old radios. The cost of nicely conditioned bakelite art deco designed radios has skyrocketed.
I probably spent too much time hemming and hawing (it’s like thinking) about it while the prices rose.
The most popular microphones these days are produced by a company about a mile from my old home in Portland. They look old such as one would see in a clip from some big band setting. They are diaphragm condenser microphones set in a product called an “Edwina” by Ear Trumpet Labs.
None of this helped me find Jesus so don’t think about that as part of my response. It would hurt.
Bitey
01/22/2022 @ 3:45 pm
That is funny, and fascinating.
“Rock the Casbah” was out a year year after the first video appeared in MTV. As “Video Killed the Radio Star” was first, it was not the first I saw either. The first I saw on MTV was “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins. I recall seeing that for the first time quite clearly.
Several friends and I had gone to pick up a couple of friends who lived in an apartment right off campus. As we stepped in the door, a small tv was sitting on a chair, and Phil’s face was mouthing the lyrics, and I heard music. It looked different from anything I had ever seen, and while the friends I was with were the ones who really knew the ones we were picking up, I was not involved in the conversation. So, I stood spellbound by the odd program I was watching. I asked, “what is this?” Someone answered, “that’s MTV.” I said, what is MTV? And so, it went.
I didn’t find Jesus there either. I did have a dream a year later that I read the headline of a newspaper that said “God is Dead”…and I woke up in a panic, and perspiring. That’s another story, and entirely too long to be of interest. Incidentally, it was the worst nightmare I ever had, and the deepest feeling of panic I ever felt.
Ron Powell
01/22/2022 @ 12:06 pm
“…it involved what the power in Pilate perceived as a threat from power, and power concedes nothing. Jesus hewed to the principles of justice and authenticity. He essentially said, I am the person you seek. Define me as you wish….”
If the life and death of Jesus teaches us anything at all it is this:
“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.” —Voltaire
Bitey
01/22/2022 @ 3:33 pm
From way downtown, BANG! Voltaire scores again.
Ron Powell
01/22/2022 @ 4:15 pm
I find that paraphrasing or reiterating classic authors isn’t as effective as the direct quote that can’t be restated any better than the words of the original expression as composed by the primary source(s).
Bitey
01/22/2022 @ 4:24 pm
That is undoubtedly so. I never questioned it until that last statement, and I began to think, when has anyone ever updated a famous quote and improved it? Quite possibly never.
There are some funny updates of sayings. A battle plan never survives contact with the enemy. In time became a Mike Tyson quote that goes, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.” And then that became, “everyone has a plan until Mike Tyson punches you in the face.” Obviously this process can’t compete with the insight of someone like Voltaire, but it is funny.
koshersalaami
01/23/2022 @ 12:37 am
I remember the chorus.
How I saw MTV was that I was selling stuff to music stores. One of the big ones in the DC area had the first pro sound dept. of any music store in the US, and that’s the kind of equipment I sold. In the pro sound showroom they had a TV on playing MTV. I had to wait around a lot for the sales guys to be finished with their customers before they had time to talk to me, so I watched MTV while I waited. Back then of course it was nothing but music videos.
You talk about the hocus pocus of Jesus. Granted, I’m not a Christian, but I feel about that as you do. I think the hocus pocus is the wrong focus. (There is a music reference there.)