M
Metro
Guest
On the subject of "Amp"
> Amp fizzled because no one watched it.
Maybe so, but this is one of those rare situations where I've really gotta give MTV due credit.
They actually stuck with the series for a good three years or so (1996-1998 approximately; not sure when it officially died but I recall seeing new eps as late as fall '98), even giving it a pre-midnight time slot at one point in early 1997. The series even spawned a CD compilation or two. It certainly opened my ears to a host of acts that I'm still a huge fun of even today - Future Sound Of London, DJ Shadow, Underworld, among others.
The proverbial fly in the ointment with Amp lay solely in its programming. When the show stuck with the bread and butter of electronica at the time, it was great. However, they'd inevtiably veer off into fringe territory every so often that just didn't fit, ranging from the truly abstract (Microstoria, etc) to almost new-age-like material (I recall seeing a Jean Michael Jarre video or two).
Points due for steering clear of the obvious fluff and for running the musical gamut - trance, techno, lounge, trip-hop, drum & bass - but I imagine it was a hard combo package to sell to an average viewer (it was for me at times).
I've always wondered if Amp was a third-party program that was packaged together independently of MTV. The show had a unique intro and close along with a really slick set of interstitials, graphics, and visual pieces that MTV seldom lends to its video-based programs, most of which are usually little more than video blocks with a host shilling the genre and its acts. I may just have to dig up an old videotape of the show and scan through the credits.
One final bit of Amp related trivia - the intro used in the later years of Howard Stern's E! show (the one with the Matrix-like camera action) was based on a video he saw and liked while watching Amp: Meat Beat Manifesto's clip for "Helter Skelter '97".
- M
> Amp fizzled because no one watched it.
Maybe so, but this is one of those rare situations where I've really gotta give MTV due credit.
They actually stuck with the series for a good three years or so (1996-1998 approximately; not sure when it officially died but I recall seeing new eps as late as fall '98), even giving it a pre-midnight time slot at one point in early 1997. The series even spawned a CD compilation or two. It certainly opened my ears to a host of acts that I'm still a huge fun of even today - Future Sound Of London, DJ Shadow, Underworld, among others.
The proverbial fly in the ointment with Amp lay solely in its programming. When the show stuck with the bread and butter of electronica at the time, it was great. However, they'd inevtiably veer off into fringe territory every so often that just didn't fit, ranging from the truly abstract (Microstoria, etc) to almost new-age-like material (I recall seeing a Jean Michael Jarre video or two).
Points due for steering clear of the obvious fluff and for running the musical gamut - trance, techno, lounge, trip-hop, drum & bass - but I imagine it was a hard combo package to sell to an average viewer (it was for me at times).
I've always wondered if Amp was a third-party program that was packaged together independently of MTV. The show had a unique intro and close along with a really slick set of interstitials, graphics, and visual pieces that MTV seldom lends to its video-based programs, most of which are usually little more than video blocks with a host shilling the genre and its acts. I may just have to dig up an old videotape of the show and scan through the credits.
One final bit of Amp related trivia - the intro used in the later years of Howard Stern's E! show (the one with the Matrix-like camera action) was based on a video he saw and liked while watching Amp: Meat Beat Manifesto's clip for "Helter Skelter '97".
- M
i had