My mother often remarks that the only time she knew that I would not be climbing the furniture to reach forbidden items or out running around the neighborhood terrorizing other childrenwas when Sesame Street was on
The television programs I watched while growing up in the 70's were quite bizarre
Sid and Marty Kroft dominated my Saturday mornings with their acid trip programs
I hated "HR Puffinstuff" but never missed an episode of "The Land of the Lost"
My musical education was provided by "The Midnight Special" and "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert"
Most of my late night viewing was spent trying to catch the Holy Grail of music TV programming, a glimpse of my gods KISS (gather 'round kids, let me tell you a story of a time before MTV when cool rock bands like KISS were only on real late at night and even then it was maybe once or twice a year)
It was on "The Midnight Special" that I saw the coolest video ever for Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"
Throughout the 80's I witnessed the birth of MTV but not firsthand because my neighborhood was not yet wired for cable (we had to wait until the late 80's)
So, we had to settle for early sattelite TV like VIEW, ON TV and SHOWTIME (yup, it was originally a sattelite network) as well as Friday Night Videos
I almost ruined my eyes trying to watch scrambled porn
It was usefull for watching all the cult movies from the 70's like one of my all time favorites "The Phantom of the Paradise"
When I finally did get cable and MTV I soon discovered "Heavy Metal Mania" hosted by Dee Snider
It was back in the days when MTV used to play music and the guest VJs got to pick the videos
I managed to get a couple of episodes on tape (it delights and amazes my friends to thisd day) as well as a Halloween night special hosted by Elvira
There were lots of cool videos by bands I never knew but would later appreciate like The Damned and Bauhaus
Like any other dissafected teen, I gravitated towards the horror/gore genre but soon became burnt out
The 90's were a cable-less environment due to the fact that I was constantly moving around
I consumed a lot less video but one club started my thinking in a new direction
That club was the now defunct Video Bar in Deep Ellum
They had an interesting event called "Sadistic Sundays" where dominatixes did their thing while industrial music played and clips of various films and videos played on the screens arond the club
I was exposed to lots of early 90's industrial acts like Nine Inch Nails Ministry and Skinny Puppy
Their videos were not the standard pretty boys with big hair pouting into the camera
These videos were full of anger and violence and ugly images
Not only that but they were at a pace that would give an epileptic a seizure
The video bar closed down but business would pick up later at The Lizard Lounge on nights that we called "ChurchNights"
This was the infancy of my ideas about combining video projection with musical presentation
Up until the mid 90's my video collecting was pretty much limited to little snippits that I caught on TV and an occasion dub someone would throw my way
That is, until two major influences would find their way into my life
The first occured when I was hanging out with a girl, getting high and watching cable access
The channel guide said that a show was about to come on called "The Hypnotic Eye"
I thought that was a cool name for a show so we tuned in later when it came on
The show starred a large eye puppet with no mouth and a hand puppet of a cat as a co-host
As if that weren't surreal enough, he played a mixture of old commercials, movies, music videos and other weird underground stuff