“The 20 Greatest Liquid Television Segments”

I don’t usually link to this kind of thing, but this list, from geek culture site Topless Robot, is worth peeking at for a few reasons:

1. It’s understandably nostalgic for a time when some pretty unusual stuff made it onto mainstream television*—check out, for instance, at number 20, the Was (Not Was)/Christoph Simon video, “Dad I’m in Jail”;
2. It offers a clarifying glimpse at some of the dominant aesthetics in underground cartooning in the late 80s/early 90s (what an influence R. Crumb and Keith Haring were having!). The animation on display here looks so different from the cartoons popular today;
3. It provides yet more evidence of how so very little, today, is inaccessible: given time, everything ends up at YouTube. It’s also evidence of how audience viewing patterns are changing: Who cares that MTV has failed to collect Liquid Television on DVD when one can watch so much of it online? (And isn’t it even more fitting that way?)

*Actually, unusual stuff is always making its way through; it just becomes easier to see it in hindsight. And underground artists aren’t necessarily better than popular ones. But MTV—like a lot of the culture—definitely used to be a lot less slick, a lot less orchestrated and polished. Some grungy folks were once given surprisingly free rein….