Caught in the Carousel

Nina Blackwood

One of the original five veejays on MTV, the Massachusetts-born, but Ohio raised Nina Blackwood remains one of the most familiar faces of the '80s. With her scratchy Kim Novak delivery, Blackwood mixed girl-next-door-ebullience with the keen knowledge of a musicologist, making her shifts at MTV indispensable learning experiences. Currently hosting "Nina's Big '80s" program at Sirius, Blackwood remains as enthusiastic as ever about music, radio and her stint at MTV. In between prepping for her program, Blackwood sat down with Caught In The Carousel and talked about the early days of MTV, how drunk The Rolling Stones were in the "Waiting On A Friend" video and whether or not it's wise to put heroes on pedestals.

Caught In The Carousel: When did you know that MTV was something special?

Nina Blackwood: Well, I thought music videos would catch on for a while. But I wasn't quite sure that a 24-hour video music channel was going to last a long time, let alone so many years. I would say I knew it was something special about two years into it. Suddenly you were seeing record labels putting in a lot of money to make these extravagant videos and if any artist had the possibility of a career they would have to have videos to break them. That's when I saw that there was a power in the business, definitely.

CITC: Do you think that videos helped bands that wouldn't have otherwise made it?

NB: I think so--for the most part that was true in the beginning. There were several artists coming over from Britain--one of the first bands that came was A Flock of Seagulls. That type of music, synthesized music, was not being played in mainstream America and I don't think a Program Director would have taken a chance playing something that different. Like after Jackson Brown comes A Flock of Seagulls? It helped bring in the New Romantic movement, the New Wave movement--

CITC: What's so interesting is that in 1981 if you thought of MTV as a radio station it was breaking a lot of rules because there wasn't one station in the country that was going to play Pat Benatar and then The Boomtown Rats back to back.

NB: Absolutely! I thought that was one of the great things about MTV and that's why I was excited. Because I went in and it I wasn't like, "Oh I'm going to be on television," it was that I wanted to be a part of what I thought would be a cool televised radio station. And I think it was for the most part in the beginning. And that was great--I mean, you'd have Michael Jackson and then REO Speedwagon, totally opposite ends of the spectrum. And then you'd sneak in Peter Gabriel and Duran Duran. It was pretty much all across the board. So I thought that was great, plus it was going out nationally, which was cool.

CITC: You're right, because I remember seeing "Waiting On A Friend" by the Rolling Stones and then came The Specials' "A Message To You Rudy"--I mean, there was no way that was going to happen on the radio.

NB: Isn't that a great video, "Waiting on a Friend"? It's so Stones. I mean it's got Ronnie and Keith in there, loaded to the gills. It's just one of my favorites.

CITC: I was eleven-I had no idea they were drunk. But I do remember thinking, 'Look how cool they walk.'

NB: Yeah, like almost stumbling? Like a really inebriated John Wayne. Yeah, I loved that, too.

CITC: I think they're in a bar at the end. Not sure how I missed that.

NB: Oh, they are! They're playing pool, Ronnie and Keith--the two biggest offenders of the band. Hanging out at the bar, waiting for Mick--it's perfect! And Charlie is going, "Oh god, when are these boys going to learn?" I'm glad you like that one, too.

CITC: But as cool as the odd back to back videos were, some people have suggested that maybe you saw the Talking Heads and then you saw The Marshall Tucker Band because there weren't a lot of videos.

NB: Well in the beginning, there weren't--and most of what we had were Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, REO Speedwagon. When we launched there weren't a lot, but it didn't take that long for people to start making videos. I think it could have been true in 1981, but then everyone started to make them.

CITC: Whether it was you or J.J. Jackson or Martha Quinn, what I loved about MTV was that I learned so much about music from you guys.

NB: Thank you very much for saying that. When I do my shows now for Sirius, I try to do it so I'm teaching something--granted it might be a trivial thing, like Mick Jones is a Buddhist. But when I think about what artist I'm going to put on I pick the one that I can use to teach something. Because as a listener, I like when the jock tells me something about the artist, a little wacky fact, you know? I'm glad that you appreciated that, because I think that's what we all did.

CITC: But I do remember reading that Alan Hunter said he used to be given binders of material to learn.

NB: Well, Alan and Martha, because they were actors, really studied their stuff.

CITC: A few years ago I was watching Carson Daly and he was talking about how great 'N Sync was but I didn't really buy that he went home and listened to 'N Sync. But when I watched you guys I really did believe that Martha would have Specials albums cued up at home while she made spaghetti. Or that you had shelves of vinyl in your house. Now it seems like the few veejays there are, really don't care that much about the music. Did you see that shift happening?

NB: Yes, it was actually starting to happen when we were there. Some of the duties of the veejays would be chipped away, like we would always do the music news and then it started branching out and we had a news division and then Kurt Loder came in and all that. And then we didn't do interviews with the artists that we used to. So, it started to look like there was not only no upward growth, but some of what we were doing in the five, six years prior was being taken away. Until the point of what you see now. I liked Matt Pinfield a lot and he really was a musicologist. But, you know, being a veejay turned more into being a television host.

CITC: I liked Pinfield because he knew all the dorky facts I did. But, you could see that he was getting increasingly uncomfortable with the things he was talking about because he knew nobody cared.

NB: He was the last one that I remember that seemed like a true music guy. But, the whole thing changed. They don't even do music shows, just reality programs.

CITC: A lot of the veejays now have poor English. I know that sounds like an old guy thing to say, but do you find it frustrating?

NB: I can't stand it! I'm sure you and I both have used the wrong word in the course of our lives, but it seems like with them it's a form of being cool to be stupid. It's a pet peeve of mine.

CITC: I always felt like if I talked to you about an Elvis Costello b-side you would know everything about it and I just don't feel like that's true anymore.

NB: That's cool that you say that. A lot of feedback was like people felt we were an older sibling turning them on to a new record or artist. It wasn't that we were cool, we just were regular people with a cool job. We never acted like we were cooler than the room, which is what I get now from the veejays. Even though it isn't really cool.

CITC: I never felt like you were the point.

NB: Absolutely, it was about the music.

CITC: I always loved the interplay when you would switch shifts.

NB: Oh the toss? We called it the toss. Some funny stuff happened then.

CITC: I might just be nostalgic, but I really miss the toss.

NB: Well, if you're being nostalgic it's absolutely the truth, that's how we felt. Like we'd get excited to do the toss together.

CITC: When bands would pop by the studio during your show it was a very disarming, very real interview. Was there any prep time?

NB: No. I mean, sometimes we'd know a couple of days in advance--there was generally at least 24-hour notice of an artist coming in. So, I'm speaking for myself, but I could be speaking for all of us. There wasn't a slacker among the five of us. We all really worked hard. You'd read everything you possibly could and you listened to their records and if you had their old stuff you'd know them and if they were new you'd watch the video. We were well-versed so we knew what we were going to ask. And of course, we had producers with that, too. They would be assigned to the certain interview as well. So, we weren't talking like we didn't know what we were doing because we did know what we were doing. To this day, the worst thing is being unprepared. I didn't want to not know what the bands were talking about. Homework was an important thing and we all did ours.

CITC: But the TRL interviews, for example--it seems like the subject matter of what's being discussed is completely different.

NB: Well, I think in our culture today, in our pop culture, it's a lot more superficial. I was being interviewed for a year, 1981 and the producer from Vh-1 was asking really cool questions that were unusual. And he said, "I always get in trouble because I ask deeper questions and they always say nobody cares about that." He was very frustrated because he had to ask stupid questions, because that's what they wanted for soundbites. They're more interested in superficial stuff.

CITC: It's too bad because last week I was thinking that it would be cool to have a channel that just played videos all day and I sort of laughed because that doesn't really exist anymore. In other words, the thing that MTV created and tried to sell to the world, doesn't really exist anymore. That's unfortunate, don't you think?

NB: I think so. And, I was directing people to MTV2 and now I'm reading how they're adding all this reality programming to it. This is the most common comment, that you can't see videos anymore on MTV. Vh-1 did a great job at first, it took over where MTV left off, but now they went the way of MTV. I'll watch Vh-1 classics, but it's not new artists. Fuse I guess is supposed to be the new thing, but I keep forgetting that it exists because MTV being the only music channel has been burned into my brain.

CITC: I remember coming home from school in 1982 and waiting as long as it would take for an Asia video. But, now I come home to "The Hills"--

NB: I don't watch any reality shows. I feel that my IQ gets chipped down a few notches by watching.

CITC: People always say you shouldn't meet your heroes, and you've probably met a lot of yours. Was it ever disappointing?

NB: No, because I don't put them up on a pedestal to be disappointed. I don't idolize, because I grew up with musicians.

CITC: So no disappointments with big stars at all?

NB: Well, once I met John Cleese, not with MTV, but at a benefit I do every year in Santa Barbara. I went up to him and I said, "You know I usually don't say this but I just love your work." And he just looked right over my head like I wasn't there. But, you know, it was busy and it was probably the wrong time.

CITC: Was there a real fraternity among the veejays?

NB: Very much so. We all had our own lives, but we did things together like going to concerts or having a party at Alan's house. Martha told this story when we had a reunion on Sirius, I don't know if I can tell it as funny as she did, but once we were going over to New Jersey to see a concert and she rented this goofy little car. And she'd go up to every one of our apartments in Manhattan and toot the horn and we'd all climb in like some tiny little clown car--fun stuff like that. We miss J.J. tremendously, but we still talk to each other. And, when we do get together we're the dynamics haven't changed.

CITC: Something tells me the veejays now don't have that.

NB: No, I don't think they do. We really were a kind of unit and I know the viewers perceived that. People thought we all lived in the same house..

CITC: Any horrible fights?

NB: We all really loved each other. The first year we all shared a dressing room with our wardrobe--it was like a band situation. And we all got along--most bands don't. And now all four of us work for Sirius.

CITC: Where do you get your new music now?

NB: Actually, I listen to Sirius. One of my favorite channels is Left of Center. A lot of new music on there.

CITC: What bands have you been liking lately?

NB: Dandy Warhols, Franz Ferdinand, Beehive, AFI--and I really like Jack White with the White Stripes and the Raconteurs.

CITC: What's interesting is that twenty-five years ago you started on this thing called MTV and now you're starting on this thing called satellite radio.

NB: I remember when there were just like two people working at Sirius, and I told my manager I wanted to be part of it. It was attractive because it was a cutting edge medium.

CITC: Did you find that you missed the MTV experience after you left?

NB: I didn't miss it when I first left because I was so busy. It's not the case of missing it, but I had some really nice memories. There are some things that I wish I could be part of again-like when you're watching a movie and you want to watch your favorite part over and over.

CITC: Give me one of those favorite parts.

NB: It's a really cute story. Ray Davies was in a relationship with Chrissie Hynde, and we wanted him to do a story for MTV and she didn't want him to do it for some reason. So he told her one day that he was going out for a pack of cigarettes and he jumped in a cab and came down for the interview.

CITC: Do you think MTV has gone so far the other way that it can't go back?

NB: I don't think it will ever go back to 24 hours of straight videos. But, if they start listening to some of the criticism out there, the pendulum might swing back to a more music-driven format. You never know.

CITC: What do you make of the public's attention span? Has it shrunk?

NB: I think the attention span has gone down to that of a gnat. And the younger the person is, the less of an attention span they have. And it's upsetting because I feel that I'm not part of society because of that. I don't even like computers and I'd rather have a book and sit and read. And people with phones in the store will be doing things and they aren't even in the moment because they're focused on the phone. People are so fragmented in their thinking.

CITC: What's something that MTV doesn't want their viewers to know?

NB: MTV doesn't want to tell people that the veejays are 25 because they think it will scare away their viewers.

CITC: I used to stay up and watch for hours wondering what video was next.

NB: That's exactly what I like about radio--that wonder of what's coming up next.