A little more than 30 years after MTV launched with a broadcast of The Buggles' “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the channel's web offshoot MTVHive.com debuted its new indie-music series “Weird Vibes” with a Vivian Girls music video that could be mistaken as a commercial for Dream Phone. Like the Buggles selection, “Weird Vibes'” opening music-video choice was designed to make a statement. The Vivian Girls' video's bright, retro aesthetic carries through the whole 30-minute program, which is every bit as seeped in late-'80s/early-'90s nostalgia as the audience for which it was designed. From the “Saved by the Bell”-esque graphics of its opening sequence to the neon colors of its closing credits, the show isn't shy in its courtship of the hip twenty-something demographic that just paid way too much for New Kids on the Block tickets and can't stop tweeting about classic Nick sitcoms.
“Weird Vibes” panders so much to its nostalgic audience that it actually patronizes them, either intentionally or unintentionally (most likely a mix of both). For all its music videos, the show's format is more closely modeled after the FCC-requirement-fulfilling educational staple “Teen Kids News” than any classic MTV program. It's a show that treats its viewers like the small children they apparently still long to be.
Between videos by acts including Shabazz Palaces, Grimes and WU LYF, the show's debut episode also includes trivia questions (the answer to one of them is “Panda Bear”), and segments about the perils of being a buzz band, with interviews from members of Best Coast, Beach Fossils and Au Revoir Simone. I suspect some of these talking heads are going to want to distance themselves from their involvement. Most come across looking pretty bad—either like giggling, vapid flakes, or like gasbags too self-absorbed to know not to take an interview with a show called "Weird Vibes" seriously. Toward the episode's end, Small Black's Josh Kolenik complains about artistic theft, lamenting that “If you have a great idea, 20 bands that are good are going to rip it off immediately, and by the time your next record comes out, that idea you had is not what it was.” That's a heavy accusation, coming from a chillwave musician who himself seems more bandwagoner than innovator.
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If it were broadcast on a less obscure platform than MTVHive.com, I could envision “Weird Vibes” being another Garden State moment for indie music—a display that magnifies the scene's preciousness to such suffocating extremes that the scene will have to somehow reconcile its quirks. To the extent that they even acknowledge “Weird Vibes” at all, indie types will likely mock the show or dismiss it as the MTV commercialization of independent culture. And that's true, mostly, but watching the first episode I'm amazed by how much the program gets right. The show is picking up on very real cues from this culture, and pointing out how completely ridiculous they are. If ever there were a call to put down that NES controller, throw out those “Clarissa Explains it All” DVDs and rename your band something other than Ducktails or Reading Rainbow, this is it.
You can stream the first episode below:
Get More: Weird Vibes, MTV Hive
