Like many who’d grown up devouring music videos on MTV, FlexasaurusRex — the online handle of a self-proclaimed “conceptual creator” — was rattled when he read reports late last year that the network could be going dark. “I had this nostalgic feeling of something going away that didn’t deserve to die,” he said.
Those rumors proved to be premature: Although the network canceled a slew of its global music channels, the flagship channel, along with music offshoots like MTV Classic, remain in the United States. But Flex (as he calls himself) had already settled on a plan to keep the old-school MTV lights on. On Jan. 3, he unleashed one of the internet’s most fanatical new projects: MTV Rewind, an unofficial website and app archive that aims to recreate the experience of grabbing a remote control, clicking over and seeing and hearing music, not the reality shows that dominate it now.
Arranged by era or genre, each of the dozen-plus channels on MTV Rewind spews a nonstop stream of clips that take you back to the days of hair metal and heartland rock (the ’80s) or grunge and goth (the ’90s). Channels named after the network’s benchmark programming, like “Headbangers Ball,” “Yo! MTV Raps” and “Club MTV,” restore metal, hip-hop and dance music videos. In the mood for some Catherine Wheel or Mercury Rev videos? A recreated “120 Minutes,” the channel’s alt-rock forum, awaits you. For added period flavor, Flex interspersed commercials featuring the California Raisins, or for products like the Super Soaker.
After Flex posted a link on Reddit, the site received over 500,000 hits in the first few hours, he said in a video interview. Social media turned into a mosh pit of praise, and Les Garland, one of MTV’s founders, sent him a complimentary note. As of this week, Flex said the site has pulled in 1.2 million page views. “I didn’t realize how much it would resonate with people and this sense of loss,” he said. “I don’t think it’s something people even realized they were missing.” (Paramount, which owns MTV, did not respond to a request for comment.)
“The quality of the videos is good, and it has one of those things that’s great about radio and MTV back in the day — the element of surprise,” said the original MTV V.J. Mark Goodman, who re-engaged with Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” while perusing the site. (Goodman was disappointed by the absence of vintage intros from V.J.s like himself — “radio and video music channels are better with a curator” — but Flex said he’s open to adding in such footage in the future.)
As far as the mysterious Flex, he is, in his words, a former “gems and minerals dealer” from Eugene, Ore., named Louis. (He declined to give his last name: “I just like to keep this separate from my work.”) Now 43, he was born a year after MTV arrived. “I grew up in a logging town, so I had many long nights of having MTV on in the background,” he said. “It was like a security blanket.”
When Covid hit, Flex said he entered the digital and media arts realm and now describes himself as a “conceptual creator with coding abilities.” For the last two months, he’s been living in Albania, “hustling for jobs as they come up and doing web design.” For now, the site is free and has no ads, but Flex asks for donations of $5 to $50 to pay for the server and “support my Albanian coffee addiction.”
Once he decided on his obsessive project, Flex dove into the Internet Music Video Database, a site that lists credits, release dates and other data for 95,000 music clips dating back to the ’60s. “I realized there was a huge archive of old videos, and a lot of them are starting to go away completely,” he said. On its first day, MTV Rewind boasted about 3,000 clips pulled from YouTube. Since then, that number has risen to about 40,000, with each channel cramming in anywhere from 400 to 6,000 videos.
Along the way, Flex has discovered videos by Serge Gainsbourg (“he’s the French Tom Waits”) and is currently rewatching R.E.M.’s 1991 “MTV Unplugged” on the channel devoted to acoustic rock performances. Adding footage to a channel inspired by “Total Request Live,” he also observed the way rock began to recede this century. “Lots of Justin Timberlake and Jewel,” he said. “You see the hard transition — there was no more rock.”
Flex acknowledges the Gen X nostalgia aspect of his creation, but he also feels it’s a needed alternative to today’s algorithm-generated playlists. “You could put it on, and it would keep going for six months and you’d never see the same song twice,” he said. “There is no mystery behind Spotify in the way it commodifies music. They’re just looking for ways to channel people’s interests.”
Another appeal of MTV Rewind may be its purity, the way it’s a throwback to a less congested social media time. “Music videos are now long-form content,” said Doug Klinger, who co-founded the Internet Music Video Database. “People are clearly longing for the ability to watch stuff and not get A.I. slop. It’s nostalgia for 30 years ago — but also for 10.”
Flex is now pondering a channel devoted to Latin music after noticing people from Latin America visiting his site. Adding more clips shouldn’t be an issue: Now that he’s gotten the tech hang of it, he can upload tens of thousands of videos in a quarter hour. “A lot of people have said, ‘I can show my kids what this was and why it meant something,’” he said. “The work is not done.”
The post Want Your MTV? A Rogue Site Is Bringing Back the Videos. appeared first on New York Times.
