History of Electronic Music: Amp

The more distance we get from it, the more fascinated I am with the late 1990's, specifically the years of 1997-2001. From a cultural perspective it was a weird, expansive time. Musically, rock was basically off the menu in that period, making way for a brief but important exploratory era when a lot of non-rock genres, most prominently electronic, got top billing. When I stumbled across this unbelievably strange artifact last night, it got me thinking about that bizarre string of years when pretty much everything was experimentation.

On the one hand, I'm glad that electronic music got to be center stage for a little while. It made stars of some very talented DJ's and it encouraged an entire generation of young people to dance just for the fun of it, a sentiment that has been absent from the club scene since jazz went out of style. On the other hand, the sudden, inexplicable popularity of electronic music also led to a wave of annoying cultural memes, i.e. the hopelessly false "rave scene" and all its hangers-on, that served to paint the entire genre in broad strokes of mindless indulgence. I recall around late 2001 I saw, of all things, a TV commercial for a local nightclub that co-opted the visual style of a rave flier and played some terribly generic trance. I knew then and there that the electronic music scene had officially jumped the shark and would have to go back to the underground in order to remain relevant.

Though not all attempts by larger entities to capitalize on electronic music were offensive. Somehow, MTV managed to get it right with Amp, a video block featuring some of the best electronic acts of the day. Amp didn't try to market the rave scene to 14-year-olds, it actually embraced the audience that was there already. The show aired late. Very late. As in, 3:00 or 4:00 AM. In other words, during the hours when ravers were most active. What's more, Amp didn't have a VJ. I can't imagine how stapling a host to Amp would have improved the show. It was a smart move to not dress up a 20-something actor in rave gear and have him or her introduce the next Banco de Gaia video.

As for the videos themselves, the electronic scene produced some of the best, most innovative music videos in history. For a good reference, check out this segment from one of the show's early episodes that features a classic from 80's electronic outfit Art of Noise, which seamlessly flows into a fittingly surreal video by then-recent Future Sound of London. These days you have to dig around online to find most of the excellent videos produced in the scene from that short golden age and a lot of what you'll find are segments from Amp.

Amp was the perfect music video program for its time and was possibly the last instance of MTV being in touch with what was new and interesting in the industry. While it's important to learn where cultural trends come from, it's also wonderful to watch them come into their own.