Photo: Walker Art Center Cable boxes couldn’t be hooked up fast enough in August of 1981. People said I want my MTV. Music videos blew our minds as we watched for hours on end a steady rotation of our ...

Although the history of the music video is intertwined with MTV’s debut of “Video Killed the Radio Star” in 1981, that is not where the idea of adding visuals to songs originated. Following some ...

I don’t mean to slander his legacy, but the news this week of the death of Chuck Brown, the “Godfather of Go-Go,” made me think of Scopitone, the proto-video platform for cheesily risqué musical films ...

In some 500 bars, restaurants and servicemen’s clubs throughout the U.S., the center of attention these days is a monstrous new machine called Scopitone. It is a cross between a jukebox and TV. For ...

About 15 years ago, vernacular photo collector Nicholas Osborn was rummaging through a flea market in Wisconsin when he came across a bunch of 16-millimeter reels. They featured kitschy performances ...

Scopitones are three minute long 16mm films that were viewed on a Scopitone machine, a jukebox-like player. A precursor to music videos, Scopitones -- both the films and the machines -- were popular ...

When I was looking for something on You Tube the other night, what to my wondering eyes should appear but the Kessler Sisters. I hadn't seen them in forty years, and they still looked terrific. Paul ...

<b>BEFORE YOUTUBE,</b> before VH1, even before MTV, there were Scopitones. <p>Scopitones were large, wood-paneled contraptions from the 1960’s that played sound and showed a video on ...