The Mindful Bard: Money for Nothing

by Wanda Waterman
The Voice Magazine, Volume 22 Issue 36 2014-09-12

Film: Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video (link)

Director: Jamin Bricker
Writer: Saul Austerlitz
Narrator:Michael Charles Roman

“I wanted to write my book before the video vanished for good. As it turned out, that ended up not being a concern, because just as the music video appeared to be on the brink of extinction, the Internet took the video under its wing, and rescued it.”
– Saul Austerlitz

Those who view this film can’t help but lay their own personal timelines over it and judge its veracity according to the point in time at which they themselves came of age during the music video era, which, according to music critic Austerlitz, began as early as the rise of talkies (notably with the screening of The Jazz Singer), took off during the late seventies, and continued to be a going concern in pop culture right up until the form devolved into little more than a fixture of the commercial music industry.

My generation grew up with musicals, the Beatles, the Monkees, and rock operas, all of which formed highlights of our rather dull late-baby-boomer lives, and so we were really excited when the first underground music videos began appearing in artsy cafes . . . (Read the rest here.)