120 Minutes Rewind, Video — April 7, 2017 at 12:05 pm

‘120 Minutes’ Rewind: The The’s Matt Johnson earns an MTV disclaimer while hosting in 1986

For this week’s installment of “120 Minutes” Rewind, we look back at the time The The mastermind Matt Johnson hosted the show in 1986 while promoting that year’s Infected — and earned an on-screen disclaimer because of his stridently political remarks between music videos.

As you can see in the clips below, Johnson used his late-night cable platform to decry the “Reagan/Thatcher romance,” and, in particular, the U.S. bombing of Libya and the U.K.’s role in that attack. (As he put it, “the use of Britain as a mere aircraft carrier to hit Libya with.”)

During the episode, the following message scrolled across the bottom of the screen: “The content of this segment does not necessarily reflect the position of MTV Networks.”

Johnson, who returns with the first new The The single in a decade later this month, also was less than charitable to the bands whose videos he was introducing, admitting he’d never heard Easterhouse before, calling The Stranglers “perpetually middle-aged” and saying, “I must admit, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark aren’t a band that I like or dislike, they’re just kind of there.”

Check out four clips from the Johnson-hosted episode below via uploader MrPhilrand.

 

 

 

 

 

PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS

 

2 Comments

  1. Wow, I’d completely forgotten about that episode! That was right about the time I started watching it, too.

    Now THAT is a reissue I’d love to see – The The’s Infected movie! I’ve only ever seen it a few times and my copy (which I’d taped off USA’s Night Flight) is long gone at this point.

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