Originally published at: David Bowie grills MTV about their failure to play videos by Black artists in this 1983 interview | Boing Boing
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Bowie was a mensch.
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Bowie did an amazing job helping Mark Goodman make himself look like a complete idiot.
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Bowie was full on sensational in every way. Damned.
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LOVE the deep ‘enhance’ move at the end watching Bowie struggling to appear polite.
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I think Bowie says “very interesting” because he can’t believe Goodman would be so open about his racism. Or he can’t believe he actually got Goodman to straight up admit it, and on camera no less.
Good on Bowie for having the balls to bring this up and how shameful for MTV.
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Apparently, one of the first beneficiaries of that interview was Eddy Grant…
And apparently Musical Youth was the first Black artists to get an in studio interview on MTV?
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As a near-teenager in the midwest in 1983, and as someone who watched MTV in 1983, let me be clear that we were not at all afraid of black musicians. Some of us even liked their music more than we liked music by white musicians.
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And it was omnipresent!
There’s an Electric Avenue in Seal Beach, CA, and to this day any time I drive near it I sing, “We gonna rock down to Electric Avenue, and then we’ll take it higher.” 
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David Bowie is a rock star.
Mark Goodman: “You like that? I don’t like you.” Has anything changed in the last 40 years?
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Aye, they played the hell out of that one once it aired; if almost nothing else.
As a kid, I remember sitting though hours and hours of new wave vids with my sister, just to catch the rare MJ or Prince video…
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It’s been posted before but i’m reminded of his interview explaining the internet to a befuddled and equally out of touch Jeremy Paxman back in 99. Bowie just had his finger on the pulse and, more importantly, paid attention.
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when adults say because the children they often mean because the parents
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It’s good to have affirmation that Bowie was not just a standout guy but was very much aware that white artists were having success at the expense of black artists. Good for him for putting MTV on blast back then
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More or less! Perhaps more emphasis on “you’ve made a terrible mistake” but with a soupcon of “I’m quietly amazed you’ve just said that”
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One thing I’ve long enjoyed is that black artists happily borrowed back. Bowie did a very James Brown type groove on Fame, and Brown yoinked it back
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Goodman: “… pick some town in the Midwest that will be scared to death by Prince, which we are playing…”
Me: where is Prince from again? oh right Minneapolis
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The look on Bowie’s face throughout says so much. Definitely not in the market for horseshit.
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Bowie’s own comments on race were “very interesting” a few years before that, I seem to recall.
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