Even as it killed the radio star, the era of music video gave birth to
a new kind of celebrity: the video jockey, or VJ for short.
As the original VJs soon learned, being a video jockey involves much more
than introducing videos to a television audience. In the 20 years since MTV
first aired, VJs have become cultural icons in their own right. It's a heady
position to find yourself in, as both former VJ Laurie Brown and current VJ
Chris Booker will tell you.
Currently a television arts reporter, Brown has seen the industry from
almost every angle there is -- from fronting a band in the late 1970s to donning
shades for a role in the Corey Hart video Sunglasses at Night. But she's still
best known for her six-year stint as one of the original VJs on a Canadian
music video channel, a time she looks back on with both fondness and insight.
"It was a lot freer back then," she remarks, "in that the VJ had a say
in programming choices. I could pick a lot of the videos: there was much less
of a stringent play list." That enabled VJs to comment critically on the videos
they introduced and to have fun creating themes.
Like Brown, Booker went to work in the industry straight out of high school.
"I started in a real small-time radio station," he says.
He didn't stay "small time" for long, though. While still in his early
20s, he moved to New York City and became a disc jockey at one of the Big
Apple's leading radio stations, K-Rock, where his pal and fellow VJ Carson
Daly also got his start.
"One of the radio consultants took me under his wing," he says, "and this
guy ended up getting a job at MTV. Through him, about three years into my
radio job, they contacted me about doing MTV2 and then some shows on MTV."
While Booker enjoys his three-day-a-week stint as a VJ, he still thinks
his work at the radio station has some definite advantages over the more glamorous
gig. "As a VJ," he quips, "I have to shave. But seriously, you've got to worry
about your looks."
Disc jockeys also have more freedom, he says, and more interaction with
their audience. He readily admits that some of the videos he has to introduce
are not that good., "I don't like everything I play."
Booker works off of scripts prepared with the help of two writers. "It's
a lot of memorization," he says.
Brown was there in the mid-1980s when music television began to lose its
rough edges. "I really watched the culture...change," she says, "from one
that felt underground and adventurous to one that realized that pop music
was a money machine."
She recalls the shift happening after studies showed that viewers were
much younger than first thought. "On the one hand," she says, "it was expressing
the best ideals of rock -- to not be afraid of who you are, to not follow
the crowd."
On the other hand, she says, it had to follow the rules of commercial television,
and she watched "the commercials going from ads for beer and cars to ads for
chips and video games."
In the economics of music television, the viewers create the demand and
the artists supply what they want. Serving as a kind of go-between, VJs have
the opportunity to see the stars as they really are.
"The media are 90 percent of the time wrong. Most of [the stars] are really
nice guys," says Booker -- even someone as notorious as Marilyn Manson. "The
relationships you can form with the bands, and the fact that you can turn
on the TV and say, 'Those are my friends,' -- that's really cool."
Occasionally, VJs have to contend with a rowdy rock star or a pouting prima
donna. Faced with such situations, Brown says her instincts as a journalist
would automatically take over.
"If it was on tape, I showed it. Sometimes it could be something very subtle
-- just the way their attitude was." She recalls several of these "gotcha"
moments happening during an interview with pop diva Whitney Houston.
Like rock stars, VJs must learn to deal with fame. It can be the job's
biggest perk or its greatest occupational hazard.
The one thing about fame, though, is that it doesn't last forever. "Being
a VJ really doesn't prepare you for a lot of other jobs," says Brown. "A lot
of VJs step off from television and into the abyss." In her case, a background
in music journalism enabled her to move on to other things.
Even if it only lasts a short time, most VJs see their on-air run as the
experience of a lifetime. Brown remains grateful for what it gave her. "The
work of an artist and the life of an artist is so interesting to me," she
says. "To be around that kind of passion and commitment is a real honor."