The first two hours of MTV (1981) [video]
Strangely enough, Australian artists were uniquely well-prepared for the emergence of MTV.<p>There was a national Saturday night pop music show called Countdown [1], that ran from 1974, featuring live performances and music videos, so Australian bands had nearly a decade head start to develop the art of music video.<p>This was a major factor in the USA success of INXS, Men at Work, AC/DC and Olivia Newton-John, as they'd started out in the late 70s, and when MTV started, they already had great music videos in the can and were well placed to make more.<p>When most videos were just of the group on a studio stage performing the song (e.g., Dire Straits' Sultans of Swing [2]), INXS and other bands of the time had arthouse filmmakers like Richard Lowenstein [3] doing much more creative work.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(Australian_TV_program)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_(Australian_TV_progr...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_7qkRwcMFc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_7qkRwcMFc</a><p>[3] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lowenstein" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lowenstein</a>