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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
MTV can't get enough sex, while VH1 keeps strip-mining rock history.
Aug 10, 1999 | It may come as a surprise to those of you who spent many happy hours vegged out in front of MTV during the '80s, but music videos are in short supply on the music channel nowadays, at least in prime time. And the same goes for MTV's geezer-friendly sister channel, VH1. Ah, it seems only yesterday that "Thriller," "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and "Hot for Teacher" were blasting from televisions across the land ...
On Aug. 15, VH1 is premiering its first original TV movie, "Sweetwater," a biopic of the rock-classical fusion group from Los Angeles that played the opening set at Woodstock and faded away soon after. And last month, MTV launched its first original drama series, "Undressed." But at least "Sweetwater," which is subtitled "A True Rock Story," remains relatively true to VH1's slogan, "Music First." With the addition of the concupiscent "Undressed" to an MTV lineup that already includes the sex advice show "Loveline," the kiss-and-tell show "The Blame Game" and the current wild season of "The Real World," Music Television's motto might as well be "Sex First, Music Later."
For both MTV and VH1, the increase in non-video programming is a matter of survival in the face of fragmented musical tastes. The music channels divvy up viewers this way: VH1 gets the graying boomers, Lilith fans and anyone else who can't deal with rap and teeny-pop. MTV gets the kids.
For aging music fans, VH1 is just a few aching joints away from A&E or the Hitler, oops, the History Channel -- it's all nostalgia, all the time. "Before They Were Rock Stars" digs up yearbook photos and audition tapes; "Behind the Music" charts meteoric rises and tragic flame-outs; "Where Are They Now?" spotlights the vanished acts whose declines weren't quite spectacular enough to get them on "Behind the Music." It makes perfect sense that VH1 is branching out into rock star biopics because, before shows like "Behind the Music" (and A&E's "Biography") elbowed them out of vogue, biopics were how celebrity life stories got told. Go rent "The Buddy Holly Story" or Bette Midler's fictionalized Janis Joplin bio "The Rose" or the 1979 miniseries "Elvis" and you'll realize where "Behind the Music" got its dramatic rhythm -- rise to fame, fall from grace, redemption.
Watching "Sweetwater," it's as if the biopic never went away. This is not entirely a good thing. "Sweetwater" suffers from the lack of humor that embalmed "The Rose." And it drags in every cliché in rock biopic history, starting with its hoary framing device: A music television producer goes searching for the members of Sweetwater for a Woodstock 30th anniversary special, and when she finds them, it's flashback time. We see how the band took off after singer Nansi Nevins (played by Amy Jo Johnson of "Felicity"), a high school senior, talked her way onstage with them at a club gig. They get a record contract, play Woodstock, have a minor hit with a flute-driven cover of "Motherless Child." But then Nevins is in a near-fatal car accident; she recovers, but her vocal cords are damaged. Without her, the band loses its record contract and the members drift apart.
Back in the present, "Mix TV" producer Cami Carlson (Kelli Williams of "The Practice," under the mistaken impression that she's the star of the movie), a recovering drug addict who is down to her last chance to keep her job, swiftly realizes that the key to her own redemption lies in finding the reclusive Nevins and getting her to speak on camera. Not only does Cami find her, she also ends up reuniting the band. "Sweetwater" is every "Behind the Music" producer's dream.
