Currently Reading Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas By Chuck Klosterman see related

The story of a rock critic's self-degradation

It is hard enough to try to gain credibility as an indie-rock music critic in Johnson City, a small East Tennessee town with virtually no music scene. When I heard I was going to New York City for the annual CMA journalism conference in March I thought I was "movin' on up."
Little did I know that hours later, I - one who abhors MTV and everything it stands for -would be enlisted in the rabid legion of Tiger Beat readers who make up the network's Total Request Live (TRL) audience.
In the late '80s and early '90s when I was in my tweens, I would commandeer the remote from my parents' grasp in hopes of glimpsing Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" or Aerosmith's "Janie's Got a Gun" on MTV. At one point I started recording my favorite music videos on a VHS tape that I had swiped from my mom's catalog of Days of Our Lives episodes. Sitting in front of the television with the patience of a 40-year-old virgin, I would wait, VCR remote in hand, ready to record the next piece of meaningful rock art, that alas, has long since faded as MTV has succumbed to reality-based staples like "The Real World," "Laguna Beach" and "There and Back."
Now the few times I see music videos on MTV it is either in the a.m. after most everyone is asleep or during TRL, where MTV devotes more time to show shots of pubescent teenage girls giving a "shout out" than to broadcasting music videos in their entirety.
Still I was in New York City for the journalism conference in the Roosevelt Hotel, and when I found myself with a few hours to kill before my 3 p.m. check-in, so I began a search for free swag and things to do where I found a booth to sign up to be a studio audience member for television tapings in the New York City area "Good Morning America," Fox News and MTV's very own pop juggernaut and unofficial flagship program TRL. I dismissed "Good Morning America" broadcast. I'd have to be ready to go at 5:30 a.m. and for a person who normally falls asleep 30 minutes before then, the odds of me getting up seemed pretty dismal. Finally after some mental argument I decided to venture into the belly of the beast that has nearly destroyed the very basis on which rock 'n' roll was founded. I thought "why not" as I scribbled my name down beside countless TRL hopefuls, of which only 20 would be chosen.
I grabbed lunch at some random burger place and then headed back to the hotel for the TRL drawing. As it started, the man with the bag of names imposed another condition - no one in dark-colored clothing could go. It stated clearly on the printout, he said that you had to wear brightly colored clothing and to be ready to go when your name is picked. I quickly approached a woman who had a hand full of bright green shirts in her hand - freebies but all were a girl's size medium. I began to negotiate with her in hopes of scoring one of the shirts, if my name was drawn. No asinine MTV dress code would stop me from peering into the inner workings of the network I loathed so intensely.
With all but two names to go, I was still waiting and beginning to feel dejected. Then, like a last-minute reprieve from the governor to a man strapped in the electric chair, he called my name. Nothing has ever sounded sweeter!
I stretched into the bright green baby doll-cut girls T-shirt and was on my way to Times Square. Before we could be whisked upstairs to the room where such musical legends such as 'N Sync, the Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears and Korn have performed, we had to get our MTV TRL armbands. The lady giving them out was more excited than a 3-year-old who had just snorted a pixy stick.Then I was stripped of all my possessions and berated by an overweight rent-a-cop for attempting to call my girlfriend so that she could catch my moment of glory on live television. I fell in line like a cow waiting for the slaughter - what was being slaughtered here was my integrity as an indie-rock journalist.
How could I have sold out for a primo seat on the TRL set on the stage overlooking Times Square?
Minutes before going live, the fanatical woman asked, "Who wants to dance for some free stuff?" Figuring there is nothing funnier than the moves of a skinny white boy who lacks rhythm, I raised my hand. I did the funky chicken, the moonwalk, the Macarena and my piece de resistance-the worm. The crowd cheered; girls swooned; I got to make an ass of myself and smash my testicles during the worm, and I got an oversized TRL T-shirt for my trouble.
After TRL went live I had grown tired of the green T-shirt cutting off the circulation in my arms. With TRL veejay Damien Fahey and special co-host Amanda Bynes standing in front of me after a portion of a Madonna video played, I decided to relieve the problem, not by removing the T-shirt like a common man but like the manliest of men, Hulk Hogan. After pre-ripping a hole in the collar, I shredded the shirt on camera directly to Bynes' right. During a commercial break, preparation for Natasha Bedingfield's performance of "Unwritten," I noticed a small seating area directly to the right of the camera crane. It seemed like an out-of-the-way place for seats, and then I noticed something about the people sitting there. They were not your typical TRL audience, not the "pretty" in the "oh, look at me" sorority girl, teenybopper way those people were sitting in the main seating area were.
Was it is just a coincidence or is MTV as superficial and staged as I had so often thought?
After a brief appearance by the Gideon "indie" Yago for and the presentation of the Number 1 video I was led out to collect my things. I came, I saw and I sold out for a lousy damned-shirt.

story used with permission of the East Tennessean.

Online version can be found here