You’re settled into bed, thinking about turning off the light and drifting off to sleep and suddenly it grabs you like Rosie O’Donnell seizes an Italian sub with all the fixings.
There’s no release from its clutches. Once it gets its hooks into you there’s no turning back. It’s harder to turn off than Charlie Sheen at the Playboy Mansion. I’m talking about the best thing on TV. Maybe the best thing on the entire planet. Rock compilation infomercials.
Nobody wants to watch them. They’re not on any TV schedule, nobody has one sitting in a TiVo and nobody actively seeks them out. They find you. Track you down in a moment of half-sleep and rob you of precious shut-eye.
It always starts so innocently doesn’t it? You’re a few minutes away from sleep but just want to wind down for a minute so you decide to explore the dial for a bit. Suddenly, somewhere between NBC and FOX, you see a flash. Cool. Was that Led Zeppelin? You reverse course and then it’s all over. You’re a subject of Time Life.
That Led Zeppelin clip is followed by The Who, or The Guess Who, or The Guess What and then Peter Frampton appears to take you on a magical journey through the collection’s theme. You know it’s an infomercial, but you just can’t stop. You saw the two-second preview of the upcoming Steely Dan clip and now you just have to see the full 20-second version. And just when you think you’ve seen it all, one of the Monkees tells you about a bonus disc, complete with more clips of your favorite classic rockers. You soon learn there’s nothing certain about the music on these discs and each new minute holds the promise of another great song.
In fact there are only two certainties for users of this half-hour heroin: 30 minutes of sleep will be lost and there’s potential for some prostrate rocking out that may require the viewer to remake the bed before turning in.
This may seem bad, but it’s not. It’s glorious. So many classic songs all crammed into one place with narration from has-been rockers and mildly attractive female hosts. It’s the best place to see cheesy graphics and poorly-filmed lip-synched performances. It all adds up to a half-hour in musical heaven. One not available since VH1 started airing the exploits of Flava Flav 24/7.
It’s almost like having a visual iPod, except you don’t need to spend any time downloading songs and importing them onto the player. They’re all right there! And, in most cases, accompanied by awesome performances that save hours scouring YouTube.
Best of all, these programs are commercial free! You never have to suffer through any lame ad breaks because the show is the commercial. That’s right, the goal of these 30-minute nuggets is to convince us to buy some massive CD collection, but we never will. The company’s already given us what we wanted for free.
A half-hour in TV paradise serving as a lead-in to sweet dreams.
Photo Courtesy Wikipedia
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1 response so far ↓
1 Seraphina // Jul 18, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I completely know what you’re talking about Andrew. Except with that photo, I thought it was going to be about one of those 90’s R&B ones. THOSE are the best.
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