Lost amid the casualties of last Thursday's CTV bloodbath — which saw the media conglomerate shutter its MuchMoreMusic and Star! TV operations — was the death of The NewMusic, whose production staff were among the 100-plus employees shown the door. The long-running program was a pioneering mix of sound, vision and journalism that launched several broadcasting careers (including that of one former EYE WEEKLY intern), was a beacon for Toronto's nascent independent music scene in the 1980s and essentially laid the foundation for the burgeoning MuchMusic empire.
And though what was once an hour-long Saturday-night flagship show on Citytv had, more recently, been relegated to a thankless Monday-night 30-minute slot on MuchMusic, The NewMusic remained one of the last vestiges of genuine, music-focussed programming in Much's current reality-show-overloaded/celeb-obsessed milieu. Apparently, even 30 minutes of the stuff per week was too much for the CTV barons to bear. Or perhaps, like so many products of the punk-rock era, The NewMusic couldn't bear the thought of turning 30.
Mercifully, the show is survived by a treasure trove of footage that will enjoy a YouTubed afterlife for all eternity. Though classic confrontations with Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and the Jesus and Mary Chain have yet to join the uploaded echelon (and the infamous Clash clip from 1979 is frustratingly un-embeddable), we salute the show with this modest sample of memorable NewMusic moments:
Alice Cooper CNE riot, 1980
The Ramones, 1980
Teenage Head, 1981
Bob & Doug McKenzie, 1983