Dave Kendall Merges With The Infinite

As a kid stuck in the suburban sprawl of Austin and then Houston/ Spring, Texas, where music tastes skewed in such a fashion that AC/DC was literally playing on a radio station somewhere 24 hours-a-day, Whitney Houston was playing endlessly in mall sound systems and my classmates positively wet themselves for Garth Brooks - finding the music I liked was a part-time job.*

MTV had not yet pivoted to dumb game shows and reality TV, but during normal waking hours, you were more likely to see them play Warrant's "Cherry Pie" on a loop more often than anything I cared about.  And then one Sunday night, I caught 120 Minutes, hosted by a guy who seemed like a true believer when it came to the kinds of music I was already kind of liking by 1989.  

Dave Kendall's run on 120 Minutes - a show he conceived and produced - and which he would go on to host, lasted from 1989 - 1992.  If you ask a lot of people, they won't recall 120 Minutes prior to Kendall, and will barely remember the show continued after he handed hosting duties off to Matt Pinfield.  Once I was headed for college in 1993, I really didn't pay much attention, and then had no cable for a few years to even notice he was gone.

Kendall was British, which was a bit of a novelty, but seemed terribly on-brand for a show that featured far less in the way of big American hair-bands and more in the way of imports like Love and Rockets, Jesus and Mary Chain, Suede, Lush, Kate Bush, Sisters of Mercy and even The Cure, who I didn't see on MTV until 1989 when Kendall played the video for Pictures of You.**  And I watched a lot of MTV.

He also featured plenty of other bands from the US, Australia and elsewhere.  It's where I saw Pixies videos that wouldn't run in daytime, Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails and plenty of others.  It was where I first heard Cocteau Twins, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Radiohead and plenty of others.

Kendall wasn't a gatekeeper - we had plenty of those at the labels and in radio programming.   I would argue he was an advocate who identified a taste for this music which was, at the time, not as popular as, say, "I Want To Sex You Up" by Color Me Badd.  He seemed to care in a way I think other VJs, who were too exhausted from playing the same 15 videos all day, couldn't be bothered to do anymore.  And he only had to do his show two hours per week.  

He also got interviews with bands as they swung through New York, which was always a kick.  

In the end, the 120 Minutes watchers entered into the creative arts, kept loving some of this stuff, and you'd think a lot of 120 Minutes music was mainstream at the time, and I assure you: it was off the radar for most of my fellow student at the KOHS - who, if they knew the bands - it was likely only from the shirts of a few people who went to shows. But now that music from 89-92 is in everything, like it was what your parents were listening to, Youths.  It was largely not.  Your parents were into a lot of trash.

I think you can credit Kendall in some ways with why these acts had a following as big as they received in the US.  But also - it seems fitting that he bailed as host in the era when Alt-Rock was suddenly the hip new thing, and labels sought to cash in.  

Here's to a guy who had an outsized and unknown impact at the time, and who was not given his proper due at the time or since.

*  I'm no music aficionado, and I don't claim to have any particularly eclectic musical tastes.  What I will say is that I was not a Top 40 guy by the middle of middle-school, but was as likely to be jamming to Buddy Holly as Violent Femmes or The Ramones.  But a lot of what you'll throw at me from the era - I completely missed.

**  I was well aware of their existence and had heard The Cure before this, but their video presence was limited on MTV until this time