Give Video Night a Try - David Carroll's Chattanooga Radio and TV

My wife and I started an enjoyable bi-weekly activity 18 months ago, and you might like it too. We call it “Video Night,” and every other Sunday we take a break from the relentless grind of political battles, tariff talk, and gerrymandering to listen to music for a couple of hours.

Thanks to YouTube, we watch the music too. I hope I’m not jinxing anything, but YouTube (at least for now) provides one of the few joys in life that is free. You can watch an endless string of music videos at no charge. Yes, you could pay a few bucks to avoid the brief commercials, but we don’t find them annoying.

On most smart TVs, you can enjoy this on the big screen, and if you have good speakers or a sound bar, it is a treat for the ears as well as the eyes.

During the winter of 2024, in the absence of our usual go-to programming (Atlanta Braves baseball) and having run out of streaming shows to binge, we tried something new. First, we had to establish some rules. Both of us began our careers in radio around the same time, but our tastes in music differed. I lean toward “top-40” pop music, and Cindy is more of a rock ‘n roller. So, the deal was made. We would alternate song choices, and neither of us could criticize the other’s picks. Strike up the bands!

To this point, we’ve had about 40 such sessions and played some 1200 music videos with no repeats, and no end in sight. The possibilities are endless.

Immediately after one Video Night ends, we begin planning our lists for the next one. We might be reminded of a favorite hit that we heard on a commercial. Or it may be a song we hear on the radio, in a store, or from a random memory.

In the early days of YouTube twenty years ago, only a few music videos and live concert performances were posted online. Now, you can find everything from Taylor Swift’s most watched video (“Shake It Off” with 3.4 BILLION views) to an obscure cover band like Australia’s Butcherbird Collective (only 900 views for their version of James Taylor’s “Fire and Rain,” but deserving of far more).

In recent years, many classic TV performances, some not seen for 50-plus years since first broadcast, have been added to the channel. Finally, some of us whippersnappin’ baby boomers can see what all the fuss was about with Perry Como and Dinah Shore. We can see rare pairings like Dean Martin and Buddy Ebsen, Bing Crosby with David Bowie, and my personal favorite, the duo of Cher and Tom Jones (they had serious chemistry).

For decades, my wife and I have battled over our favorite Beatles. She’s a George Harrison gal, while I tend to favor Paul McCartney. Those guys pop up a lot on our Sunday night playlists.

Dick Clark Productions has posted hundreds of songs performed on American Bandstand from the earliest days of rock ‘n roll through the late 1980s. You can watch a parade of questionable hairstyles and unfortunate fashion fads. Yes, we thought we looked good at the time.

All the MTV videos are there, from the excellent (everything by Michael Jackson) to the awful (too many 80s bands to name).

Pretty much every female reading this column swooned to the teen idol of their particular era, and you can find your favorite “crush” on YouTube. The bobby-soxers of the 1950s loved Sinatra, who was supplanted by Elvis, soon to be followed by Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson, the Monkees, Donny Osmond, David Cassidy, John Travolta, and various “boy bands.” Would you like to see Davy Jones’ first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show? It just happened to be on the same night as the Beatles’ first US television performance, 3 years before the Monkees came along.