Posted by chicagomedia.org on December 15, 2008 at 11:35:53:
JBTV goes high def, Still providing home for "non mainstream artists"
by Jyn Radakovits, Chicago Indie Music Examiner
December 12, 4:51 PM
One man, a microphone, and a dream to bring Chicago land the best music possible, made former radio man, Jerry Bryant a landmark in entertainment for over two decades. Funded by Bryant himself and local sponsors and run by a staff of volunteers, Bryant's JBTV managed earned itself two Billboard Video Awards for "Best Local/Regional Alternative Modern Rock Show".
Airing for the first time in 1986 and being bounced between channels during its infancy, the show has grown far from those early days as it prepares to air in HDTV for the digital transitional this winter.
Even in its earliest days, JBTV was a home to the "little guy", that band that local band that needed their first break, that band that MTV felt wasn’t marketable to the mainstream viewer. Bryant found after viewing a video reel from RCA records in the early 80's the said neglected artists by the mainstream media began to find him when he began to play their videos that would never be aired anywhere else. Then they began to invite themselves onto his program, beginning with Peter Murphy, later Frank Black and Joey Ramone - a tradition that continues to this day; any artist that comes on JBTV invited themselves onto the set to play their video list, thus the show becoming a haven for the unsung heroes per say, and a Mecca for up and coming artists. Many artists say they had even grown up watching the show and its influence and ideals set the stage for their later career.
"Traditional record companies have destroyed the business," Bryant says on his site giving a nod to the popularity of podcasting and online shows.
As mergers and bad sales keep anyone that's not a Britney Spears off the airwaves, viewers can trust there will always be a home for the "B-side" and Indie rock artists to be aired at JBTV which at 3 am still manages to command some 30 thousand viewers with an equally number of website hits.
Shows like Bryant's bring back the much needed integrity to music that been lacking for so long by corporate artists. It also gives revival to artists that have maybe never been given a fair shot with the mainstream media such as the needed push it had given Nirvana after cleverly creating a "captioned" version of "Smells like Teen Spirit" later copied by MTV after fan mail suggested most viewers hated the song "because we had no clue what they were saying." A week later, it was among one of the most requested.
An inspiration to the media as well, JBTV's growth only fueled the dreams of aspiring music journalists like myself as a child. One of my published articles on a band came from contact information plastered across the screen between commercial breaks.
I'd like to thank Jerry Bryant for exposing me to so many of the bands that I've come to follow "before they were stars" per say and keeping that desire in me to keep trying to find that undiscovered act and the "next big thing" especially in Chicago and keep up with JBTV's commitment to local music first.
Among the archives of artists interviewed on the show: Afghan Whigs, Alice in Chains, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Ash, Aztec Camera, Bad Brains, Bad Religion, Barenaked Ladies, Ben Folds, Big Audio Dynamite, Bjork, Frank Black, Blind Melon, Blink 182, Blue Meanies, Jeff Buckley, Built to Spill, Burning Brides, Kate Bush, Cake, The Cardigans, Roseanne Cash, Corrosion of Comformity, Cowboy Junkies, Cracker, The Crystal Method, The Dandy Warhols, Dave Matthews Band, Dinosaur Jr, Disturbed, Duncan Shiek, Erasure, Everclear, Fall out Boy, Filter, The Flaming Lips, Fountains of Wayne, Fu Manchu, Nelly Furtado, Garbage, Gin Blossoms, Goldfinger, Goo Goo Dolls, Green Day, Pj. Harvey, House of Pain, Indigo Girls, INXS, Chris Issak, The Jesus Lizard, Jet, Joan Jett, Jewel, Kill Hannah, Killing Joke, Korn, Kottonmouth Kings, L7, Less than Jake, Live, Local H, The Living End, Los Lobos, Marilyn Manson, The Mars Volta, Meat Puppets, Midnight Oil, Ministry, Moby, Alanis Morrisette, Morphine, Morrissey, Peter Murphy, My Chemical Romance, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, New Found Glory, No Doubt, Oasis, Offspring, Ok Go, Our Lady Peace, Pearl Jam, Liz Phair, Phantom Planet, Presidents of the United States of America, Primal Scream, Primus, Prong, Psychedelic Furs, Queens of the Stone Age, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Ramones, Joey Ramone, Razorlight, Lou Reed, Reverend Horton Heat, Henry Rollins, Screaming Trees, Brian Seltzer, Shonen Knife, Siouxie and the Banshees, Skinny Puppy, Smashing Pumpkins, Smoking Popes, Social Distortion, Sonic Youth, Soul Asylum, Soundgarden, The Sounds, Stereophonics, Suede, Super Furry Animals, System of a Down, Teenage Fanclub, The The, They Might Be Giants, Unwritten Law, The Verve, White Zombie, Wilco, and Zwan.