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120 REASONS TO LIVE

120 Reasons To Live: Bomb The Bass

Nothing did more to further the cause of Alternative Nation-building than 120 Minutes, MTV’s Sunday-night video showcase of non-mainstream acts. For nearly two decades, the program spanned musical eras from ’80s college rock to ’00s indie, with grunge, Britpop, punk, industrial, electronica and more in between. MAGNET raids the vaults to resurrect our 120 favorite and unjustly forgotten videos from the show’s classic era.

#119: Bomb The Bass “Beat Dis”

You know how the introductory paragraph above suggests that this series of 120 posts would include “industrial, electronica and more in between”? Yeah, that hasn’t really happened for the most part. With one post remaining, it’s apparent that 120 Minutes was not as musically varied as memory served; still, stylistic breakthroughs such as “Beat Dis”—the 1988 megasingle by U.K. act Bomb The Bass—regularly found a home on the program. Helmed by producer Tim Simenon, Bomb The Bass didn’t invent sampling, but it sure did pioneer how to pile it on. As for MTV’s further adventures in electronic-music/DJ programming, Amp (1997-2001) became a far more subversive vehicle for arty, creative videos.