In 1964—a year before the release of A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas—Vince Guaral­di gave the first tele­vised per­for­mance of “Linus and Lucy.” Filmed for pub­lic tele­vi­sion, the per­for­mance fea­tured Guaral­di on piano, Tom Bee­son on bass, and John Rae on drums. Long unseen, this 1964 per­for­mance cap­tures the piece in its ear­li­est tele­vised form, well before A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas became the sec­ond-best-sell­ing jazz album in his­to­ry. Sit back, take a deep breath, and enjoy this groovy, his­toric per­for­mance.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

How Inno­v­a­tive Jazz Pianist Vince Guaral­di Became the Com­pos­er of Beloved Char­lie Brown Music

The Vel­vet Under­ground as Peanuts Char­ac­ters: Snoopy Morphs Into Lou Reed, Char­lie Brown Into Andy Warhol

An Intro­duc­tion to Vince Guaral­di, the Jazz Com­pos­er Who Cre­at­ed the Best Christ­mas Album Ever, A Char­lie Brown Christ­mas

MTV still exists. At least, it still exists in the Unit­ed States, or in cer­tain of that coun­try’s mar­kets, for the time being. A flur­ry of pre­ma­ture obit­u­ar­ies recent­ly blew through the inter­net after the announce­ment that the net­work had shut down in oth­er parts of the world, Europe includ­ed. But even there, some expressed the sen­ti­ment that MTV had already died long before. And indeed, in the U.S., where it orig­i­nal­ly launched, ask­ing who remem­bers when MTV actu­al­ly used to play music videos has been a com­mon lament for decades, aired even by gen­er­a­tions too young to remem­ber those days them­selves. But mem­bers of any gen­er­a­tion can now relive them — or live them for the first time — through a new site called MTV Rewind.

The first music video that greets the vis­i­tor is The Bug­gles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and appro­pri­ate­ly so, since it inau­gu­rat­ed MTV itself when it went live on August 1st, 1981. What fol­lows are all the rest of the videos played on that first day, like Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” Blondie’s “Rap­ture,” David Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swing­ing,” and Kate Bush’s “Wuther­ing Heights.”

(Oth­er, less wide­ly remem­bered entries include no few­er than three songs by Cliff Richard, which speaks to the then-incom­plete for­ma­tion of the kind of pop-musi­cal cul­ture we still asso­ciate with MTV.) The site’s oth­er playlists recre­ate oth­er eras and genre-spe­cif­ic pro­grams, from 120 Min­utes to Total Request Live, Head­banger’s Ball to Yo! MTV Raps.

Cur­rent­ly, MTV Rewind’s music video count comes to about 40,000, enough to ensure any for­mer addict of the net­work a stream of nos­tal­gia hits. But the site’s cre­ator (a 43-year-old Amer­i­can res­i­dent in Alba­nia, accord­ing to the New York Times, known pseu­do­ny­mous­ly as “Flex”) has also incor­po­rat­ed vin­tage sta­tion IDs and com­mer­cials, many of them liable to trig­ger down­right Prous­t­ian sen­sa­tions in the right view­er. What may feel refresh­ing even to curi­ous younger vis­i­tors is that, whichev­er chan­nel they choose, the next video that plays is deter­mined not by an algo­rithm attempt­ing to pre­dict their per­son­al tastes. Rather, each playlist is shaped by the pop­u­lar cul­ture of a par­tic­u­lar era, with enough left-field selec­tions to keep it inter­est­ing: just the sort of thing in hopes of which we used to flip over to MTV, back when the idea of stream­ing video on our com­put­ers still sound­ed like sheer­est fan­ta­sy. Enter MTV Rewind here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the First 2+ Hours of MTV’s Inau­gur­al Broad­cast (August 1, 1981)

All the Music Played on MTV’s 120 Min­utes: A 2,500-Video Youtube Playlist

The Com­plete Col­lec­tion Of MTV’s Head­bangers Ball: Watch 1,215 Videos from the Hey­day of Met­al Videos

The Inter­net Archive Res­cues MTV News’ Web Site, Mak­ing 460,000+ of Its Pages Search­able Again

The 50 Great­est Music Videos of All Time, Ranked by AV Club

Revis­it Pop-Up Video: The VH1 Series That Rein­vent­ed Music Videos & Pop Cul­ture

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Bri­an Eno once said of the Vel­vet Under­ground that their first album sold only 30,000 copies, but every­one who bought one start­ed a band. Joy Divi­sion’s debut Unknown Plea­sures sold only 20,000 copies in its ini­tial peri­od of release, but the T‑shirt embla­zoned with its cov­er art — an image of radio waves ema­nat­ing from a pul­sar tak­en from an astron­o­my ency­clo­pe­dia — has long since con­sti­tut­ed a com­mer­cial-semi­otic empire unto itself. That speaks to the vast sub­cul­tur­al influ­ence of the band, despite their only hav­ing been active from 1976 to 1980. When we speak of the genre of post-punk, we speak, in large part, of Joy Divi­sion and the artists they influ­enced.

Less than a year after the 1979 release of Unknown Plea­sures, Joy Divi­sion’s lead singer Ian Cur­tis com­mit­ted sui­cide. The band had already record­ed Clos­er, their sec­ond and last album (at least before the sub­se­quent, more suc­cess­ful ref­or­ma­tion as New Order). Scant though it may be, their stu­dio discog­ra­phy has only drawn more and more crit­i­cal acclaim over the decades.

Still, fans who weren’t around to wit­ness the rise of Joy Divi­sion first-hand will sus­pect they’ve missed out on some­thing essen­tial. “Live, Joy Divi­sion were heavy,” remem­bers band his­to­ri­an Jon Sav­age. “Per­form­ers — and David Bowie is a good exam­ple – know exact­ly what to give and what to with­hold, but Ian Cur­tis didn’t have that stage­craft. He just came on and gave every­thing.”

That sort of inten­si­ty, Sav­age adds, is “not infi­nite­ly repro­ducible”; even at the time, it seems that those who wit­nessed Joy Divi­sion in con­cert under­stood that their pecu­liar­ly com­pelling ener­gy was dri­ving toward some kind of final com­bus­tion. You can get a taste of it in the col­lec­tion of the group’s every tele­vised per­for­mance, orig­i­nal­ly aired on BBC2 and Grana­da TV in 1978 and 1979, at the top of the post; just above, we have a 70-minute com­pi­la­tion of all their filmed live shows. Much of it con­sists of footage shot over two nights at the Apol­lo The­atre in 1979, which the uploader describes as of poor qual­i­ty — but “accord­ing to peo­ple who were there, the gig’s qual­i­ty was poor in per­son too.” As much as gen­er­a­tions of fans have done to mythol­o­gize the band’s brief exis­tence over the past 45 years, here is evi­dence that even Joy Divi­sion had an off night once in a while.

Relat­ed con­tent:

75 Post-Punk and Hard­core Con­certs from the 1980s Have Been Dig­i­tized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR, Lemon­heads, Dain Bra­m­age (with Dave Grohl) & More

The His­to­ry of Rock n Roll in 10 Songs: A List Cre­at­ed by Leg­endary Rock Crit­ic Greil Mar­cus

Radio­head Cov­ers The Smiths & New Order (2007)

Hear the 50 Best Post-Punk Albums of All Time: A Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Playlist Curat­ed by Paste Mag­a­zine

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Goth

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.