By the end of the 1980s, my best nightclubbing days were behind me. Sure, I’d still go out here and there, to clubs and concerts. But the Eighties was the decade where I experience so many greats of the post-’77 musical surge: seeing everyone from the Jam to Lene Lovich, from Husker Du to the B-52s, from the Ramones to Talking Heads, not to mention the Clash six times, including at their legendary residency at Bond’s in Times Square in 1981.

Oh, what a time it was. The punk-rock movement of the late 70s, at its core, was a crucial self-actualization for the second wave of baby-boomers tired of the over-inflated arena rock that had come to define the era. Enter urgent new sounds played in the elemental confines of clubs, while stark and distinctive fashion statements and fervid fanzines joined the battle against the bloated PR machines of corporatized supergroups. Even under the later umbrella terms of alternative or indie rock, this movement continued well into the grunge-friendly early 90s.

Hey, Thom–if you’re looking for the “Fake Plastic Trees,” they are in Aisle 5. (see below).

By then, I was getting a little older and more inclined to take it easier. One way I kept up with the alternative-rock scene was by watching the MTV show “120 Minutes” on Sunday at midnight. Giving the steady diet of putrid reality shows that dominate the once-great channel, it may be hard to imagine the inspired programming they once had on at the end of the week. “120 Minutes” was preceded by the near-anarchic animation show “Liquid Television” and the starkly beautiful sci-fi series “Aeon Flux.”

Along with videos from a great variety of artists that fell under the loose alt-rock definition, there were also numerous in-studio interviews and performances. Though MTV has long given up on most music programming, MTV2 now shows “120 Minutes” (videos only) on the weekends at its old midnight time slot. So I recently revisited this 90s show and see what it might tell me about this time when I was more or less retiring from the music-community front lines. I took the first twelve viddys that came on and jotted down my hot-take reactions, rating them on a 1-10 scale.

“Sonnet” by The Verve

Funny this came on first because I had just listened to their celebrated 1997 album “Urban Hymns” and came away duly impressed. “Sonnet” is the alluring second song, following their massive hit “Bittersweet Symphony.” It’s one I really like but the dark, static video doesn’t do much to enhance it. Grade: 7

“Sing Your Life” by Morrissey

Yup, it’s him. Morrissey has become quite a divisive figure in later years and I never much got him, outside of a few songs when he fronted the Smiths. This 1991 offering may have sought to lighten up his dour, sometimes embittered image, presenting him as a slick lounge singer with the implied positive image reflected in the song title. But I didn’t buy it for a second. Grade: 5

“Eighties” by Killing Joke

This is one of those bands I never got around to listening to. Maybe the group name (analogous to “destroying humor”) was a turnoff. For sure, it was (is?) a dark and aggressive sound. This ranter and raver was from 1985 is bludgeoning slab of industrial rock where KJ’s strident vocalist Jaz Coleman rails non-specifically about the ills of the decade.  Images of Reagan, Thatcher, Brezhnev and global strife flash on the screen. Coleman delivers this supposed message of resistance in full autocratic mode from a stage where both the U.S. and Soviet flags are present. Given recent events suggesting a new cozy relationship between a certain ex-KGB man ruling Russia and a certain dictator-loving American president, that element may now seem sadly prescient. Grade: 6

After the KJ video there was a commercial break. The first one was for baby diapers, probably not the kind of ad you saw during “120 Minutes” original run.

“Down to This” by Soul Coughing

This is the point where I felt rock culture slipping away from me. But only in retrospect; I missed this band first time around and so glad I did. The guys in this group had great indie cred, some of them cutting their musical teeth with composer John Zorn. So I can only guess why they settled for that poorly-aged cut-up style of 90s indie rock, complete with shuffling beats, fake rapping, low-rent samples and repeated nonsensical tag lines. It’s all too clever by half, and while people like Beck could infuse this sub-genre with whimsy, this is just annoying. Grade: 3

“Everyday Sunshine” by Fishbone

Just by the song title alone this came along as a breath of fresh air. After some of what came before, this L.A. group brought what others lacked: infectious energy, warmth, humor, a true social consciousness and killer grooves (they were also the only band of color of the 12 videos). Fishbone have been a wild card probably since the day they formed while junior high back in 1979. They’ve played punk and funk, ska and metal and all sorts of things in between. Here, they ride the best vibes of War and Sly Stone from the inner city to the concluding scene is a field of wildflowers. Grade: 9

“Shell Shock” by New Order

These post-punk stalwarts, formed in 1980 from the ashes of the legendary Joy Division after the suicide of singer Ian Curtis, cut their own distinctive path.  For a while, at least. Distinctive early highlights like “Age of Consent, “Temptation” and “Love Vigilantes” had by 1986 given way to a more homogenized synth-rock. “Shell Shock” is decent and danceable but a lot less gripping than earlier records. Through the blue-filtered haze of the video, I spied keyboardist Gillian Gilbert, the sole woman viewed in this sampling. Grade: 6

“Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead

Since I had a swipe at Soul Coughing and Killing Joke earlier, you can go ahead and snigger at me for giving this one a high mark. Even casual Radiohead fans may roll their eyes at this, one of those slow mournful tunes of theirs, voiced in falsetto by Thom Yorke—all the while being pushed around in a shopping cart up and down the aisle of a futuristic store. It’s not the best song from their great 1995 breakout album The Bends but the band’s uncanny ability to suss out the artificialities of modern life, and how it leads to lives of quiet despair, is clearly on display here, even if Yorke’s persona drives you batty. Grade: 8

“Hang Onto Your Ego” by Frank Black

This raucous and righteous cover of this Beach Boys deep cut from their classic Pet Sounds album (aka “I Know There’s an Answer”) is how you do someone else’s song and make it your own. (For how not to do it, read on). The cut-and-paste-and-distort method of video production fits the subject matter (LSD discombobulation) perfectly. Grade: 8

“Prisoner of Society” by the Living End

These Australian punk rockers don’t mess about, this classic genre complaint (reference the title) is about what you would expect. A loud-and-proud three-chord chainsaw, the obvious reference points are the Clash and Green Day, but the named themselves after a Stray Cats song and kind of look the part. Yeah, it’s retro but what’s good for the 1978 goose is also good for the 1998 gander. Grade: 7

“I Love to Hate You” by Erasure

OK, so we’re back to this again. I don’t know what it is, because I liked a lot of synth pop hits in the 80s. But this is as slick as it is unimpressive. A big budget video, complete with flamenco dancers and the singer walking on water, can’t save the song’s decided inconsequence. I guess this survey kind of shows you just like what you like. Grade: 5

“Ball of Confusion” by Love and Rockets

We lower the bar even more for this know-nothing cover version of the Temptations classic protest number. Everything about this group bugs me, from their smug presentation to the fact that they cribbed their name from Gilbert Hernandez’s celebrated comic-book series of the same name, which is centered around a band called (wait for it) Love and Rockets. What is particularly galling about this is the lack of effort, the expressionless vocal and rudimentary beat. Like Frank Black above (and hundreds of others) the goal is to apply your own stamp when covering another’s song. I don’t think these yobs have any stamp to give at all. Grade: 3

“Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio” by the Ramones

How appropriate that this video appeared as the last of the twelve watched at random. The Ramones’ first LP, released in April of 1976, was a clarion call for a new generation of rock and rollers. Despite the pummeling riffs and song titles like “Beat on the Brat” and “I Don’t Wanna Walk Around with You,” the group was all about community. This extended from their famous home base at CBGB in their native New York to London, where their first concert (in front of 2,000 at the Roundhouse) greatly inspired the nascent punk movement there.

In a perfect world, brilliantly conceived singles like “Sheena is a Punk Rocker” (#81) and “Rockaway Beach” (#66) would have topped the American charts. But by 1980 it was pretty evident that the band was destined for cult status only. It was decided that for their fourth album End of the Century the perfect producer to broaden their appeal would be the legendary Phil Spector. Not yet the frizzy-haired convicted murderer we would later come to know, the Spector of 1980 was still plenty crazy. Classicists at heart, the boys loved his famous girl-group sound of the early Sixties. Instead, what they got was the volatile producer allegedly waving a gun at them and locking them into his house while making obsessive demands.

The Ramones reinvent the wheel at CBGB in ’77

What came out of that was a good album but not the last-chance breakthrough they desperately wanted—though at #44 it would prove to be their highest charting LP.  The anthemic opening track, “Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio” seemed like a prideful last hurrah, even though the Ramones would not break up until 1996.  Name dropping everyone from Murray the K to T. Rex, the band (the lyrics are by singer Joey Ramone) embraces the whole of this great American invention—rock ‘n’ roll—and warns of its endangerment:

Do you remember lying in bed
With your covers pulled up over your head?
Radio playin’ so one can see
We need change, we need it fast
Before rock’s just part of the past
‘Cause lately it all sounds the same to me.

The fact that they’re maybe jumping the gun here is covered by the refrain: “It’s the end, the end of the 70s/It’s the end, the end of the century.” It’s everything that the music should be: energetic, passionate, purposeful and witty. The coming decades would see the rise of self-centered Instagram pop in the Katy Perry, Ke$ha et al., proving them painfully correct.

Sadly, the Ramones’ front line of Johnny, Joey and Dee Dee, all died between 2001 and 2004. “End of the Century, indeed.

Back in 1976 in Creem magazine Gene Sculatti, in a review of the Ramones first album concluded: “If their successors are as one-third as good as them, we’ll be fixed for life.” Once upon a time, we held that to be true. Grade: 10