Seen your video

On a run just now I had an ecstatic moment when ZZ Top's "Legs" came on the radio, and I began marvelling at the fact that ZZ Top successfully made the transition to the MTV age--and, in a sense, defined the MTV age.

So many big bands of the 1970s didn't, like Styx and Journey and Fleetwood Mac. Even KISS, who you'd think were ready-made for video, sputtered in the early 1980s and didn't come back until they got rid of the makeup and the lizard costumes.

But some 1970s bands were great on MTV, like ZZ and Hall and Oates and Talking Heads. In all three cases, their success probably had a lot to do with the fact that their videos were imaginative, as opposed to boring. (Did you ever see one of those Journey videos?)