Back in the '80s, I always looked forward to the last Sunday of each month, when M-TV would air "The Cutting Edge." IRS Records produced the program, which certainly had its share of IRS recording artists. But the show is like a "Who's Who" of the music that had been known as new wave and would later be called alternative. Jonathan Richman, X, and The Smithereens were but a few of the bands who performed on the show. Iggy Pop, Susanne Vega, and Tom Waits were interviewees. Harry Shearer, Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins, and Merle Kessler's "Ian Shoales" character all did comedy/spoken word pieces. And host Peter Zaremba would sometimes work a theme into the various episodes, such as dressing up as a mad scientist or conducting man-on-the-street interviews about how to combat boredom.
In between all of this were a few music videos by new wave/alternative/slightly off-beat artists. In 1986, M-TV began to feature similar videos on "120 Minutes" every Sunday. I suppose this might have overshadowed "The Cutting Edge" and contributed to its demise (as all that was required for "120 Minutes" was the video dee-jay to introduce the videos, pretty much the same M.O. as the rest of M-TV).
