TV REVIEW : MTV’s Rock Report: Let’s Be Serious

MTV’s annual “news” report, “The Year in Rock: 1991”(premiering tonight at 8), takes itself pretty seriously with brief glimpses back at the Gulf War, the Thomas-Hill harassment hearings, abortion battles, AIDS and the collapse of communism sprinkled in amid such more typical MTV news subjects as Madonna, concert riots, Guns N’ Roses, rock lawsuits and arrests, and, of course, Madonna.

This mixture of breaking news with breaking hits most likely represents an admirable attempt to remind the youth audience that the world did not revolve around Skid Row and Metallica this year.

But it has something less--or maybe more--than the desired effect: It makes its parade of hard-rockers and dance-poppers seem all the more buffoonish set up against real events of life-and-death significance. Going directly from a biting survey of the war tragedy into a segment that includes Mariah Carey talking about clothes shopping and a dirty joke from Sinead O’Connor is beyond incongruity.

A feature on superstar iconoclasts R.E.M. is worth tuning in for, but otherwise there’s scant evidence to support the second half of co-host Kurt Loder’s opening theorem--that it was “a pretty bad year for the music industry (but) in some ways a fairly healthy year for music itself.”

You keep waiting for this highly thoughtful fellow to apply some of the cynicism he implies toward the war effort to some of the brainless acts being briefly considered, but mum’s the word when contemplating the global significance of Marky Mark.

The commentary-free nature of the hour wouldn’t be so bad if the report at least hit on the right topics.

Yes, the year’s disastrous concert tour receipts is a worthy subject, but is it really possible to summarize 1991 in music and not even address the divisive free-speech-versus-hateful-speech issues of the Ice Cube controversy, which have polarized so many in the record industry?

Answer: Yep.