Date: February 20, 1994

Event: 120 Minutes (TV show)

Leg: The Early Years

Venue: MTV Studios

City: New York

State: New York

Country: United States

Notes:
This was Beck's first appearance on MTV, with Thurston Moore hosting that week's "120 Minutes." Beck "answers" some questions from Thurston, tosses his shoe across the stage, plays a gorgeous (fingerpicked!) "Pay No Mind," high fives Thurston a bunch of times. Mike D from the Beastie Boys then appears to chat, and then the three of them proceed to fuck shit up. Kids, this is what MTV used to be like.

Watch the interview!



Watch "Crystal Clear (Beer)"!



Watch the Fuck Up Session!



MTV used to be awesome, believe.

Beck remembered this in 2006 in an interview with The Onion:

I saw that recently. It's pretty amazing that that was on MTV. I remember it was at eight in the morning, just this ungodly hour to be on MTV. It was kind of scary and weird. It was very daunting; I just associated MTV with… I guess at that moment, it was sort of changing, but before that, it had been this bastion of hair-metal and teen-pop. It was right after Nirvana and Sonic Youth were getting on MTV; Thurston was up for some antics. There's some stuff we did that I think they took out: We bought some baseball bats and we had this idea that we were gonna get a phone call and we were gonna smash the phone with these baseball bats. I guess we did it too violently or something, so they took it out. I guess they were getting some heat from Beavis And Butt-head at the time; they didn't want kids to start taking baseball bats to phones. But it was good. We did that jam, Mike D [of Beastie Boys] and Thurston. It was definitely straight out of some Lower East Side coffeehouse activity.

Guitar (Acoustic): Beck Hansen
Guitar (Electric): Thurston Moore
Noise: Beck Hansen
Vocals: Beck Hansen, Mike D.

Recorded: Yes

Length: 12:00