Current Schedule

Mondays @ Kelly's Olympian
426 SW Washington
Wednesdays @ Firkin Tavern
1937 SE 11th Ave

2012: The Year We Make Contact

Thanks for the memories Sandy Hut, Tanker Bar, Aalto Lounge, Nick's Famous Coney Island, Saratoga, Mississippi Studios and Jolly Roger. It was a pleasure serving your clientele.
Their loss can be your gain. Contact us for schedules, rates and requests. Music videos are still your best entertainment value.

Comings and Goings

Thanks to Kenton Club, Fez Ballroom and Slabtown for giving Eye Candy VJs a try as an entertainment option for your clientele. You were each a joy in your own right, and providing a quality interactive experience for your customers makes us proud. We always hate parting ways with the staff we've befriended and are always happy when we cross paths again. See you out there. Meanwhile, got some new gigs to announce and prepare for. Thanks for keeping us busy, Portland. And MTV, if you hadn't quit your job, we'd be out of one. We're glad you are bold enough to be lame.

Get latest video podcast here: Catholic Girls - Boys Don't Cry

Best of Portland in WW

We are proud to announce that we're Willamette Week's pick for 2010's Best of Portland issue and showcase @ Wonder Ballroom Thursday, July 29th. Expect us to drag out our best rumpshakers and to start springing up with new engagements around town before the Summer's out. Our all-request mobile music video museum format makes it an ideal night out on the town to relive your adolescence in the comfort of your favorite bar. Eat our tweets

So long Fez, Hello Kenton

Sorry to announce that our monthly event on The Fez' third floor, Eye Candy Ass-Shake, has been cancelled indefinitely. We'd like to thank Mike Ackerman and his awesome crew for giving us 15 months' fair "shake" to get it rolling. We had some really memorable, well-attended shows and some lonely downers too. Biggest thanks for everyone who ventured downtown to experience the great projection and dance floor, and to the hosts of the 2nd floor's Dementia, who helped make our night a success by sharing their crowd.
Get the latest video podcast here: Robyn Hitchcock - Balloon Man

Keeping Gigs is Hard

Since Phantom Hillbilly's all-rock DJ Mondays @ Beulahland were summarily cancelled, we've had to become even more sensitive to our employer's financial goals. We had a great three-month run at Valentine's, including a surprise visit by The Thermals' Kathy Foster, but ultimately did not draw the requisite crowd nor their requisite wallets to continue. We'll miss it and sincerely thank Joe Haege for the invite and for negotiating such a great gig. We loved the crowd and the venue was ideal for watching music videos.

R.I.P. Ted Kennedy

As the U.S. grows accustomed to a Senate without Ted, Eye Candy VJs keep adding venues to their cap. Among them are Valentine's Wednesday, Sept. 2 and The Dunes Wednesday, Sept. 23

New Venues, New Videos

Beginning over a year ago, VJ Norto and The Phantom Hillbilly franchised out their signature by-request music video dance party to Slabtown, then Fez Ballroom. Brinda and company gave us a good run weekly then first Thursdays at Slabtown, and Eye Candy Ass-Shake @ Fez was pick of the week in The Portland Mercury.
Starting Tuesday, March 31st Eye Candy will embark on a foray deeper into NE Portland to 2026 NE Alberta St., The Know. If you've never been, The Know is part bar, part stage/screenspace. So it ought to be a great space for music and video, right? Wish us luck.

A Short History of the Medium

In the U.S. at 12:01 PM August 1, 1981 MTV launched with the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll," spoken by original COO John Lack. Those words were immediately followed by the original MTV guitar riff over a montage of the most famous moment in world television history, the Apollo 11 moon landing.
Other entrepreneurs credited with the network's inception include former Monkee Michael Nesmith who had pioneered a program called PopClips and producers Alan Goodman and Fred Seibert.
Appropriately, the first music video shown was Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles. At launch time, the actual subscriber count across the U.S. was 500,000, though official counts listed 3 million.
As early as 1984, MTV was criticized for excessive pornographic references and accused of denigrating the importance of music, replacing it with a purely visual aesthetic and putting less image-centric acts at a distinct disadvantage.
On the other side of the moral influence debate, it has also come under criticism for being too politically correct and sensitive, censoring too much of their programming. Many music videos were censored, moved to late-night rotation, or banned entirely from the channel.
The early format was modeled after top 40 radio. Today, MTV has practically discarded music videos in favor of broadcasting a variety of pop culture, youth culture, and reality television shows aimed at adolescents and young adults.

How Do We Do It?

One day during the summer of 2006, The Phantom Hillbilly struck upon an idea: DJs are not in short supply. He loved music and entertaining crowds, but needed to offer something above and beyond the traditional in order to secure a spot at his favorite local haunt. A perusal of his DVD and VHS collection revealed he'd been inadvertently collecting music video collections of his favorite artists and his basement studio sported video as well as audio mixing equipment. He bounced the idea of an all-video night including his short comedy films produced for Independent Tuesdays film showcases off of Beulahland proprietor Jimmy Langen, who agreed to give it a biweekly trial run on a night that sorely needed more business.
The Phantom Hillbilly invited his con-conspirator in filmmaking and then-housemate, VJ Norto, to help wrangle equipment and found that he too had been an avid music video collector. Together, the two devised a system to make smooth transitions between music videos by separating the visual and audio elements, but their repertoire was limited. Within one year, their library had grown considerably due to a proliferation of digital-format videos which filled the gaps and broadened the variety they could present.
The legal ramifications were fuzzy in intellectual property terms until research revealed that music videos are promotional films for the very music bars pay ASCAP and BMI licensing to play.

Welcome to EYE CANDY Video Museum

a Delectable Dessert of Visual Stimuli featuring over two thousand performances by artists from almost every era and genre of the last fifty years, available at our fingertips by your request.
When you've selected the videos you'd like us to play, simply go up to the Eye Candy table by the south side exit and tell either VJ Norto (bow tie) or The Phantom Hillbilly (hat), the artist and song. We will write it down on our playlist. It also helps if you give us a handle (name of your party) in order for us to keep track of different people's requests.
On an average we can play about 15 songs an hour and of course the bar closes at 2:30. We want to make sure everyone is happy. If you give us a long list of requests we hope it is because you want to stay with us all night!
We generally honor all requests submitted. However, since there is a last call, there isn't always enough time to play it all. Tips certainly help expedite speed of video performance.