Blue Peter: “Don’t Walk on Past” (1983)

As far as I can recall, this is the first music video I ever saw. And I didn’t see it on television: I saw it in a contemporary art gallery, on a class trip.

But memory is famously unreliable, so I decided to do some digging. First was figuring out that it actually was Blue Peter, not The Fixx, whose video I remembered. The song was released in 1983 and the video was by the soon-to-be-celebrated Rob Quartly. Much Music, the Canadian answer to MTV, didn’t go live until August 1984. And the watershed video for “Thriller” didn’t come out until December 1983. Finally, the contemporary art gallery in question, The Power Plant, didn’t occupy those premises or go by that name until 1985, but its precursor opened in 1979. And given its location in downtown Toronto, it’s reasonable that an artsy early video by a Toronto musician might have screened there.

So, all in all, I’d say it’s plausible. In any case, it’s still an interestingly retro-tastic video and a great song from Canada’s little-known but excellent new-wave scene. Well worth checking out.