“It’s a quiet storm…” Nigerian-born fashion designer turned singer Sade is the subject of tonight’s Video Profile. Pat Prescott starts us off with an introduction to the “smooth and sexy high priestess of soul,” before jumping into a Sade mega-mix cut with exclusive interviews with the artist from the Night Flight studio (originally filmed in 1985). In her interview segment, Sade talks about her record Diamond Life and finally provides instructions to the American audience on how to pronounce her name.

A psychedelic, hand-drawn theatre of the absurd.

In this essential Night Flight interview, John Waters reflects on the transgressive ethos that defines his filmmaking. He recounts his humble beginnings touring prints from the trunk of his car, the neighborhood Baltimore crew of collaborators including Divine (“I don't trust anybody that hasn't been arrested at least once”), and a career built on offending multiple generations. A timeless snapshot of a Night Flight icon, and the perfect way to celebrate ten years of the streaming channel!

Night Flight’s here to help you keep those New Year’s Resolutions! In our Self-Help Video Break (a video mashup from the NF editors similar to Atomic TV and Rockin’ Ronnie), we’re treated to “words of wisdom” from artists who have lived life in the fast-lane. Featuring RAD drug PSAs from Gene Simmons and Jon Bon Jovi, Carrie McDowell's "Uh Uh, No No Casual Sex" and of course, inspiration mantras of Will Powers’ (Lynn Goldsmith) "Adventures of Success!" Don’t miss a music video message from Jefferson County, KY Public School Students: "Say Nope to Dope!"

"Stay tuned for the latest music... on Night Flight's New Sounds!" Tonight, we head back to June 1988, Floodland-era Sisters of Mercy, Kid n' Play premiere the "Kickstep" Do This My Way, Electronic Body Music from Boston's Manufacture, and quiet storm grooves from Soul artist Terence Trent D'arby's single "Sign Your Name."

“Rock ’n’ Roll has always had a strong political perspective,” says Night Flight host Pat Prescott introducing a politically-charged "Take Off" episode from 1985. The quintessentially '80s video mix starts with a puppet caricature of Reagan from the British TV series "Spitting Image," leading into a compilation of music videos (with some definitely carrying a stronger political resonance than others.) Featuring Culture Club's "The War Song," Eurythmics' "Sex Crime" theme from the film 1984, the socially conscious montage of Bruce Cockburn's "If I Had A Rocket Launcher," and The Specials' (then known as Special AKA) anti-apartheid anthem "Free Nelson Mandela." Concluding the episode is a brief cooking segment featuring our beloved (and oft-mortally wounded) friend, Mr. Bill!

"You're watching Night Flight: where music, movies, cartoons and comedy collide with the unexpected!" - Pat Prescott Tonight’s a mystery box of uncut Night Flight. First up? A long-lost “adult” cartoon from Bob Godfrey, famed UK animator and ideas man on the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine." The main act for this episode is a New Edition Video Profile, which covers their myriad off-shoots and solo projects, including Bell Biv Devoe’s “Poison,” a heavy dose of post-modern R'n'B and New Jack Swing. 

Side A: Welcome to New Sounds highlighting the burgeoning acts and micro-genres of the late 80s with Belgian synth act Front 242 (with a video from iconic photographer Anton Corbijn), Australian punk act Lime Spiders, Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians massive hit “What I Am,” and some fantastic Joy Division inspired coldwave from Siglo XX. Side B: Time for some rapid fire Flash Tracks featuring the masters of party anarchy: Fishbone, the brilliant vocal contortionist Bobby McFerrin, and finally the big sounds from Scotland’s Big Country.

Night Flight invites you into the the existential weirdness of the wonderfully loopy Soviet-era sci-fi comedy KIN-DZA-DZA, recently restored by Mosfilm for its first-ever U.S. release by Deaf Crocodile. Two average Muscovites are teleported across the universe to the planet Pluke, a Tatooine-like desert world whose inhabitants are hilariously noncommunicative and where common wooden matches are tremendously valuable. A deadpan, absurdist mixture of Kurt Vonnegut, Monty Python, Samuel Beckett and Jodorowsky's never-made Dune where alien cultures are even more haphazard and WTF? than our own, the film is also a savage satire of bureaucratic idiocy and dysfunction no matter what political system you're living under - or what planet you're living on.

In her official Night Flight interview, Wendy O. Williams stakes her claim as the “heaviest woman in heavy metal,” establishing a metal creed rooted in raw energy and self-expression. From recording with Gene Simmons to trading vocals with Lemmy, this treasure from the Night Flight vault finds the icon channeling a loud, unfiltered worldview that's entirely her own.

From Boston to LA, New York to DC, a musical explosion is taking place in Rock and Roll. Traditionally, success for bands came from touring, but today, the video explosion has given local bands national exposure sparking a renaissance in music and reinforcing the original roots of Rock 'n roll. Featuring 'Til Tuesday, Run DMC, REM and more...

Classic Night Flight profile of avant-garde experimentalist Laurie Anderson. Featuring an incredibly candid interview with Anderson about her background and work.

1988's "Take Off" to Hardcore (and more!)  You gotta hand it to the original Night Flight writers. Every weekend for over seven years, the team put together 8 hours of cutting-edge television—mixing a complex blend of avant-garde, undiscovered and obscure visual/audio art. The amount of work this took on a weekly basis back in the 1980s is staggering.   Tonight’s episode is a one-two punch of amazing Night Flight curation. Take Off to Hardcore begins fittingly with Bad Brains and Bl'ast!’s “Surf and Destroy,” before taking a detour off the Hardcore Highway into Euro-Industrial tracks from Alien Sex Fiend and Nitzer Ebb, only to end with an awesome Peter Murphy clip and solo track. It’s disorienting for sure, but one hell of a watch!

Night Flight "Take's Off" to the once and future glory of Acid Rock. The original catalytic agent for Acid Rock faded away, but Night Flight tracked the visual cues and sonic elements of Acid Rock making a major flashback for the '80s through artists like S'Express, The Cult, The Psychedelic Furs, Nina Hagen and The Mission.

Night Flight's 1989 Video Profile of "The Man and The Band" Bon Jovi, who made "Metal-lite safe for teenage consumption" according to Pat Prescott, arrives tonight on Night Flight Plus. The late-era Night Flight special episode covers all the essential Jovi Cuts, including the original videos from the New Jersey native for "Runaway," "In And Out Of Love," and more.

Welcome back to Night Flight! “In a world where musicians bend over backwards to carry message of social responsibility, the wild and raucous Jane’s Addiction sings of personal freedom and non-conformity." - Pat Prescott. In tonight's 1991 original episode of Night Flight, find out why Jane's Addiction had become the most talked about band of the early ‘90s by going behind the scenes with lead singer Perry Farrell's Home Movie "Soul Kiss" This uncut original episode also features all the original 1-900 commercials, Night Flight comedy cuts, and clips from the 1938 exploitation movie, "Sex Madness."

Tonight’s original Night Flight episode is Video Profile of The The, featuring the broadcast premiere of the band's video-album, Infected. Matt Johnson’s 1986 music video opus, described by host Pat Prescott as a “hard-hitting musical statement shot around the globe,” features the work of directors Tim Pope (The Cure), Peter Christopherson (Coil), Mark Romanek (Michael Jackson's "Scream") and many more. “Infected” is our anthem in these unreasonable times right now.

What’s on the menu for tonight? Fish Heads! Our 1988 “Take Off” episode of Night Flight is a special salute to… Food? “Whether you slice it or dice it, chew it or spew it” Pat Prescott proclaims, “you can’t live without it!” Kicking off with Weird Al Yankovich’s “Eat It,” and including tunes from The Fat Boys, Tom Petty, Barnes and Barnes and a myriad of food-related, public domain interstitials, this episode is a pure cup of instant weird. Including the the notorious 'pot brownie' recipe from 'The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook!

Night Flight’s full episode from September 1984 starts off with a Lou Reed’s wild dancing in his video for “I Love You Suzanne,” and doesn’t stop until way past your bedtime. Night Flight’s Video Picks give you selections from Art of Noise, Billy Idol, Sheila E. and Elvis Costello. Cut away to some classic commercials, and we’re back with AC/DC, Hendrix and Judas Priest on Heavy Metal Heroes. Finally stick around for a full episode of Radio 1990 featuring Billy Squier, as he releases his video for "Rock Me Tonite", the clip that may or may not have torpedoed his career.

In 1965, as leader of the NY Band: The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed became Rock's first leather-clad social outcast. At the age of 20, Reed took violence, drugs, sadomasochism, and sang about them in a rock context creating music as painful as it was compelling. He set the stage for the punk revolution. Night Flight tells the story of Reed with music videos, live footage and amazingly candid interviews discussing his love for performance, writing and his unique approach to recording.

“Take Off” to Animation is one of the most beloved original Night Flight formats, as true today as it was in the 1980s. Like our other animation specials, this 1987 arrival from the vault is a one-of-a-kind time capsule from an era when music videos and animation technologies were evolving side by side. Featuring Grace Jones’ multi-media visual spectacle, vibrant cel animation for Wally Badarou’s “Highlife,” and David Bowie’s rotoscoped video for “Underground” from Labyrinth (also streaming on Night Flight Plus), the episode highlights hybrid formats and emerging tools like early 3D computer animation at the height of the cultural zeitgeist.

An eccentric, introverted man (Bob Bert of Sonic Youth) goes on an adventure in his bathtub. As he explores a warped and lopsided world, he chooses to ignore his surroundings in favor of his favorite comic book. Others around him react to his presence with lust, jealousy, desperation and violence while he remains blissfully naive. Winner of the 2020 LA Punk Film Festival's "Best Animated Film" award.

Back in 1985, Night Flight produced a candid backstage interview with Tom Petty while he was on tour promoting Southern Accents. After hearing the sad news on Monday, we went to the archives to get the full segment for you.

Five identical men balance themselves on an ever-shifting plane.

Night Flight is proud to present the 10 winners of our first Night Flight Music Video Film Festival, selected by Night Flight founder Stuart S. Shapiro. We are thrilled to see that music video creativity of independent directors and artists from unsigned acts is so vibrant and prolific. Congrats to director Tony Grayson, whose video "Wicked Wild" by The Metalliques was the Grand Prize winner chosen by the audience at Nitehawk Cinema in Brooklyn on December 13th, 2023.

Ann Magnuson's performance art video piece in character as "Fallopia," the latest in a line of sexy Prince protégés — which she describes as "a classroom lesson in "How to Become a New Wave Video Slut"-- was produced exclusively for Night Flight in the 1980s, and you can now watch it in its entirety in this episode from 1986. "My rise to the top was pretty much standard stuff, same as everyone else's. First there was the live sex acts, then the stag parties, then the sleazy piano bars and conventions, then "Star Search." And then after, gosh, I don't know how many 'dates' with record company executives, I was signed to a major label, and my own rock video, and today I'm one of the BIGGEST New Wave Sluts in the industry!!"

The Ramones, Cabaret Voltaire, J. Geils Band, Rockwell, and The Monsters all make an appearance in Night Flight's Take Off to Rock and Horror from October 25th, 1986. On the flip side of this seasonal episode, Night Flight includes filmmaker Dan Carbone's post-apocalyptic title DOT in its short horror film collection of "Mini Chillers" a surrealist b&w film sought after by Night Flight purists.

Welcome back to Night Flight. Tonight we celebrate the incredible life and career of Aretha Franklin with our 1987 Video Profile of the legendary artist. "She was the daughter of a preacher and by the late 60's the undisputed Queen of Soul" - Pat Prescott. With over a dozen million-selling albums, Aretha forever fused the passion of Gospel, the sensuality of R&B, and the precision of Pop. Tonight's episode is an incredible survey of Aretha's 1980s output, in true Night Flight Style. Featuring all of Aretha's 1980s cuts including: Rock A Lot, Freeway Of Love, Another Night, and George Michael collaboration Knew You Were Waiting.

Two "expressionistic wackos" argue over a glass of juice.

“Their music was devil’s music: high decibel, tortured, frenzied songs about Death, Destruction and Black Magic.” Welcome to Night Flight’s 1984 Take Off to Heavy Metal History with a look at metal forgers Black Sabbath. We go back to the 1970s for classic Sabbath, trace the development of Ozzy Osbourne and Ronny James Dio from their days as Black Sabbath’s lead singers to their solo careers in the mid 80s as “Rock’s Top MadMen.” We’ve heard from many of you that your first exposure to BS was late at night on Night Flight, so consider this your return trip home to some 35 years ago. If you are a Black Sabbath original line-up purist and Dio isn't your thing, may we suggest the Black Sabbath Video Profile for another excellent episode?

The segment is guided by a candid Radio 1990 interview with Robert Smith about the inspiration for the "Close To Me" video, fame and more. In true Night Flight fashion, the British band's "ever-evolving visual image" is explored through director Tim Pope's videos throughout the piece.

Tonight, we travel back to the airwaves of 1991 for a compilation episode of syndicated Night Flight. This hour and a half episode covers European Rock and Guitar Gods. Let syndication host Tom Juarez be your guide as you travel through the music and visuals of Nina Hagen, Taco, Yello, Telephone and more!

Night Flight takes you to the dazzling animation of contemporary music videos, from Herbie Hancock's computer-assisted imagery to the kaleidoscopic videos of Adrian Belew and the Tom Tom Club.

Tonight we bring you a July 1989 episode of Hit Parader Magazine's Heavy Metal Meltdown! Visit a Sunset Strip tattoo parlor with L.A. Guns, get up close and personal with Badlands' lead vocalist Ray Gillen, go on the road with Winger and step inside the Elektra Records office for a little Metal Business Advice. Get ready for the meltdown!

Directed by Peter Litvin. Discover Hollywood's dark side.

Ryuichi Sakamoto's passing in 2023 has left an enormous void in the world of music, film, and beyond. Here at NF HQ, we were comforted by bittersweet arrival of a tape from the archives that includes Sakamoto's Man Ray inspired video for “Risky,” which features the inimitable croon of Iggy Pop. This "New Sounds" episode also highlights songs from ex-Go-Go's band House of Schock, The Smithereens, Pop Will Eat Itself, and more. Stick around for a New Filmmakers Showcase featuring a musical saga about a small-time hustler called Honky Tonk Bud (Scott Laster, 1986) the urban folk legend.