For this week’s installment of “120 Minutes” Rewind we re-visit the Kevin Seal era for a 1989 interview with Matt Johnson of The The, who discusses his band’s then-new album ‘Mind Bomb,’ his decision to assemble an actual band, professional boxing and the student uprising in China.

In October 1988, an MTV-packaged “new music” tour featuring Living Colour, The Godfathers and The Sugarcubes hit Alabama’s Auburn University, where the music-video network filmed the latter band’s 50-minute, 14-song set for a special that aired during the “second 60” of “120 Minutes” on Christmas of that same year.

For this week’s ‘120 Minutes Rewind,’ we offer up a clip of unusually good video quality, a nine-minute reel from summer 1990 that saw Sonic Youth frontman Thurston Moore and drummer Steve Shelley sitting down to talk about the band’s just-released ‘Goo’ album with host Dave Kendall.

Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper parted ways in 1989 after a string of unlikely MTV and college-rock radio hits — including “Stuffin’ Martha’s Muffin,” “Elvis is Everywhere” and “Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child” — but the rambunctious duo will reunite on stage in San Diego this fall.

Twenty years ago today, first-time director Samuel Bayer gathered several dozen fans and three young musicians on a Culver City, Calif., soundstage to film the video for Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ a soon-to-be iconic clip — the infamous high school pep rally from hell — that ultimately would be as era-defining as the song itself.

Our latest link round-up includes a Q&A with Thomas Dolby, news of a comic-book series inspired by The Smiths, an essay on whether MTV’s ‘120 Minutes’ is still necessary, news of the return of Washington, D.C.’s WHFS and a review and excerpt of Simon Reynolds’ new book ‘Retromania.’

Saturday night, following an eight-year absence, MTV’s iconic alternative-music show ‘120 Minutes’ returned with a new format and a familiar face: late-’90s host Matt Pinfield. The whole show is now online; watch it here.

This is a little more mainstream than what we usually cover, but it’s hard to deny the significance: Thirty years ago today, on Aug. 1, 1981, MTV went on the air (‘Ladies and gentlemen, rock ‘n’ roll…’), changing the course of music in the ’80s and beyond.

Daniel Ash — he of ’80s darkwave trifecta Bauhaus, Tones on Tail and Love and Rockets — turns 54 today, and to mark the occasion, we present this little nugget: It’s a promo for MTV’s ‘120 Minutes’ featuring a cue-card reading Ash and his Love and Rockets bandmates David J and Kevin Haskins that aired sometime around 1986.

Today’s round-up of share-worthy links includes a report about Morrissey’s latest offending statement (this time comparing the slaughter in Norway to meat being served in fast-food dives), plus interviews with Mission of Burma’s Clint Conley, ‘120 Minutes’ host Matt Pinfield and ex-Depeche Mode member Alan Wilder.

Twenty years ago today, the Perry Farrell-spawned Lollapalooza festival — which, in retrospect, joins Nevermind as perhaps the best historical encapsulation of ‘the year punk broke’ — made its debut in the sun-baked Arizona desert with performances by Nine Inch Nails, Living Colour, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Jane’s Addiction.

Since the announcement last month that MTV plans to revive its ‘120 Minutes’ franchise as both a new monthly TV show and a quick-hit web series, the music-averse network has begun populating its MTV Hive website with performances by the likes of The Cure, Pixies, The Jesus and Mary Chain and World Party.

MTV announced today that it will revive its hugely influential Sunday night alternative-music video outlet ‘120 Minutes’ as a weekly online series called ‘120 Seconds’ hosted by Matt Pinfield on web portal MTV Hive and a monthly show that will be televised on sister network MTV2.