Weird TV music moments

Anyone have any recollections of musical moments on TV that made you scratch your head? I have 2:

1) Seeing Captain Beefheart on SNL when I was 12 or 13. It was the most horrific sound I had ever heard!He was just bleating his clarinet maniac-ally....then I remember the mic falling out of the clarinet and him yelling S%$T!

Another was this ghastly Beatles tribute, around 76-77..with all these B movie and TV actors singing Beatle songs.....I swear Sidney Portier sang Long Long Long.......very disturbing!

 

Anyone remember the Rolling Stone Magazine 10th Anniversary TV special? Really horrible. I think the only thing most folks remember from it is a sketch with Steve Martin and Keith Moon smashing up a hotel room.

 

Was that the one with the dancing letters spelling Rolling Stone?

 

The scene: 1970s college football game. Half-time. I'm channel surfing and come across it just in time to hear the P.A. announcer(!) singing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" while the marching band gyrates! Surprising I didn't defect to the Soviets right then.

 

Probably, there was a whole bunch of stuff like that throughout. I recall a really bad broadway/interpretive dance Beatles medley at some point.


Here's another one: The usually reliable Lindsey Buckingham totally trashing "Here Comes The Sun" on ABC's 2001 New Year's Eve special.

 

The Beach Boys The Spirit of America Spectacular, July 5, 1981

This was a live concert broadcast, during the tour in which Carl Wilson had left the band temporarily to tour behind his first solo album. The band had flown back to Long Beach, California after doing their traditional July 4th gig in Washington DC, and everybody was tired and jet lagged. Brian Wilson, probably at his low point, was forced to do lead vocals on many of the songs Carl would normally take care of. "God Only Knows" and "Don't Worry Baby" were especially embarrassing and sad.

They needed Carl back very badly, and it wasn't too much later that they finally convinced him to return.

 

various national anthems before sporting events:

--Rosanne (of course)
--Whitney, Cher, Mariah???? Huge superbowl lip sync problem, I just can't -remember which generic diva it was.
--Marvin Gaye (NBA all-star game--not weird, just brilliant)
--little girl forgot the words and Portland coach Maurice Cheeks came out and helped her finish (last season)

 

Another SNL one.....Elvis Costello stops the band in mid-song, then decides to play a different one.....Lorne Michaels was pissed!

 

God knows........I was just a kid, I thought the guy was a nutbar, can't remember the song! I remember it had a really nutty crazy slide guitar part!

 

I remember several wonderful moments on David Leterman's NBC show. One had Paul Simon being interviewed by Dave. Paul wasn't scheduled to perform, but Dave badgered him and someone from the band brought him his guitar. So Paul starts tuning up and strumming, and telling some neat story that I no longer remember. And then his string breaks. But he makes his repairs and goes on to sing. I don't recall te specific song, but I remember it being a wonderful, unrehearsed and off-the-cuff moment with a musician really letting his guard down.

 

There was another, weirder time on Letterman with both Simon & Garfunkel. I think it was during their reunion tour when tensions were still strained between them. Art was telling Dave some story, and as he related some specific incident that he (Art) claimed to have been a part of, Paul interrupted and told Art that he wasn't there at the time - essentially that he was making the whole thing up. It was an awkward and strange moment. But pure live TV magic...

 

I remember that one. He was talking about Simon and Garfunkel's Concert in Central Park, and how he'd been interrupted by a fan who'd climbed onstage during the song "The Late, Great Johnny Ace". Letterman persuaded him to perform the song, on a borrowed guitar. The odd part was, at almost exactly the point in the song where he'd been interrupted in Central Park, he had his string mishap.

After a commercial, Letterman commented, "We've figured it out...the song is jinxed!"

Back to Beefheart on SNL, that was November 22, 1980, the songs performed were "Hot Head" and "Ashtray Heart".

 

That is one of my all time favorite musical moments!! I remember a show called "Fridays" that was on for a short period in the late 70's (?) to compete with SNL. On their first 3 weeks, their musical guests were the Boomtown rats, The Clash, and the Jam! I also believe the Plasmatics were on there also. The guitar player had on a female nurses top, and a ballerina tutu. He also rolled around in the audience for a while during his "solo" if I remember correctly.

I remember seeing Kiss on some Halloween special in the 70's that was kinda weird. Wasn't Johnny Rotten on American Bandstand once with PIL, and during their song he walked around pushing people around?? That was weird, but in its own way very awesome!!

 

Seeing Nirvana in the fall of '91 on MTV's Headbanger's Ball was great TV.

Chris

 

Yes, now it's all coming back! Thank's for refreshing my memory.

Dave's interview style may be unusual, but it does produce some amazing live TV moments. I never would have believed it, but Dave actually got the best interview I ever heard out of the novelist Jerzy Kosinski.

 

Lawrence Welk saying that his band leader was "a credit to his race.."


my jaw hit the floor......

 

That was awesome!
I loved that show!

 

Prince's first and only time on American Bandstand back in early 1980. He performed(lip synched) "I Wanna Be Your Lover" and "Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad", which were great. What was weird and very ackward was when Dick Clark interviewed, or tried to interview the Purple One. Prince responded with one word answers, and when Dick asked how many years he'd been in the business, Prince held up four fingers. Like a shy, flaky little kid.

 

I just remembered The Doobie Brothers making an appearance on a TV show called What's Happening (with the fat guy named ReRun, remember?)
It was weird......they played two songs.....but they seemed so out of place.

 

Several come to mind:

-- Didn't see it at the time, but saw it years later: When the Rolling Stones appeared on Ed Sullivan in early 1967, they were forced by Ol' Stone Face and/or the CBS Standards and Practices people to change the lyrics of their then-current single to "Let's Spend Some Time Together." Watching Mick's scowling face every time he sang the words "some time" was priceless!

-- The Plasmatics appeared on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in either late 1980 or early 1981. Carson was positively bemused by it all.

-- In 1983, Boy George appeared on Carson and sat down in the interview chair with him. At one point, Johnny was asking about music the Boy liked, and George answered by singing several lines of "Fly Me to the Moon" absolutely gorgeously.

-- In 1991, when Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video made its world premiere on the Fox network, I think on a Sunday night. The first four minutes of it was very cool, especially the part with all the morphing faces. But then came that interminable ending, with the King of Pop grabbing hios crotch, moving as if he were Elvis on bad drugs, and bashing the windshield of a car! What was THAT supposed to be about? Not only was it offensive, it was TERRIBLE ... and the video's coda was never aired again as far as I know.