Weird TV music moments

How about Pink Floyd on American Bandstand? They all look pretty unenthusiastic miming to Apples and Oranges and Syd looks pretty spaced. Dick Clark asks Waters if he likes cheeseburgers .....

Chris

 

Does anyone remember Pink Floyd's appearence in '67 on the Pat Boone show and the Perry Como show?

Chris

 

Was this the Paul Lynde Halloween Special? If so, seeing KISS and Paul Lynde together would be very weird

 

In some weird way, I think that they would have liked each other.

 

MY MAN!!!!

I wanna come over and watch videos at your house, man... this all sounds like entertainment gold!

Somewhere I have a tape of Iggy Pop on the Dinah Shore show with David Bowie on keyboards, that was weird! I mean, who would have thought "Let's get on Dinah Shore, THAT will give us the exposure we want!"

 

How 'bout Simon & Garfunkel's performance on the recent Grammys? Very much so palpably tense and cold. The entire thing was so obviously forced. Too bad, too

 

Two very weird music/TV moments:

REM singing "What's The Frequency Kenneth"? on The Late Show w/ David Letterman WITH Dan Rather! It was one of the most surreal things I've ever seen. If you know the story, Dan was mugged, the previous year, by some guy who demanded to know "What's The Frequency Kenneth"? REM took the story and turned it into that song. To see Dan singing and dancing with REM was priceless (and very bizarre).

In 1968, Cream appeared on the "Smothers Brothers" show and mimed (badly) to "Anyone For Tennis". Apparently, the horrified expression on Clapton's face resulted from the watching the stagehands nail live frogs to their "mark" to get them to stay still for the outdoorsy themed video. (PETA would be all over that today!) Seeing Ginger Baker chase a butterfly with a tennis racket has to be one of rock's most bizarre video moments.

PS:
Speaking of Cream, today (July 12) is the 35th anniversary of Clapton's announcement that Cream are splitting up. After a "Farewell Tour" and the "Goodbye" album, they were done.

 

Some of my favorite weird TV memories are from Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show in the late 70s/early 80s:

Johnny Rotten being his most obnxious self--"You can't treat me like this, I'm a STAR!"--Snyder comes back from a break, and Rotten was gone.

Wendy O. Williams wearing nothing but black electrician's tape.

Iggy Pop wanting to talk about philosophy while Snyder asked him questions like "What about when you rolled around in broken glass?" (Iggy: "Yeah, I did that...it hurt.")

Elvis Costello charming the pants off Snyder. "I thought you'd be another of those snotty punks..."

 

Hey Doug: It's the only one I know of!

JD

 

What he said.

 

One I just thought of: In the "We Are The World" video, Quincy Jones is demonstrating to Bob Dylan where his vocal comes in on the verse- and he's singing to Bob using a bad Dylan impersonation. Very odd...

RE: Live on Bandstand- I remember Blue Cheer on there with all their stacked amps- I thought that was live. And the Go Go's first appearance was live, IIRC.

 

That was bad, but Liza singing "We Are The Champions" was about as bad and strange as it gets.

 

Another "Live on Bandstand"-Jerry Lee Lewis doing "Great Balls of Fire"-1958.

Probably the most embarrassing (for the band) moment: The Crickets' Jan. 1958 appearance on the "Ed Sullivan Show". During the dress rehearsal, Jerry Allison and Joe B. Mauldin didn't show, and Ed was furious. So for the show, he told the stage hands to wreck their perfomance. The sound on Buddy Holly's guitar went out, the stage lights went dark, to be replaced by spotlights shining so bright on the boys, that as Jerry recalled years later, "We could barely see anything". So Buddy turns his Strat up, and the stagehands turn his amp down again, so he turns it up again. During the solo, he is furious, and playing 16th notes like a jackhammer! It still was a success, ratings-wise so Ed asked them back. Needless to say, they turned him down!

Funniest outtake: Elvis' 1968 special. He announces "This is my latest song" (the backing track for "If I Can Dream" fails to begin playing). Elvis (deadpan, after about a second or two): "How do you like it so far?" (the audience loved it BTW)

 

One of the funniest music on TV moments I've seen was SNL in the early 90's... Mike Myers playing Mick Jagger and Mick Jagger himself playing Keith Richards on Weekend Update.

"Mick... you ignorant slut!"

-Matt

 

Oh my GOD. I had to even record that for a friend of mine that lived in Minnesota and he new them and was friends with them. He even knew there manager.

Well being my friend and I thought he had pretty good taste in music. I was totally aghast at what I heard come out of this band.

I will go on record to say it was and still is the worst performance of a musical guest on SNL And then the one guitarist at the end of a song just tosses his Les Paul Standard still plugged in to the ground like that was going to make things better.

I just sat there and shook my head sickened by them as a group. I know there was some talent there because I'd heard Paul Westerberg playing on my friends LP that he had done at that time.

I had just finished recording 8 demos for my friend that he had written and had come to town and I got his parts down and I was arranging and recording all the other parts to these songs so he could let this guy Peter who was The Replacements manager hear them.

I worked very hard to make his stuff sound nice and polished and smooth. Needless to say, the guy didn't like it much because it was too commercial sounding for his liking. What a waste of time. PLEASE, I thought never again

 

By the way guys and Steve, I'm sorry if when I'm in a thread like this and I go off into one of my tagent like stories. It just happens when I read something that sparks a memory. So I apoligize if it gets away from the threads subject.

 

Just goes to show, one man's trash is another man's treasure. I LOVE this performance (the Replacements on SNL). Sure it's sloppy, but in the best sense of the word. Every time SNL has a musical guest that sucks I pull out this tape and watch it instead. I think it's incredibly funny the way they switched clothes with each other between songs. What the hell is that thing Bob is wearing?

 

I don't know, Bob is the guitarist that threw his Les Paul. I believe he died a few years back. But I was doing a favor for my friend Lou as where he was living outside Minneapolis that particular Saturday his local NBC station was playing something else instead of SNL.

So I havn't seen the performance since the night they were on, as I had to send him the video tape of the show so he could see their performance.

I'm sorry I just wasn't into the punk rock stuff ever back then.

 

I thought it was great (IMHO, of course!)

I think I have a tape of this somewhere, but I got the west-coast feed which had a big chunk taken out hastily when the 'Mats used a bad, bad word!

 

Hendrix on Dick Cavett and during the song his amp died.

 

Kiss on the Tom Synder show back in 1979 promoting the Dynasty album and tour (see my avatar) is the weirdest thing I've seen. Tom Synder had no clue about the band or music in general. Tom said Gene Simmons was the bass (as in the fish) player.
Ace was drunk as a skunk cracking jokes and putting parts of his space outfit on a teddy bear. ("It's a space bear!") Tom said his notes said Ace would be the "quiet one."
Paul & and especially Gene were clearly not amused by Ace's antics. It was probably one of the few times you saw Kiss not putting on an act as they usually do in interviews. It's a total behind the scenes look on what was going on with the band at that time (utter chaos).

 

This is my first time browsing this thread. I disagree. Beefheart was brilliant. He performed Hot Head and Ashtray Heart that evening. Both songs are found on his first Virgin LP Doc At The Radar Station.

Weird TV music moments? Hmm.
Wendy O Williams And The Plasmatics on Gil Fisher's - The Fishin' Musician on SCTV. Gil's dog was black at the beginning of the sketch. It was white at the end.
Wendy O Williams And The Plasmatics on NBC Tomorrow With Tom Snyder. Tom also interviewed Wendy. It was weird and wacky.
Blue Öyster Cult on Tomorrow with guest host Charles Grodin. That was weird. IIRC, The Cult peformed "Burning For You" and "Joan Crawford" and were interviewed by Grodin.

Elvis Costello And The Attractions performed on Saturday Night Live in Decmeber of 1977. Their first song "Watching The Detectives" went off without a hitch. Their second song was a different story.

The band launched into "Less Than Zero". As Elvis reaches the line about "there's a vacancy waiting in the English voodoo" he turns to the Attractions yelling "Stop! Stop!". Then Elvis turns back to the crowd saying "I'm sorry, Ladies and Gentlemen, there's no reason to do this song here". He then turns back towards the band and says "OK, Radio Radio... 1, 2, 3, 4" and the band dives in.

IIRC, Elvis said later that this had been somewhat worked out with the Attractions. He said to them earlier in the day, "Let's do a Hendrix on Lulu", and they did. For those who don't know, Jimi Hendrix Experience pulled exactly the same stunt on U.K. pop singer, Lulu's TV variety show in 1969. They started "Hey Joe" and mid-way through switched to an instrumental version of Cream's - "Sunshine Of Your Love".

This would pose a serious technical problem in both cases for:
A. sound
B. camera angles, close ups, solos, switching.

Devo appeared on either the Mike Douglas Show or Merv Griffin in around 1980 performing "Whip It" and "Snowball", IIRC. The host, actually I think it was Merv, was wearing one of their inverted flower-pot hats or the "Devo Energy Dome" as they are known. It was pretty funny.

The Henry Rollins Band in tuxedos performing on the Grammy Awards a few years back was hilarious.

Dan Rather on Letterman one evening just after REM hit the charts with "What's The Frequency Kenneth?". Dave asked Dan if he knew the song. Dan said he didn't but knew something else, and launched into "It's The End Of World As We Know It".

And as previously mentioned, Pink Floyd on American Bandstand and The Mats on SNL.

Elvis and The Attractions on SNL.

 

Miike....I WAS 13!!! To me it was horrific!!!!