With David Letterman recently signing off after over thirty years on The Late Show, now seems like a good time to celebrate a few great, terrible, interesting or awkward musical TV appearances. With all my might, I have resisted including Future Islands and Jocky Wilson. There’s also nothing from Later… in here. Has anything of note even happened on that show?

R.E.M. play a song too new to be named for David Letterman

In which Dave chats with the boys from Athens, GA, for a bit, before they close their national TV debut with a new track that nobody knows, and which doesn’t even have a name yet. Because that’s just what you do if you’re R.E.M.

https://youtu.be/Ykp0Vq77IBw

The House of Love storm Christine in front of a bored-looking audience in 1988

One of the commenters on youtube claims to have been at this Melvyn Bragg endurance contest of a recording for five hours without being granted so much as a toilet break. No wonder the audience ignore the direction for tumultuous applause, offering their best Victorian portrait pose instead.

https://youtu.be/N_kiBGZNeLA

Blur make their TV debut on a cookery show. Hosted by a member of Bucks Fizz

It may sound like an accidental Partridge, but Eggs n Baker was a cookery and music program for kids hosted by Cheryl Baker. And it was the scene of Blur’s first TV appearance.

https://youtu.be/QaTqEqNydMM

Occasionally, Cheryl would burn simple recipes while engaging in awkward interview banter. Here she is making landfill television with members of folk-fiddly indie band Pele.

https://youtu.be/BqHiut4efCU

And for the hat-trick, here’s Pele performing Megalomania, from their well-worth seeking out album Fireworks, to a crowd of kids. If the response of the little ones seems muted, I expect it’s just because inside they are busy mulling over the complex personality issues raised by the track.

https://youtu.be/B7R9SWDmEZY

Oasis make their TV debut on The Word

In which Liam is all over the mic like a touchy-feely person who hasn’t invented his trademark hands-free persona yet.

https://youtu.be/81Z-WRuQe2w

The Auteurs play Light Aircraft on Fire while sparkly dancers wing it

Hotel Babylon was a late ITV grab for the drunken young adult market that almost entirely passed me by during its mid to late 90s run. I guess I was just old and mature by then, or had grown tired of its spiritual mother-programme The Word (both, along with The Big Breakfast, were made by Planet 24). Easy as it is to mock this Dani Behr-fronted music and entertainment fare, it’s worth asking where are the shows now that would book The Auteurs during Luke Haines’ most nihilistic phase, and the likes of Therapy?

https://youtu.be/NxG0Pw0_0Fc

Bez gives it the full Bez

In which The Happy Mondays, signed to Tony Wilson’s Factory Records, make an appearance on “The Other Side Of Midnight”, a Granada show hosted by none other than Tony Wilson. You can be Shaun Ryder, I’ll be Bez.

https://youtu.be/nLO_cnljeY0