Sunday, March 15, 2009

Less Than Radio Radio Beastie Goodness

Flashing back to when SNL could be cool...musically at least (Kelly Clarkson?)

First, watch THIS CLASSIC CLIP of Elvis Costello's appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1977 when he halted "Less Than Zero" a few bars into it and then ripped into "Radio Radio".

It got him banned from SNL for twelve years.

I remember watching this when it originally aired. I was a skinny teen over at my best friend Dave's house (because he was the only pal I knew who had cable television at the time here in Buttkick) and we were all excited to hear some of this 'punk rock' we'd been hearing rumblings about. The musical guests on SNL up to that point had been pretty mellow (Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Leo Sayer, Carly Simon, etc.), and however silly it'd be to classify Costello as 'punk' today (though that's how he was billed and introduced as on the program), at the time I did turn to my friend Dave and say: "Whoa...what the heck just happened?"

Then watch this riff on that riff from SNL's 25th anniversary show in 1999 when Costello 'sabotages' the Beastie Boys "Sabotage" — and they perform "Radio Radio" together.




"I wanna bite the hand that feeds me
I wanna bite that hand so badly
I want to make them wish they'd never seen me"



Damn. So cool.

3 comments:

Christina said...

I somehow never had seen these before even though I love both bands. Fun! I bet the Beastie Boys had the time of their life playing that song with him.

Callaghan said...

Effin' awesome. The original will always be in my top three rock'n'roll tv moments.

But I hadn't seen the 1999 version. Amazing.

Just one thing - does Beastie Boy MCA ever smile?

Corey said...

Great selection Will. Good job finding that old 1977 clip. SNL use to be as much about the musical guests as the comedy. Now I just flip the channel when the flavour of the week comes up.

There is a great SNL Paul Simon George Harrison duet from '76 out there too.