Christian Marclay on NBC's Night Music

A performance by Christian Marclay, from the October 29, 1989 episode of the short-lived music television show Night Music. Other guests that night included Todd Rundgren, Taj Mahal, Pat Metheny, and Nanci Griffith. The NBC show series was hosted by David Sanborn, and in its run I recalled seeing Sun Ra, Nick Cave, Pere Ubu, Diamanda Galas among others appear, but quite often the highlight was the assortment of collaborations that were created for the sheer kick of seeing musicians together on TV you wouldn't normally see on a stage let alone on a network show. Sonic Youth doing the Stooges "I Wanna Be Your Dog" backed by the Indigo Girls, Sanborn and Hiram Bullock, and there was also once an appearance by Conway Twitty performing with the Residents behind him. Of course any show like this was too good to last, I don't know the certainty of the rumor that a scheduling of the Butthole Surfers finally made the beer sponsor draw the line. But would be nice to see this on DVD. (Thanks Kristin Anderson)

Comments

[Devon Young]

Wow, this was awesome! I love it!

[krebstar]

My fave show was contained appearances by Screamin Jay Hawkins
and Bongwater...

Plus a really pretty song with Debra Harry backed up by Sanborn and the band...

[Brian Turner]

Oh yeah, Bongwater intro'd by Screamin Jay, with Bob Weir and the Pussywillows backing up, doing a Roky tune....

[illlich]

This was one of the few episodes I saw at the time (I also saw the Conway Twitty/Residents one, and one with Sonny Rollins and I think Leonard Cohen).

I can't imagine they could actually have the Butthole Surfers on (beer sponsor or not) -- any of their other interviews from that period are over-the-top weird and borderline offensive. Think : the Sex Pistols infamous TV appearance combined with dadaism and lots of pot smoke. The TV censors would have to edit so much that it would be pointless and unwatchable.

case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEuKiqnnOPM

[Lucky]

this is fucking brilliant. only new the song from marclay's cd "records" (atavistic) - but see him doing this speedy changes is incredible. from only watching i'd say this must be sounding like mad shit, but it's aural jewelry for my ears ;)

thanks for this post, mr. turner!

[waylon solos]

why did they leave this guy out of the new dj hero game?

[boil]

how bout scratchn something people actually listen to? I didn't recognize one fkn measure of that.

[Webhamster Henry]

Now I have to dig out my copy of Record Without A Cover.