Most Incongruous celebrity soundbiter on a VH-1 documentary?

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What is the wierdest, most hilarious mismatch you've seen between a band being examined and the celebrity opinion clip VH-1 has chosen to help illuminate their awesomeness? Especially on their list shows, like "The 100 Rockingest Rock Stars in the Entire History of Rock", they obviously just truck through a dozen or so showbiz people with downtime and get them to say something about any of the bands they've heard of. So, every fourth rocker on the countdown, you might get Tony Danza on David Bowie or Toni Tennille on Public Enemy. Fuck, I can't remember a real one, so I'm calling out to you people with functioning memories. And if you know what they said, better still.

― Curt (cgould), Sunday, 17 November 2002 16:52 (twenty-three years ago)

Well, they always get that guy from Rolling Stone who has a lisp and is a moron.

― David Allen, Sunday, 17 November 2002 17:05 (twenty-three years ago)

shows (in the uk) on bbc2 are just the best for that -
it's a bit of a cliche to say stuart maconie, so i'll go
for my fave of all time that isn't him.
it wasn't about a rock band but it's the same sorta thing.
see the tapes of clips the 'stars' are meant to know about
on 'i love 1989' or whatever have been either sent to them on a video or shown to them in the green room beforehand, so they're never real memories rather they
are pretending to remember the bands/vids/films/ads/clothes
in discussion for the given show.
that's right, and just so we're clear - they act *pretend* memories.
right so, gail porter, all of 9 years old when 'withnail and i'
came out said 'and i remember when it came out and i was just like woaaah what's *this* all about...?'
and THAT was her whole contribution.
gail porter. now in her mid 20's. then aged 9 pretends to
have gone whoah. gail you didn't go woaaaah.
barely anybody did. it was a very small film indeed
barely gaining it's money back until the first tv run at least.
and YOU didn't go woooah at an 18 rated movie about stoned
hippies aged 9.

" legislated nostalgia - to force a body of people
to 'have' memeories they don't actually posses..."

― piscesboy, Sunday, 17 November 2002 17:31 (twenty-three years ago)

There was this MTV special where Rolling Stone & Spin folk were actually discussing (straight-faced, sorta) what it took to be a rock star. Far be it from me to suggest that music critics are the last sort of folks to ask re: decadence and hedonism - shit, Lester Bangs getting ripped on Robitussin is pretty fucking edgy.

Also search those musician types (esp. Alice Cooper) that offer absolutely nothing of substance in their praise of a specific band. Band X is so original, band X ARE such-&-such genre, band X rock a llama's ass 15 ways to Ramadan - maybe they qualify such generalizations between the 15-second clips shown during these documentaries. If so, they are getting seriously jobbed by the editors.

I can't get too specific, though - it boils down to simple variations on a theme once the names and contexts are dealt with. I remember one instance of "X is so original" so completely uncalled for that I started speaking in tongues. Galdbbrredlkalkadgjek.

― David R. (popshots75`), Sunday, 17 November 2002 17:38 (twenty-three years ago)

Spike Lee talking about when he heard Nirvana on the radio for the first time. The sad part was that I think he was totally serious.
Something about "Music was never gonna be the same after that" and buying the album straightaway. HURR?

― Tom Millar (Millar), Sunday, 17 November 2002 18:38 (twenty-three years ago)

David Allen is referring to Rob Sheffield.

Melissa Etheridge and Tom Petty own this thread.

― James Blount (James Blount), Sunday, 17 November 2002 21:13 (twenty-three years ago)

"He was like a phoenix. He came down and cut them like a sickle. FWHOOSH! You are done."

― Prude, Sunday, 17 November 2002 21:28 (twenty-three years ago)

Peter Gabriel's involvement in the Donny Osmond episode of Behind the Music kind of threw me.

― Kim (Kim), Sunday, 17 November 2002 22:33 (twenty-three years ago)

Jack Black on the Neil Diamond BTM.

― jm, Sunday, 17 November 2002 22:52 (twenty-three years ago)

Lenny Kravitz on Behind The Music:Vanilla Ice. No wait, actually, that makes perfect sense...

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Sunday, 17 November 2002 23:04 (twenty-three years ago)

It's not Behind the Music, but seeing Henry Kissinger talking about the merits of Jim Carey's movies on a feature on Encore was fairly strange.

― earlnash, Sunday, 17 November 2002 23:42 (twenty-three years ago)

I just saw the part where Mr. Petty utters that particular line referenced by Prude. I have to got to find out who his dealer is. He's obviously on some of the kindest shit ever.

― Tom Millar (Millar), Monday, 18 November 2002 00:03 (twenty-three years ago)

Henry Rollins expressing his admiratoin for "Funky Town" by Lipps Inc. was a surprise.

Rob Sheffield can't expire soon enough.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Monday, 18 November 2002 00:44 (twenty-three years ago)

nick rhodes is such a fool

― Barnaby (Barnaby), Monday, 18 November 2002 17:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Henry Rollins expressing his admiratoin for "Funky Town" by Lipps Inc. was a surprise.
Henry is *always* on these shows giving much love to funk and jazz. He once said (and this is a quote) that "Jazz was the most evolved music ever made." At a spoken word gig he spent ten minutes singing (not literally) the priases of P-Funk, then 1 minute each giving props to Ween and 1 minute to Black Sabbath. So, I guess in his mind, P-Funk might be 10x bettah than Sabbath or Ween.

― Lord Custos Omega (Lord Custos Omega), Monday, 18 November 2002 17:31 (twenty-three years ago)

Conflict of interest alert: the guy who first played bass for the Rollins Band produced the early Ween albums. But then again, he and Henry didn't get along, so...

― hstencil, Monday, 18 November 2002 17:40 (twenty-three years ago)

Bowie's on Carson Daly and as an intro they've got the usual suspects providing blurbs - Rob Sheffield, Kurt Loder, Gene Simmons ("Bowie reinvented himself" - thanks Gene!). Some editor of Blender is coming off as smart in this crowd (it's the accent).

― James Blount (James Blount), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 06:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Conflict of interest alert #2: Back when they had that show "The List" and had Henry Rollins hosting, someone added Devo to one of the lists, and someone else tried to take Devo off the list. Henry stepped in and said "as Czar of the list, I'm saying they should be left on the list."
Three guesses which old punk icon owns a record label that is currently re-releasing the Devo back catalog.
No, its not Jello Biafra....
No, its not Lydia Lunch....

― Lord Custos Omega (Lord Custos Omega), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 19:20 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't understand how these are conflicts of interest. He promotes bands he likes. And I don't think he kept them on the list for the moolah (if people are gonna buy it because Henry said it was good, wouldn't they have already grabbed it cuz it was on his label?). I don't think you'd re-release Devo albums for the money. You'd do it because you really like them. If it wasn't for bands promoting other good bands, there's a lot of stuff nobody'd be turned on to.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 19:26 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't think you'd re-release Devo albums for the money.

Damn straight! Not when anyone can walk into any thrift store in America and find practically their entire discography.

― hstencil, Tuesday, 19 November 2002 19:27 (twenty-three years ago)

Sorry to interrupt, but the Rolling Stone person everyone is referring to is Joe Levy, not Rob Sheffield. Rob doesn't have a lisp and isn't a moron -- though he has appeared on a few VH-1 shows.

― Andy Greenwald, Tuesday, 19 November 2002 21:15 (twenty-three years ago)

Re: Henry Rollins & Funky Town.

Apparently he recorded a version of that song with Ru Paul a few years ago and it never got released, it was for some sort of compilation/tribute that never came to fruition.

― Bobby D Gray (bedhead), Tuesday, 19 November 2002 21:57 (twenty-three years ago)

Lipps Inc Tribute Album??? R0x0r!!

― Daniel_Rf (Daniel_Rf), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 00:04 (twenty-three years ago)

Damn straight! Not when anyone can walk into any thrift store in America and find practically their entire discography.
Ahhhh...but how much you wanna bet the new versions are "digitally remastered for Xtreme sound quality" with a bunch of bad b-sides tacked on as bonus material. Thats gotta be worth buying it retail.
Right?

RIGHT?

― Lord Custos Omega (Lord Custos Omega), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 17:20 (twenty-three years ago)

A friend does the casting for some of these shows and I always suggest really odd people, but the VH1 formula cannot be disturbed, she tells me.

What was the name of the mid-90s VH1 show hosted by DeCurtis featuring four rockcrits talking new records? I always used to watch that show. It came on right before I left for church on Sundays...

― Yancey (ystrickler), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 17:33 (twenty-three years ago)

It was Four on the Floor... or something like that.

― Jody Beth Rosen (Jody Beth Rosen), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 17:36 (twenty-three years ago)

You are correct, JBR. I thought that's what the name was, but I wasn't certain.

― Yancey (ystrickler), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 17:39 (twenty-three years ago)

I think it was on before American Gladiators.

― Andy K (Andy K), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 18:24 (twenty-three years ago)

No more Devo-bashing, goddammit!

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 19:41 (twenty-three years ago)

But toy robots were BUILT for bashing! I knew that when I was 6!

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Wednesday, 20 November 2002 19:45 (twenty-three years ago)

You're thinking Kraftwerk. Devo were a different breed of Jocko Homo Novus, the new breed of Devolved Meta-Mongoloids. Bashing them would be...I dunno...almost but not quite like killing a sentient being with soul or something.

― Lord Custos Omega (Lord Custos Omega), Thursday, 21 November 2002 01:09 (twenty-three years ago)

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