Saturday Night Live

the Ebersol years, which'll never get collected that way (losing us anthology of appearances by Fear, Funky 4+1, etc)

1980 musical guests alone:
Kid Creole and the Coconuts
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band
Aretha Franklin
James Brown
Linda Rondstadt
Cheap Trick
Jimmy Cliff
Todd Rundgren
Funky Four + 1
Prince
Delbert McClinton
Jr. Walker

1981:
Rod Stewart
The Kinks
Miles Davis
Fear
Rick James
the Gogos
Billy Joel
Meatloaf
the Spinners
Allman Bros
Sparks
Elton John
Mink Deville
John Cougar Mellencamp
Charlie Daniels

I mean COME ON

i manage to rip a copy of the ornette coleman performance (from the infamous milton berle episode) from Hulu, and it's fucking fire.

(from 1979, i think? or 1978. something like that.)

That Sparks appearance is amazballs: host Danny Devito letting Ron Mael introduce "Minnie Mouse" by talking about vermin diseases, which he follows up on by breakdancing during the instrumental break.

aarrrgh why you guys tease me

I guess I shouldn't bring the Miles Davis comeback appearance wherein unknown to the audience or even Davis himself that he was performing while having a stroke.

I seem to remember a very brief clip of Miles on the 25th anniversary SNL dealie. As with most Miles of that era, unfortunately, it wasn't particularly remarkable -- nor could you tell he was having a stroke.

Kinda ticked: I went searching for those Sparks clips, found them, but the host site had embedded them from somewhere else (presumably YouTube) and the original uploader blocked embeds before probably having to delete said vids because NBC.

As with most Miles of that era, unfortunately, it wasn't particularly remarkable -- nor could you tell he was having a stroke.

Yeah, the biggest tell is he's wandering around as he plays a lot (or at least more so than usual). In his auto bio he said that the only thing that kept his mind off the pain was walking, so he'd been in continuous motion since the afternoon at least.

so fits with the comedy on the show for the last 35 years

this list is super fucking accurate

http://jacobreed.tumblr.com/post/110939031244/saturday-night-live-all-142-cast-members-ranked

Really strange watching the first ep last night. Carlin actually bombed a couple of times ("Have you heard these jokes before?"), but it was weirdly refreshing to see two (!) musical guests within the first 30 minutes.

jacobreed in the fine tradition of beating a slender joke to unfunniness

it was weirdly refreshing to see two (!) musical guests within the first 30 minutes.

well you wd've loved the TV Variety Show 1947-75, then

The other day I was driving around, and out of nowhere I wanted to remember the name of that guy who did that thing. Maybe five minutes later it popped into my head: A. WHITNEY BROWN! What happened to that guy?

After he left SNL, he was one of the original correspondents on The Daily Show. He's kept a mostly low profile since then, though.

OMG they're doing a red carpet pre-special special for this 40th anniversary thing. That's sort of ridiculous.

In the new Rolling Stone (which has that cast ranking thing as the cover story) there's a side bar with a list of the 10 best episodes. The Michael Jordan/Public Enemy ep came in at #1. Had forgotten that one gave us Schmitt's Gay: http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/679770/ (lesser quality, but has the original music, which the 'official' online versions don't).

OMG they're doing a red carpet pre-special special for this 40th anniversary thing. That's sort of ridiculous.

I dunno, if a red carpet ceremony is going to happen, I actually think it makes more sense to do it for the 40th anniversary of a show that changed the television landscape than for an annual back-patting awards show.

(Except, isn't it like 10 below in NYC right now?)

sheesh what is the deal with Chevy Chase?

(it's easy to forget he's 71, God bless him, I like CC)

3.5 hrs is a long time

This is so bad.

is sandler @ this thing

holy shit @ Chevy Chase. Did he eat 10 million bowls of Colon Blow?

Was Betty White supposed to be doing the Californian accent? It didn't quite come across.

In a way, it's the perfect retrospective: it's like a typically middling-to-awful SNL episode, but twice as long!

whats up with that

hey, randy newman is in the audience. (did he actually appear on the show? i missed the first 45 min.)

i'm having funny w/ this, but the A.D.D. montages are painful

I can't believe Jimmy Fallon has failed his way to the top, what a huge pile of mediocrity.

Newman hasn't been on stage (yet). I saw Spielberg & Capshaw in the audience as well.

ok, muting it now

the Miley cover was pretty all right tbh

Would rather hear her sing that than Simon, tbh.

This is the best way to watch SNL -- one episode every 30 years or so.

Ha. Should I turn on?

kanye getting like 8 mins of this to perform & do floor exercises shd prove hes goat imo

You'd think they'd have saved up some good material for this thing.

How embarrassing. I was about to call them out for not remembering Terry Sweeney, but then I found out he's still alive.

FInally visually confirmed that Valerie Dee Naranjo is indeed in the band.

ok the jon lovitz thing was funny

Was he singled out for any particular reason?

No reason other than picking on Jon Lovitz is funny.

I would've done this show completely differently...interview style, focus on the eras, the writers' room, get former cast members talking to each other about things and see what kind of conversations develop, and whatever. Not, I repeat NOT, try to recreate Celebrity Jeopardy and Wayne's World and Bass-O-Matic sketches with old people. And why McCartney? Kanye? Miley? Paul Simon? The fuck do I need to see music performances on this occasion for? Ugh. Anyway, it's finally over.

Also, very worrying to me is that it seems like John Goodman could die any day now. Eeesh.

chevy chase looked worse, frankly

yeah chase looked like he gained 40 additional pounds, but fuck him anyway

I actually thought the celeb jeopardy standard bit was funny. Sean Connery et. al.

Glad to see Fallon and Sanz called out for breaking.

this is like... shoah long