Somewhere in the discussion of the demise of Top of the Pops I came across a link to Nirvana’s performance of Smells Like Teen Spirit on the show.
Top of the Pops didn’t allow bands to perform their music live, instead forcing them to sing and mime to pre-recorded music. So Kurt Cobain completely took the piss with his singing, while the whole band mimed their instrument-playing as badly as they could. Cobain doesn’t even pretend to play a whole chunk of the song. Krist Novoselic spends most of the performance swinging his bass around his head. It’s hard to tell from the YouTube video but apparently the bass didn’t even have any strings on it. Stick it to the man!
By the way, this is my 500th post to Soylent Red.