With its last show on May 20th, 2015, David Letterman closed a 33-years long series of TV shows, NBC’s Late Night With David Letterman and CBS’s Late Show With David Letterman, that introduced and promoted a plethora of musical guests, both mainstream, and more alternative artists. Today, to keep you entertained during the last days of 2020, we’re giving you a throwback list of top 10 great indie live videos, presented by Paris grungy indie rockers WONDERFLU, who just dropped their new EP “Bubblegum”, a 90s infused 5-tracker that can be played in its entirety below.
“We’ve put together 10 of the greatest musical moments from the shows’ history, and though the list is by no means complete — we could easily have gone to 100 — these are the performances we keep returning to over and over again.” – says the band.
10 great indie live performances from the Letterman show:
There have been a lot of night shows with great live music in the US during those past years. We have to say we don’t know why so many good performances have been made on shows hosted by David Letterman’s but anyway, let’s take a look at some cool lives while we’re waiting for the right to perform again.
Flaming Lips – She dont use jelly
Steven Drozd is headbanging on his drumset, Wayne Coyne is high, Ronald Jones is bottlenecking the shit out of his guitar during the choruses. And the house band show leader, Paul Shaffer, is tripping like all of us while playing organ (it’s at 2:07 folks)
Weezer – Say it ain’t so
Just to see Matt Sharp doing every single rock move with his bass. He can easily outplay any air guitar champ.
Screaming Trees – Nearly lost you
A nice version of their hit with organ on the chorus that anticipates on what the band will make on Dust, their fantastic next album. One of those album we can listen to whenever we want, it will always sound fresh to us.
Wilco – Outta site (outta mind)
We saw them a lot of times and we have to say the noise part of “Via Chicago” that they make live is a really intense experience, way more than on the CD. It obsesses us a lot, it’s the kind of arrangement no one else has done that good. This is one of their early hits with a strong stones vibe, it’s unstoppable.
Ween – Exactly Where I’m At.
This is the band we don’t listen to enough. Accordingly, we have little to say about them except that this song is awesome.
Guided By Voices – The Unsinkable Fats Domino
Classic line up. With Greg Demos doing some dangerous move (it’s at 0:51, don’t try doing that at home, kids)
Dinosaur Jr – Feel the pain
Unclassic line up but despite not having Lou and Murph, that song is unbeatable. We have nothing to add to the legendary superlatives that usually go with the band, they’re all well deserved
Sonic Youth – Incinerate
Of course it never went on the radio. But this is real pop to us. If you could count how many hours the members of Wonderflu have listened to, band by band, they’re probably number one
Beastie Boys – Sabotage
We always make fun of ourselves cause some of our songs have only three chords. As Lou Reed famously stated : “One chord is fine. Two chords is pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.” Well this is just fine ^_^
Flat Duo Jets – Wild wild love
That Elvis attitude, that fucked up solo, that piano solo from Paul Shaffer. It’s out of time music that comes partly from Athens, Georgia but it’s not REM. Allegedly, the White Stripes loved that band, it’s probably not a super relevant information but the book we took the info from is worth mentioning, it’s called “Late Century Dream, Movements in the US Indie Music Underground” and it documents some indie places and underground bands of the US that weren’t highlighted enough, it’s a good read!
