Have you ever gotten into a band/Artist on the strength of seeing them on TV.

[amidar]

I'm a bit out of the loop these days. I seemed to hit 30 and just couldn't keep up with all the new cool shit coming out so hid out in the 70's for a while which is my default mode.

Anyway I do watch shows like 'Jools Holland' despite his stupid 'honky-Tonk' piano bits, poor presenting style and that stupid jam they do at the start and end. I also catch Glastonbury and the odd televised festival. So my question is in the last say 10 years have you watched something on TV and gotten into the band/Artist off the back of it. I can only think of two one from a few years back and one from Glastonbury last year. Here are the only two I can think of right now. The first one was instant, the second one just grew on me.

This isn't reserved for British TV if you can find the performance on YouTube stick it up. Oh and bugger it if it was twenty years+ ago put it up if its the show, preferably playing live but not a prerequisite:

By the way this thread is half inspired by talking about 'Jack Jones'. 'Zach Condon' is another person who I wish I could sing like!

[Skip]

It's hard to admit to it here but I first heard Joanna Newsom when This Side Of The Blue featured on a mobile phone commercial

[Cacapo]

TV?

[amidar]

I never thought about commercials which kind of goes hand in hand with promoting some artists these day so yep commercials welcome as well.

[babycart]

Saw this duo late at night on Spanish TV a couple of years ago and bought the lp the following week. New lp out in June!

[amidar]

Digging that BC.

[pitch]

Michael Kiwanuka

[pitch]

Best TV discovery was back in 1992 or 93 when I stumbled upon Pulp playing live just before they got big. I couldn't believe how good this new band were live - little did I realise they had been going for almost 10 years by that point and this was the last throw of the dice. Fell in love with everything Pulp from that evening on.....

It might have been this:

[Shere Khan]

Lucky you gave that 20 year rule because I think I've got to go back that far (a little further actually) to post an artist I got into on the strength of a TV appearance. I didn't know Jon Spencer Blues Explosion at all when I saw this. I thought it was stunning, especially the use of the Theremin. I was already a big Gallon Drunk fan and I didn't really think there was anybody else quite like them...but now there was.

[e3sa934]

Best TV discovery was back in 1992 or 93 when I stumbled upon Pulp playing live just before they got big. I couldn't believe how good this new band were live - little did I realise they had been going for almost 10 years by that point and this was the last throw of the dice. Fell in love with everything Pulp from that evening on.....

The band had been around in some form since 1978, with their debut gig in July 1980 in Rotherham ( I was there - but had gone to see the headliners "The Naughtiest Girl Was A Monitor")

[chimptown]

seeing live footage of Earth on a Seattle / Fantagraphics / Grunge / SubPop documentary was pretty eye opening. There was nothing to it - just two guys in a room with a crowd of about 4 just playing this monotonous rock drone - but for some reason that image haunted me for years .

[ivan_smackhead]

it was about 30 years before i took any notice of them, but metallica at glastonbury in 2014 completely had me hooked. been buying their stuff ever since.

[pitch]

The band had been around in some form since 1978, with their debut gig in July 1980 in Rotherham ( I was there - but had gone to see the headliners "The Naughtiest Girl Was A Monitor")

Yes - I always think of the first Peel session as the beginning (which was 81 I think?) but goes even further back! Surely it's a unique history - almost 15 years in the underground before exploding into the limelight! Any other contenders for that kind of apprenticeship (without much change to band name and lineup?).

[Striker]

TV was a big part of my musical discovery network growing up, never had MTV so it was whatever I could eke out of the terrestrial offer in the late 80s early 90s. This largely meant TOTP on Thursday & The Chart Show on Saturday mornings.

The latter just showed videos with Info about the artist in a box, it was a great show especially the indie chart section, me & my older brother would sit there with a VHS tape in & record all the good stuff, things I heard first here were Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds "Deanna", "Can U Dig It" era Pop Will Eat Itself (the first LP I bought with my own money was "This Is The Day..."). "White Knuckle Ride" by Danielle Dax always seemed to be on it, loads of early rave stuff too.

Suede doing "Metal Mickey" on TOTP totally turned me around on them, I'd read about them in NME but I wasn't having it, they seemed like arseholes & the writing about them was so sycophantic I immediately took the opposing view (a similar situation came about with The Strokes a few years later but they turned out to be actually shit, so I won that one). This appearance made me go out & buy a record by a band I was convinced were going to be rubbish.

The Word was also an essential pre-internet music discovery system, the show itself is now seen as a tawdry 90s "what were we thinking" cliche to be trotted out for cheap nostalgia countdown shows on Channel 5, but the music programming on that show was no joke, all the other nonsense that the word perpetrated had got it into the position where bands could play with seemingly no restrictions & the bookers were great at getting amazing bands before became massive.

First saw Rage Against The Machine on this in '93, I'll have been 18 at the time so this was catnip to me.

A year later, I know that Oasis quickly became a parody of themselves, and due to what came after it's difficult to get across how great this was coming out of the blue. Every professional Manc in the phone book will tell you they saw Oasis at The boardwalk on a Tuesday night for £2.50, but the truth for 99% of people from Manchester including me is that you saw Oasis first on The Word.

And Skip, I feel you brother, I never heard that Vashti Bunyan before it was on an advert, I know, just burn me up in a giant wicker man or something.

[Striker]

Haha, I just found this on youtube, this is what it was like people, The ITV Chart Show Indie Chart section showcasing a thinly veiled song about wanking, Saturday morning April 1989.

Full disclosure, I thought The Pixies were boring as fuck & I loved that Power Of Lard song, I was 14 years old. [whispers: I still think The Pixies are boring]