The bet­ter-safe-than-sor­ry approach to musi­cians pre­tend­ing to play on TV while view­ers hear a pre-record­ed track seems like the antithe­sis of rock and roll. Yet since the ear­li­est days of The Ed Sul­li­van Show, audi­ences have accept­ed the con­ven­tion with­out com­plaint. When the fak­ery unin­ten­tion­al­ly fails, reac­tions tend toward mock­ery, not out­rage. Crit­ics rail, the UK’s Musician’s Union has often balked, but bands and fans play along, every­one oper­at­ing under the pre­sump­tion that the banal cha­rade is harm­less.

Leave it to those spoil­sports Nir­vana to refuse this pleas­ant fic­tion on their Top of the Pops appear­ance in 1991.

Like Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts from Amer­i­can Band­stand to Soul Train, Britain’s Top of the Pops had a long tra­di­tion: “For over 40 years,” writes Rolling Stone, “every­one from the Rolling Stones to Madon­na to Bey­on­cé stopped by… to per­form their lat­est sin­gle as either a lip-sync or sing along with a pre­re­cord­ed back­ing track.” All musi­cians were expect­ed to mime play­ing their instru­ments, a com­i­cal sight, for instance, in appear­ances by The Smiths, in which view­ers hear John­ny Marr’s mul­ti­ple over­dubbed gui­tars but see him play­ing unac­com­pa­nied.

The Smiths approached their Top of the Pops appear­ances with tongue-in-cheek irrev­er­ence. At their 1983 debut per­for­mance, Mor­ris­sey mimed “This Charm­ing Man” using a fern as a micro­phone. Still, the band game­ly pre­tend­ed to play, like every­one else did. But when Nir­vana hit the TOTP stage, with Cobain singing to a back­ing track of “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” they wouldn’t observe any of the niceties. YouTube chan­nel That Time Punk Rocked writes:

Cobain opts for slow, exag­ger­at­ed strums dur­ing the few times he touch­es his gui­tar, sings an octave low­er (he lat­er con­firmed he was imi­tat­ing Mor­risey from The Smiths), and attempts to eat his micro­phone at one point. He also changes some of the lyrics, exchang­ing the open­ing line “load up on guns, bring your friends,” for “load up on drugs, kill your friends.” Dave Grohl hits cym­bals and skins at ran­dom, doing more danc­ing than drum­ming. Krist Novosel­ic even swings his bass above his head. And despite these ridicu­lous antics, the crowd goes absolute­ly insane.

Maybe the crowd went wild because of those ridicu­lous antics, or maybe no one even noticed, as when a crowd of thou­sands in Argenti­na hard­ly seemed to notice when Nir­vana open­ly mocked them after the audi­ence abused their open­ing act. This may be one bur­den of star­dom Cobain came to know too well—protests reg­is­ter as per­for­mance and stick­ing it the man onstage just makes the man more mon­ey. But the video remains “one of the great­est mid­dle fin­gers” to musi­cal mim­ing cap­tured on camera—recommended view­ing for every salty young band prepar­ing for their first TV gig.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nir­vana Plays an Angry Set & Refus­es to Play ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it’ After the Crowd Hurls Sex­ist Insults at the Open­ing Act (Buenos Aires, 1992)

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Two Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (Sep­tem­ber 26, 1991)

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

I’ve nev­er been a huge fan of Frank Zappa’s music and grav­i­tat­ed more toward the bizarre yet bluesy son­ic world of his some­time col­lab­o­ra­tor and life­long fren­e­my Cap­tain Beef­heart. But I get the appeal of Zappa’s wild­ly vir­tu­oso cat­a­log and his sar­don­ic, even caus­tic, per­son­al­i­ty. The phrase may have devolved into cliché, but it’s still worth say­ing of Zap­pa: he was a real orig­i­nal, a tru­ly inde­pen­dent musi­cian who insist­ed on doing things his way. Most admirably, he had the tal­ent, vision, and strength of will to do so for decades in a busi­ness that leg­en­dar­i­ly chews up and spits out artists with even the tough­est of con­sti­tu­tions.

Zap­pa, notes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its pro­file, “was rock and roll’s sharpest musi­cal mind and most astute social crit­ic… the most pro­lif­ic com­pos­er of his age,” who “bridged genres—rock, jazz, clas­si­cal, avant-garde and even nov­el­ty music—with mas­ter­ful ease.” Record­ing “over six­ty albums’ worth of mate­r­i­al in his fifty-two years,” he famous­ly dis­cov­ered, nur­tured, and col­lab­o­rat­ed with some of the most tech­ni­cal­ly pro­fi­cient and accom­plished of play­ers. He was indie before indie, and “con­front­ed the cor­rupt pol­i­tics of the rul­ing class” with fero­cious wit and unspar­ing satire, hold­ing “the banal and deca­dent lifestyles of his coun­try­men to unfor­giv­ing scruti­ny.”

Need­less to say, Zap­pa him­self was not prone to banal­i­ty or deca­dence. He stood apart from his con­tem­po­raries with both his utter hatred of trends and his com­mit­ment to sobri­ety, which meant that he was nev­er less than total­ly lucid, if nev­er total­ly clear, in inter­views and TV appear­ances. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, David Let­ter­man, cham­pi­on of oth­er fierce­ly tal­ent­ed musi­cal odd­balls like War­ren Zevon, was a Zap­pa fan. Between 1982 and 83, Zap­pa came on Let­ter­man three times, the first, in August of 82, with his daugh­ter Moon (or “Moon Unit,” who almost end­ed up with the name “Motor­head,” he says).

The younger Zap­pa inher­it­ed her father’s dead­pan. “When I was lit­tle,” she says, “I want­ed to change my name to Beau­ty Heart. Or Mary.” But Zap­pa, the “musi­cal and a soci­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­non,” as Let­ter­man calls him, gets to talk about more than his kids’ weird names. In his June, 83 appear­ance, fur­ther up, he pro­motes his Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra album. As he explains, the expe­ri­ence of work­ing with cranky clas­si­cal musi­cians on a very tight sched­ule test­ed his per­fec­tion­is­tic (some might say con­trol­ling) tem­pera­ment. The album gave rise, writes Eduar­do Riva­davia at All­mu­sic, “to his well-doc­u­ment­ed love/hate (most­ly hate) rela­tion­ship with sym­pho­ny orches­tras there­after.”

But no mat­ter how well or bad­ly a project went, Zap­pa always moved right along to the next thing. He was nev­er with­out an ambi­tious new album to pro­mote. (In his final Let­ter­man appear­ance, on Hal­loween, above, he had a musi­cal, which turned into album, the triple-LP Thing-Fish.) Since he nev­er stopped work­ing for a moment, one set of ideas gen­er­at­ing the next—he told Rolling Stone in answer to a ques­tion about how he looked back on his many records—“It’s all one album.” See a super­cut below of all of Zappa’s 80s vis­its to the Let­ter­man set, with slight­ly bet­ter video qual­i­ty than the indi­vid­ual clips above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zap­pa Explains the Decline of the Music Busi­ness (1987)

Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of Frank Zap­pa in 401 Songs

Hunter S. Thompson’s Many Strange, Unpre­dictable Appear­ances on The David Let­ter­man Show

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

This uncom­fort­able scene played out on CNBC in 2004.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Prince Play Jazz Piano & Coach His Band Through George Gershwin’s “Sum­mer­time” in a Can­did, Behind-the-Scenes Moment (1990)

Hear Prince’s Per­son­al Playlist of Par­ty Music: 22 Tracks That Will Bring Any Par­ty to Life

Apply to Become an Archivist Over­see­ing Prince’s Arti­facts & Archival Mate­ri­als: Appli­ca­tions Are Being Accept­ed Now