Classic Roots Choice #29

Well, sure, we should be a bit further than 29 at this point. This series took quite a hit at a certain point. It also doesn't help that there's no easy way to show the actual video (as is the case here).

Danny DeVito was on The Tonight Show to promote "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" so The Roots played the most Philadelphia song out there... the Action News Theme.

The only way to see it is by watching the full episode and even then, there's not much to see - it's a song after all. There's an article about the event here.

Classic Roots Choice #28

Back to back!

The other night David Schwimmer was on the show. His walk-on song? It's only one of my favorite songs of ALL-TIME....

His song is a special Roots interpretation of ... ROSS'S MUSIC!

MAaANNN, that's awesome. Maybe next time they can play "Electrifying... Infinite Time".

For comparison.

Classic Roots Moment #26

Not walk-on music but it doesn't matter. This quick, tiny moment requires no explanation, it's epic and the video will expire...

Classic Roots Choice #26

Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi was on the show the other night to promote the current season of "Jersey Shore". Her walk-on music? A segment of the Oompa Loompa song from "Willy Wonka...".

[Waaaaaa.]

That's classic.

Classic Roots Choice #25

When Patton Oswalt was on the show last Friday his walk on music was a strange, slowed down version of "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" with a certain evil overtone.

This was a reference to one of Oswalt's standup bits:

Listen to the actual slowed-audio version of the song here.

It's kind of a strange convention to make chipmunks have extremely high-pitched voices. There's no evidence for it as they don't speak English. Or if you say that they would have higher pitched voices because they're smaller animals then we need to adjust a whole host of animal cartoon characters.

Classic Roots Choice #24

In this installment of "Classic Roots Choice", Jimmy Fallon does all the explanation himself. Enjoy.

Classic Roots Choice #23

That didn't take long, did it?

Elvis Costello was on Late Night on Friday. Here, The Roots have an entire life's work of songs to choose from, so what does one do? The walk-on music they chose for Elvis Costello was the theme song from the R. White's Lemonade commercials.

There might be thousands of people everywhere scratching their heads looking to my blog for the answer to the riddle (which I would know) except Elvis just couldn't leave it be and explained it himself in his interview (boooooo! I could have been the only one!).

Elvis' father was a jingle writer and wrote the R. White's Lemonade "Secret Lemonade Drinker" song. On top of it, Elvis' sang back up on the song when he was just a kid. In case you weren't living in Great Britain in the 70's (and I suspect that's the case) it looked like this:



It's always struck me as the height of weirdness. Is this a common problem? He's addicted to lemonade, isn't he? He's gotta do it secretly because he doesn't want his family to know he's got a serious lemonade problem and needs professional help? LOSE THE HABIT, MAN!

Classic Roots Choice #22

Usually these posts are for obscure or clever choices of song for a particular guest's walk-on music. This one's a bit different. This is about kicking-to-commercial music.

The Roots covered "Everything in its Right Place" from Radiohead's epic "Kid A" album.

It looked and sounded like this:

"But wait a minute", you say incredulously, "It goes to commercial so you only get to see a few seconds of it". Your point being? Those two seconds were the most exciting two seconds of my terrible day.

Ed. Note: Relistening to the original now to verify the youtube link and, 10 years later, it still sends me back to the first time I heard it. That is a trip. The song is a trip in itself, but that's a trip on top of the original trip. That's what I call "Double Tripulature". There's also "Triple Tripulature" but people don't generally survive that. Don't forget to trip your waitress.

Classic Roots Choice #21

Jon Glaser was on Late Night recently and the Roots played him on like so:

[Video Removed]

And people in the know WERE cracking up. Jon Glaser now has his own show but he started out as a writer for Conan O'Brien. During his time there he performed in a comedy trio known as "The Slipnutz". I was going to explain the history of the trio but youtube actually pulls through on this one:

I'm always surprised to see the footage of Slipknot fans actually booing The Slipnutz - it's not like Slipknot fans to have bad taste. My best guess for the reason is this: The Slipnutz weren't wearing masks. The entertainment value of any music is increased 100 fold when the musicians wear masks (every Slipknot fan knows this).

Jon Glaser must of learned this lesson, for in his new show, he wears a mask and that fact causes the show to be different and better than all the other shows. It's called "Delocated" and it airs on Adult Swim.