Sure­ly you’re famil­iar with the work of Dick Flash, the tire­less writer for Pork mag­a­zine who asks the most bril­liant minds in music today the deep­est, most seri­ous, most prob­ing ques­tions. Take, for instance, his inter­view of artist/pro­duc­er/am­bi­ent-music-inven­tor Bri­an Eno. “I was going to ask you whether you thought tech­nol­o­gy had affect­ed music very deeply,” Flash begins, “but then I thought, ‘Well, that’s a bloody stu­pid ques­tion to ask Bri­an Eno. I know you’ll agree that you just can’t imag­ine rock music with­out all the tech­nol­o­gy which goes into mak­ing it and get­ting it heard. How do you think that process has affect­ed what you’re doing?”

“Well —”

“I mean, when you’re mak­ing music, what even­tu­al­ly comes out has almost noth­ing to do with per­for­mance at all. I mean, I won­der if you some­times feel more like a painter than a com­pos­er.”

“The thing about this new record —”

“Because after all, your music is basi­cal­ly scenic. It’s not only that you make it more like a painter than a com­pos­er, but also, it does­n’t have a nar­ra­tive. There’s no sort of tele­o­log­i­cal struc­ture to it. It’s not goal-direct­ed. Instead it’s a bit like a sort of emo­tion­al micro­cli­mate, a place more than an event. Does that make any sense to you?”

“Yeah, well, I —”

“I mean, I’m not try­ing to put words into your mouth, but the real ques­tion is, should this stuff be called music at all, or is it a new art form? Do you think that this and oth­er media suf­fer from the car­ry­over of their orig­i­nal names, when in fact they’ve changed into some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent.”

“Well, I like paint­ing, yeah. I real­ly like it. Um…”

The inter­view, con­duct­ed at the time of the release of Eno’s album Small Craft on a Milk Sea (which Flash calls Milk Crate on a Small Sea) con­sti­tutes a true meet­ing of the minds. The con­ver­sa­tion cov­ers all the sub­jects that mat­ter: ecol­o­gy, film scores, the 1956 Copy­right Act, the human need for sur­ren­der, “the inter­net and all that,” the Edge’s hat, and why Eno does so much col­lab­o­ra­tion in the stu­dio. As to that last, the inter­view­er has a the­o­ry: “You love play­ing with what some­body else is play­ing as much as you enjoy play­ing with your­self.”

But wait — you say you’ve nev­er heard of Dick Flash? Watch the inter­view again: does­n’t he sound and look, behind that hip hair and spec­ta­cles, at least a lit­tle bit famil­iar? And does­n’t Eno him­self, con­fus­ing Mal­colm McLaren with Mar­shall McLuhan and going on about Annie Lennox’s neck, seem unchar­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly inar­tic­u­late, almost as if he’s pok­ing fun at him­self? (And who’s that in the pic­ture on his com­put­er desk­top, any­way?) Like all the finest inter­views through­out the his­to­ry of jour­nal­ism, this one leaves us with more ques­tions than answers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

The Genius of Bri­an Eno On Dis­play in 80 Minute Q&A: Talks Art, iPad Apps, ABBA, & More

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies”

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

David Bowie & Bri­an Eno’s Col­lab­o­ra­tion on “Warsza­wa” Reimag­ined in Com­ic Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Sure, I know ice truck­ers and snow crab fish­er­men have it rough, but I’ve always thought the hard­est job in the world is to be a come­di­an. You walk out on stage, night after night, throw­ing your­self on the mer­cy of the fick­le crowd, with noth­ing but your wits to keep you afloat. It’s nev­er been any won­der to me that so many come­di­ans turn to var­i­ous sub­stances to cope with the heck­ling, chilly silences, and dis­in­ter­est­ed, half-emp­ty rooms. Even suc­cess­ful, beloved comics face tremen­dous per­for­mance pres­sures. Some of them crack. And some, like John Belushi, hop onstage dur­ing a Grate­ful Dead show at the Capi­tol The­atre, cart­wheel over to a micro­phone before the cho­rus of “U.S. Blues,” and join in on back­ing vocals.

Belushi’s impromp­tu 1980 prank per­for­mance with the Dead was not, ini­tial­ly, wel­comed. He had, reports Live for Live Music, “met with some resis­tance from the band” when he asked to join in dur­ing the encore, and drum­mer Bill Kreutz­mann “had to nix Belushi’s wish­es.”

So Belushi, true to form, took mat­ters into his own anar­chic hands, stag­ing what Kreutz­mann called in his 2015 auto­bi­og­ra­phy a “comedic ambush.”

He had on a sport coat with small Amer­i­can flags stuffed into both of his breast pock­ets and he land­ed his last cart­wheel just in time to grab a micro­phone and join in on the cho­rus. The audi­ence and every­one in the band—except for Phil—ate it up. It could­n’t have been rehearsed bet­ter. Belushi had impec­ca­ble comedic tim­ing, musi­cal­i­ty, balls, the works. And appar­ent­ly, he did­n’t take no for an answer.

Belushi’s musi­cal antics, and sur­pris­ing acro­bat­ic agili­ty, are already well-known to fans of The Blues Broth­ers. His pen­chant for real-life musi­cal chaos—such as his stag­ing of an authen­ti­cal­ly riotous punk show on Sat­ur­day Night Live—have also become part of his estimable com­ic leg­end.

Sad­ly, no video of the stunt seems to exist, but you can see Kreutz­mann tell the Belushi sto­ry in the inter­view at the top of the post and, just above, hear that night’s encore per­for­mance of “U.S. Blues.” Lis­ten close­ly at around the 1:50 mark and you’ll hear Belushi join in on the cho­rus. We’ll have to imag­ine the cart­wheels, but it prob­a­bly looked some­thing like this.

Hear the full Dead show from that night here. And if you’re crav­ing more musi­cal Belushi, check out his spas­mod­ic impres­sion of the late, great Joe Cock­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Young John Belushi Imi­tates Tru­man Capote & Per­forms Live on Sec­ond City Stage (1972)

The Night John Belushi Booked the Punk Band Fear on Sat­ur­day Night Live, And They Got Banned from the Show

Stream 36 Record­ings of Leg­endary Grate­ful Dead Con­certs Free Online (aka Dick’s Picks)

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

Punk rock has a robust tra­di­tion of gross-out, offen­sive comedy—one car­ried into the present by bands like Fat White Fam­i­ly and Diar­rhea Plan­et, who may not exist were it not for Fear, an unsta­ble L.A. band lead by an obnox­ious provo­ca­teur who goes by the name Lee Ving. Like fel­low L.A. punks the Germs, Cir­cle Jerks, and Black Flag, Fear gets cred­it for pio­neer­ing a Cal­i­for­nia punk sound known for ado­les­cent brat­ti­ness and a total lack of pre­ten­sion to any kind of art­ful­ness or cool.

Like many of their peers, Fear rose to promi­nence when Pene­lope Spheeris fea­tured them in her 1981 punk doc­u­men­tary The Decline of West­ern Civ­i­liza­tion, Part I. But before that sem­i­nal film’s release, Fear was dis­cov­ered by John Belushi, who first caught the band on a local L.A. music show called New Wave The­atre in 1980. He tracked down Ving, who tells Rolling Stone, “we had a cou­ple of beers and became fast friends.” At the time, Belushi was at work on his com­e­dy Neigh­bors with Dan Aykroyd and con­tract­ed the band to record a song for the film (his last before his death in 1982).

The film’s pro­duc­ers, Rolling Stone writes, “were appalled” by the song “and refused to use it,” so to make it up to Ving and com­pa­ny, Belushi pushed to have the band booked on Sat­ur­day Night Live on Hal­loween, 1981. The result­ing per­for­mance has become leg­endary for what hap­pened, and what didn’t, and led to Fear becom­ing, says Ving, “one of the esteemed mem­bers of the per­ma­nent­ly banned.” You can watch a clip above of the band play­ing “Beef Boloney” and “New York’s Alright if You Like Sax­o­phones” above (intro­duced by Don­ald Pleas­ance), and just below see Ving in a clip from a recent inter­view show dis­cussing the ill-fat­ed gig.

Belushi stage man­aged the band’s appear­ance, striv­ing for authen­tic­i­ty by bring­ing into the stu­dio what Ving calls “an actu­al punk rock audi­ence rather than just Mr. and Mrs. Mis­souri.” (That audi­ence includ­ed now-leg­ends Ian MacK­aye of Minor Threat and Fugazi, mem­bers of New York hard­core band the Cro-Mags, and Tesco Vee of the Meat­men.)  The result­ing mosh pit was noth­ing out of the ordi­nary for the typ­i­cal punk show. But, unsur­pris­ing­ly, “the real audi­ence at Sat­ur­day Night Live was scared to death,” says Ving, “They didn’t know what was hap­pen­ing with all the may­hem.”

Dur­ing the riotous pro­ceed­ings, SNL pro­duc­er Dick Eber­sol “got hit in the chest with a pump­kin,” some equip­ment was dam­aged, and dur­ing the final song, “Let’s Have a War,” an audi­ence mem­ber grabbed the micro­phone and yelled out “F*ck New York!” The pro­fan­i­ty freaked out NBC, who cut the broad­cast short and shelved the footage for sev­er­al years. The New York Post lat­er quot­ed an unnamed NBC tech­ni­cian as say­ing, “This was a life-threat­en­ing sit­u­a­tion. They went crazy. It’s amaz­ing no one got killed.” The paper also quot­ed a fig­ure of $400,000 for dam­ages to the Rock­e­feller Cen­ter set.

But as Bill­board report­ed two weeks lat­er, the fig­ure was total­ly erro­neous (sup­plied to the Post by Ving as a prac­ti­cal joke, as he says above). “We had to pay $40 in labor penal­ties. That was the extent of it,” said SNL spokesman Peter Hamil­ton. As for the shock to view­ers, it seems the net­work received “all of 12 com­plaints” after the broad­cast. Ving him­self found the over­re­ac­tion ridicu­lous, and NBC’s long shelv­ing of the footage—only recent­ly made avail­able in a trun­cat­ed version—a humor­less mis­take. “They seem to be… los­ing the sense of humor about the whole idea,” he told Rolling Stone, “I had a sense of humor at the whole idea of start­ing Fear. It was extreme­ly humor­ous to me, and I think John saw that humor.”

Indeed he did, but Belushi’s appre­ci­a­tion for Fear’s antics was ahead of its time. Now we can see, at least in part, what all the fuss was about. And we can also final­ly hear the long-shelved sin­gle for Neigh­bors that Belushi record­ed with the band.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Young John Belushi Imi­tates Tru­man Capote & Per­forms Live on Sec­ond City Stage (1972)

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live

5 Musi­cal Guests Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live: From Elvis Costel­lo to Frank Zap­pa

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