Musical Guests on The Young Ones, Ranked
No correspondence will be entered into
Motorhead, “Ace of Spades, S2 E1, “Bambi”. I mean…fucking OBVIOUSLY.
Ken Bishop’s Nice Twelve, “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, S2 E2, “Cash”. Supergroup, including Jools Holland, Stewart Copeland, Chris Difford, and a bunch of others, doing a swinging Dylan cover. Awesome.
Madness, “House of Fun”, S1 E3, “Boring”. Madness was so cool they were on The Young Ones twice - both times brilliant - but this was the best one. Also Suggs threatens to smash Rick’s face in.
Dexys Midnight Runners, “Jackie Wilson Said”, S1 E4, “Bomb”. No they were NOT a one-hit wonder.
The Damned, “Video Nasty”, S2 E3, “Nasty”. It’s not that great a song, but it’s still The Damned.
Madness, “Our House”, S2 E5, “Sick”. “I hope Mike hurries back with the cure!” “No Neil, it’s Madness this week”. This is the other cool Madness appearance.
Nine Below Zero, “Eleven Plus Eleven”, S1 E1, “Demolition. I have no idea who these guys are or were, but the song is pretty good. I am sure they’ll go far.
Amazulu, “Moonlight Romance”, S2 E4, “Time”. This is a boring song by a boring band, but there was much much worse on the show: see below.
Radical Posture, “Doctor Martens”, S1 E2, “Oil”. This is basically crap, but as Radical Posture are just the backing band for his novelty song it gets a small amount of credit for at least not being a serious attempt at a good song.
Lion Tamer and Lions, S1 E6, “Flood”. This isn’t actually a musical guest, it’s just a lion tamer and some lions. But this episode didn’t have a musical guest, so I guess this will have to do. The last two on this list are so bad that the lions are a better musical guest than they are.
John Otway, “Body Talk”, S2 E2, “Summer Holiday”. I don’t know what this is. It’s a guy doing a thing. It’s weird.
Rip Rig and Panic, “You’re My Kind of Climate”, S1 E5, “Interesting”. This is why people wake up in a cold sweat after having nightmares that they’re back in the early Eighties. Fuck this band and everyone involved in allowing them out in public.