Watch the Muppets House Band Cover Beatles and the Band at Outside Lands Festival
Attendees at this year's Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park got to witness Muppet history in the making: The felt friends' house band, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, were on the bill delivering their first-ever live performance.
You can watch the entire show above, which captures a set list that included band theme song "Can You Picture That?" as well as covers of songs originally performed by the Mowglis ("San Francisco"), Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros ("Home") and the Band ("Ophelia") — rounded out with a show-closing rendition of the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends."
The Electric Mayhem's official live debut comes five years after an aborted attempt to put together a new album and tour for the "band," with My Morning Jacket slated to provide the music in the studio and onstage. Unfortunately, cost concerns convinced the Disney company to pull the plug before the project got too far along.
"It's so sad," My Morning Jacket drummer Patrick Hallahan told MTV. "They were going to release an Electric Mayhem album, and they wanted us to be the band, and then we would go on tour, and they would have all these animatronic Muppets, and we would, like, be behind the stage playing. As much as I love Disney's history, cutting that project — and it doesn't have to be us, it could've been any band — that visual would've been amazing."
Check out the band's take on "With a Little Help From My Friends" and "Ophelia" below — and don't miss Muppets drummer Animal's interview with Pitchfork, in which he reveals that even though the music industry has changed a great deal since the Mayhem made their debut in 1975, his experience as a rock star remains the same: "Break things! Women! Get paid!"
Watch Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem Play 'With a Little Help From My Friends'
Watch Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem Play 'Ophelia'
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