I've got a fever and the only cure is MORE COWBELL

Yes, I am a Saturday Night Live fan. I've seen at least a bit of the show every Saturday night that I was near a television since 1991, which is still my favourite season. Every September, I struggle through getting to know a new cast, and I read the newspaper reviews that announce that SNL is horrible now and was much, much better five years earlier (it is almost as if they do not read five-year-old articles in their own papers).

I like Saturday Night Live because each week offers new possibilities. If the host's any good at all, the show will play to his strengths and will be unique: I know I'll see something I wouldn't have seen anywhere else. If the host's lousy, I simply go to bed. I can save time by figuring out who the host is in advance. If it's an athlete, I don't bother with the opening credits. I still don't understand why the bookers think athletes can do sketch comedy, but they've been booking these guys for years so obviously there's a reason.

Over the years, I've become less impressed by the musical guests. This is at least partly because I do not like boy bands, but it's also because the guests themselves seem uninterested in their own music. Barring an Ashlee-Simpson-style mishap (which was even more enjoyable live than on YouTube), I can look forward to three and a half minutes of some moron standing there mumbling into a microphone, playing the same three chords over and over, and looking bored. I blame this guy:



(Yes, that's Phil Collins playing drums.)

This sort of thing makes lousy musicians think they can pull off the same trick. They play a few notes over and over and think they've got a song. If the great guitarists can do it, why not everyone else?

And so last weekend we found ourselves watching Beck sing a song that was so boring I can't even remember it. The best part was that one member of his backup band appeared to be on crystal meth and was flailing around. At one point he pulled out a cowbell and started banging on it. Unfortunately -- and you aspiring musicians should write this down -- if you want to use cowbell in your live shows, you really should bang on it near a microphone. Otherwise, nobody will be able to hear it and all of your efforts will be for nothing.