Back a couple decades ago, when a band or singer appeared on Sat. Night Live it could make a career for them. They had some big stars, but they also had local groups and fairly unknown singers who used SNL for a big step up.
Do the music acts still get a big jump? Do they still show talented little known singers?
I wonder because I am old and don’t know who almost all the acts are.
Back in the “original cast” days, whoever booked the musical talent was a blues and blues-rock snob. Some fairly avant-garde new wave acts snuck in accidentally (like Talking Heads and Devo), usually over Dan Aykroyd’s objections. Eventually, they let the house band signify for the blues snobs and booked whoever was popular with the kids that month. This really went off the rails during the Doumanian/Ebersol years (Heaven 17? Frankie Goes to Hollywood?), and appearing on the show today is as much an establishment hallmark as a cover appearance on Rolling Stone (and a much bigger deal than a Grammy).
Not sure who some of the acts are anymore? It’s called “advancing age.” Get used to it.
Or not. A folk trio called The Roches appeared as the musical guest some time in 1979. That appearance inspired one of their later songs, Big Nuthin’.
A google search of “Roches big nuthin Saturday night live” returns a youtube vid, a few pages from roches.com, a thread from the SDMB archives, and then wikipedia.