While many remember Anthrax’s guest turn on the early era FOX sitcom Married With Children, that’s not the only time they’ve appeared on a major network sitcom. They also served up some awkward laughs on NBC’s ’90s sitcom Newsradio.
In the 1995 episode “Negotiation,” after one her co-workers gets a promotion, producer/reporter Lisa Miller (Maura Tierney) attempts to leverage the station by revealing she’s got an audition for MTV News. But Lisa’s on-off boyfriend and co-worker Dave Nelson (Dave Foley) laughs off her threat, feeling certain that she’s not a regular viewer of the network.
That leads us to one of the most cringeworthy interviews, as Lisa is tasked with interviewing the members of Anthrax for the music video giant (as they still were in 1995). Scott Ian, Frank Bello and the band’s vocalist at the time, John Bush, all take part in the guest cameo, where they field Lisa’s increasingly fumbled questions.
She starts by asking Bush about the band’s guitar work on the new album, not realizing he’s the singer. When Ian chimes in that some of the best guitar work on their album (which would have been Stomp 442) came from Dimebag Darrell, Lisa mistakenly identifies him as being from “Pandera.” She then proceeds to misidentify the band as grunge, then guesses punk and industrial only to be corrected again by the group.
While the band luckily didn’t need Lisa’s interview on the show to sell albums, the Newsradio guest turn was a nice plug for their 1995 release, Stomp 442, which yielded the songs “Fueled” and “Nothing.” And, as Ian stated, Dimebag Darrell did lend a hand on guitar for the songs “Kingsize” and “Riding Shotgun.” The album hit No. 47 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart.
Newsradio ran from 1995-1999 on NBC, starring Tierney, Foley, Stephen Root, Phil Hartmann, Andy Dick, Joe Rogan, Vicki Lewis and Khandi Alexander. Watch the Anthrax cameo below.
Anthrax’s John Bush, Scott Ian and Frank Bello Guest on NBC’s Newsradio
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