Jimmy Fallon faces a nightly challenge of trying to turn The Tonight Show into a hip Buzzfeed kind of internet thing, and the “Do Not Play” segment is when he just gives up and shows you some funny album covers. (At least COED tries to liven things up by collecting sexy album covers, right? Weird Christmas albums, too.)
Anyway, “Do Not Play” is just Fallon holding up funny old album covers and making a snide comment in the time-honored internet tradition. Nothing wrong with that. There’s a reason that it’s a popular segment. We’re still thinking that same music geek on the Tonight Show staff (possibly Steve Higgins himself) had to watch one of his own LPs get ridiculed last night.
A lot of guys bought The Orchids’ self-titled LP that came out in 1980 on the MCA label. That’s because it was the latest all-girl project from weird musical mastermind Kim Fowley (RIP just recently, damn it.) We guess they looked kind of dopey, and Kim was in the midst of playing around with mixing lite new-wave sounds with disco, so the album isn’t any kind of real classic, but it’s no disaster, either.
The clip played last night wasn’t typical of the LP, either. Fallon looks kind of square wincing at the rocking sounds, though. Kind of weird that’s how The Orchids end up on The Tonight Show, but that’s showbiz. And the rest of the segment is fun, too, when you get past how it feels like Jimmy Fallon is reading you something off his iPhone…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGODYdc4MJM]
And here’s a song by The Orchids. We’re not saying that they were as good as The Runaways, or even The Go-Go’s–but not so bad. They seem like nice girls, too…
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AgXX3S0BVk]