If ever a televised music program was ripe for a digital-media anthology, it’s the wonderful SNUB TV. Originally a segment within the USA cable network’s storied Night Flight from 1987-88, SNUB TV soon became a show in its own right on BBC2, helmed by journalist Brenda Kelly and director Peter Fowler. Its existence in that form, from early 1989 to mid 1991, falls almost exactly in the gap between the end of the era in UK pop dominated by the likes of the Smiths and Echo and the Bunnymen, and the ascendancy of Britpop. Accordingly, it became a go-to for coverage of the Madchester/baggy scene and the early stirrings of shoegaze. Segments featuring Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, My Bloody Valentine, Ultra Vivid Scene, Ride, the Darkside, Spirea X, and Stone Roses are on YouTube, and they show a program committed to intelligent coverage, one that took the aesthetic merit of new movements as a given, without condescension. They even jettisoned presenters. There were a couple of VHS anthologies released in the early ‘90s (which is the only way I knew about its continued existence post-Night Flight), but they’ve been out of print about as long as the show’s been off the air. A DVD/Blu-ray set is desperately overdue.

SNUB TV’s strengths weren’t limited to showcasing the new noise. Kelly and Fowler did inspired features on established independents from the early punk and hardcore scenes, as well. This Butthole Surfers segment rivals any of the band’s interviews for sheer weirdness, gives us a peek at the group in the studio, and contains rare live footage of the demented downer-psych freakout “Jimi,” from the Hairway to Steven LP.
 

 
After the jump, The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, Pere Ubu’s David Thomas, Wire, and Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye…