At the Drive-In – One Armed Scissor (Later Archive 2000)

This video:
Watch At the Drive-In perform One Armed Scissor back in 2000.
From the BBC's flagship music show Later... with Jools Holland.

[sirtoby]

The Stages of Omar:
1. Accidentally knocks guitar string out of tune in the first second of the song
2. Tries to pass it off as crazy psychedelic guitar madness
3. Attempts to fix it mid-chorus/realizes there's not enough time
4. Does best to play around it/more psychedelic guitar madness
5. Cuts his losses and yeets his guitar
6. TAMBOURINE TIME!!!

[CosmicWaltz]

This is my favorite live performance. You have to realize, this was around the time that Hit Me Baby was the #1 song, and Robbie Williams was the second guest on this episode. The joy I get imagining what the audience and producers must have thought when they uncorked this bottle of crazy is beautiful.

[liammcnicholas]

This is what remembering a song by memory feels like

[flightgravity]

I recall an interview with Omar where he said there was a point in ATDI where he started to hate the guitar. This may have been that point in time.

[johnmeininger]

Thank goodness Omar remembered his emergency tambourine.

[michaelgraham]

Almost 21 years later and this album is still next level stuff

[drpibisback]

I like how Omar tried to bring it back a little during the first chorus, only to realize how fucked the tuning was at that point and just descending back into noise. I've heard a lot about how wild this performance was but could never find a video, it didn't disappoint.

[stephenmorton]

The drummer and bass player are the only ones actually playing "one armed scissor"😂😂😂

[octavechords]

Jim Ward saved the presentation since Omar and Cedric decided to go nuts hahah

[orcgoat]

The performance that launched a thousand new bands.

[nelldogcf]

This was taken off YouTube for so long, glad to see it back incredible performance.

[dominicparker-tcsb]

This is the single most important punk rock band of the last 25 years, people said of the velvet underground 'not many people bought the LP but everyone who did started a band'. This was the case for ATDI when I was a 16 year old kid I the early 2000s. One day everyone listened to nu metal and didn't think they were good enough to be in a band, the next they realised it didn't matter and started their own. Honestly every single person in my fairly large friend group after they saw this formed a band, me included. After I heard them I cut my hair, changed my clothing style, started reading different books and changed the way I played guitar. Everyone went from bar chords to dowtuned single note shit to hard strumming crazy jazz chords in disjointed timings really fast over night. It was more I the spirit of the barchird grunge and punk we grew up on with a bigger weight to it like the metal but far far more experimental than anything we knew, it was the best of everything we'd heard. Even people who weren't even that into them formed bands cause they made everything feel possible again. We all sounded like them a bit too! The nirvana of my generation for sure.

[MVB]

If I had a dollar for everytime I’ve shredded my voice screaming along to this album. Truly one of the greatest albums ever made.

[Swashbucklerx]

This looks ridiculously smooth for 2000

And man were they ahead of their time here.

[peterhood]

I'll never forget how watching this at the time made me feel. As a fourteen year old, this was my Elvis on the Mitlon Berle Show or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan moment, it changed EVERYTHING.

[schnaarbar]

So this is what happens when half the band gives up playing the song and just goes insane. Very impressive

[kevburke]

I was in a cover band and we ended the set with this song and tried to recreate the energy from this performance and they were honestly some of the best nights of my life.

[birdablaze]

I love Jim Wards voice so much. I’m a huge Sparta fan and I definitely pick up on his energy from this insane performance

[ElementPaul]

Gotta love Omar’s guitar going out of tune pretty much immediately and later giving up with it completely to pick up a tambourine

[eldiablo]

Omar's guitar is non-operational lol