While its great grandson YouTube may have stolen the thunder, local access cable television is still out there. Thanks to people like artist/jazz musician Mark Kostabi, it’s still going strong. Produced for the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, Kostabi’s show Title This “is a game show where celebrities compete to title Kostabi paintings for cash awards”. A panel of three contestants – like film director Michel Gondry or maybe Spin magazine founder Bob Guccione Jr. — are shown a Kostabi painting, then they try to name it and throw out ideas like “Sourpuss Tantrum” or “Condoleezza Rides”.

If the hipster audience likes their title and votes “yes”, the winning celeb gets a crisp $20 bill and the painting is named. It’ll help if you know a little something about the visual arts, since art critics and fellow painters are frequent guests, but the latest Title This is a good example of how important music is to the show. A Kostabi piano performance provides the opening theme and one of the panelists is former Interview magazine music critic Glenn O’Brien. There’s also a performance from Tony Middleton, member of the doo-wop group the Willows who had a hit in 1956 with “Church Bells May Ring”. The show ends with a performance from the totally unrelated Willowz, who are in this case the garage punkers that often work with producer Paul Kostabi, Mark’s brother. Previous guests from the world of music include Sex Pistol Glen Matlock, Blue Oyster Cult drummer Albert Bouchard, Village People cowboy Randy Jones, and avant jazz legend Ornette Coleman who performed a duet with Kostabi on the great The Earth Doesn’t Fall episode. The show began life as Name That Painting, and was briefly called Paint That Naming before Title This was settled upon in order to keep the lawyers at Name That Tune happy. Kostabi’s website archives it all, making hours of surreal local access madness available for clicking.

For a taste, here’s the Willowz bringing down the house: