So Stephen Colbert has been flogging (for weeks) his big "guitar shred-off" with the guitarist from the Decemberists, Mr Funk. The entire show tonite was built around it. They had a panel of judges in cluding someone from the NYT and NY governor-elect Eliot Spitzer, and Henry f--ing Kissinger, fer chrissakes, did the let-the-shredding-begin honors.
Anyway, Funk does his solo, and then Colbert steps up and promptly "cuts his finger" and can't continue, and he pleads for someone to sub for him. And out steps... Peter Frampton.
But the big surprise or me was when Rick Neilsen of Cheap Trick came out at the end to play the Colbert Report theme music, which, I was astounded to learn, he wrote. (Astounded because it's always sounded to me like a clone of the Daily Show theme music, which was written by They Might Be Giants.)