Search for Violent Femmes/Hawaiian Shirt Spongebob Promo/Live Action Band Sings the theme song, and "Pear band" sings spongebob theme song.

Hello and welcome to the search for lost media. It's been quite a while since I did one of these, but I recently found myself as part of a search for a spongebob promo that I want to tell my story about and bring some attention to. It all started with an LSuperSonicQ video where he discussed lost media that remains unidentified where the video covered a spongebob promo where a rock/punk/emo band sang the spongebob theme song and a pear was somehow involved.

Being a Nickelodeon kid who watched the channel constantly, this sounded very similar to a promo I saw every night. I vividly remember a band playing the spongebob theme song on the cartoon that lead into the airing at 8PM. I remember it was 8PM because it was right before my bedtime and the last thing I'd watch before going to bed was a live action band playing the spongebob theme song in a kind of rock and roll style during the credits of the show before saying "coming up next." I wasn't quite sure about "pears being involved," but I knew this promo had multiple variations so maybe a pear was involved.

Since I hadn't signed up for the LMW forum and needed to share my details, I started a thread on the LMW discord giving all the details I remembered. I remembered "the band was not super hard core" (so it wouldn't scare parents), and that it played every night at 8PM during the credits. Once I got accepted into the LMW forum I posted my details and the leads from another discord user to the forum thread. As it would turn out, this was actually a completely different promo set from like 5 years prior. I'll cover the search for pear promo thus far (since it's still open at the time of writing), but first I'll cover my search for "the Hawaiian Shirt band sings the theme song during the credits of the show before 8PM."

First, after giving all my memories, LSuperSonicQ showed a screen shot from this promo, SpongeBob SquarePants Weeknights (Nickelodeon Promo) 2001 (HD). This was the "hawaiian shirt spongebob promo" that is hard to search because this is the only upload and doesn't include any data about the guys who where singing or that they were wearing Hawaiian Shirts. Because I was a kid, I had a bad perspective on "what was hard core" and what wasn't, and I remember them going harder than this, but whatever. The problem with this though, is that there were other variants of this band singing the Spongebob Squarepants theme song, specifically playing it in full that played at 7:59 PM on weeknights during the credits of the previous show. And as far as I know, those variants were still lost.

I brought this up on the forum and some other users were able to help me find the other variations over on discord. First, there was someone who found the DVD version of "the Hawaiian shirt band" singing the theme song in full (from the DVD "Nautical Nonsense and Sponge Buddies"). What was helpful here is that it gave me a band name, The Violent Femmes from "Violent Femmes Sing Spongebob." It was "the promo I remembered" but it wasn't "the exact promo" I remember. This version ended with "on Nickelodeon" instead of "coming us next."

At this point I'm like "OK cool, it's almost all found, but there's still one variant that is still not found," and that is the "coming up next" variant that played during the credits of the cartoon that aired before Spongebob at 8PM. Well, then we got a hero from the discord that found "Nickelodeon Split Screen Credits (September 28, 2001)," which was the credits for Rugrats that aired at 7:30 PM before Spongebob at 8PM that had the "coming up next" variant. Now as far as I know, all the "spongebob weeknights at 8PM" promos with the Violent Femmes/Hawaiian Shirt band have been found.

So what made this minor search so hard and why is it an example of why this continued search for "the pear band" is going to be so hard? Well look at the titles and descriptions of the videos. The first "2001 promo" is just "Sponge Bob Week Nights promo" without any description. Nothing about "theme song variant" or "violent femmes" or "spongebob at 8PM." If LSSQ didn't put the screen shot of the upload in his video I would be saying "this is the pear thing." Then with the other variants, that required someone to know "this is the violent femmes," and then search through random archive videos until finding "Nickelodeon split screen credits" that did say "violent femmes" in the description but not all the details like "Hawaiian shirt." Then as the search went on there was a little tangent about "screamo heavy metal" covers which prompted me to tell a story about how in highschool a friend played a death metal cover of the spongebob theme on his ipod that started out normal until the captain faded with "oooooohhhhhh" with what I think was "spongebob squarepants" sounding like "wait for it" until it transitioned back into spongebob playing the nose piccolo. A forum user f/ound this but it wasn't the version I remember. The search isn't for this cover (my guess is this was "just one of many death metal covers released to youtube and/or myspace back in 2010" and not necessarily worth searching for), but it just is to say just how hard the search will be.

So now for "the pear band promo" search. I recommend going to the LMW forum thread for all details and updates, but here are the various leads and details that we have as of 5/19/25.

• It seems to have been from sometime in 2006 to 2012
• It was not a segment on Truth or Square (mainly the P!nk "we got scurvy" song)
• It might have been Big Time Rush or Naked Brothers Band since they were "the nickelodeon bands" (though that seems to have been thoroughly searched and nothing)
• Might have been a segment in "nick extra"
• There was like a painting of a pear in it (or somehow a pear was involved)
• Something about plaid being a major element
• The band probably wasn't My Chemical Romance but the band was similar
• Possible cross over with "the movie band" from the 2009 Nickelodeon movie "Spectacular!" (particularly "Spectacular presents the president's day marathon").
• Possible band "Less Than Jake," but the band confirmed it wasn't them
• It maybe aired on MTV (another viacom network that sometimes aired spongebob).
• Doesn't seem to be "MTV video mods" (definitely not "Spongebob Sings All the Small Things" from video mods)
• There was a pear collaboration with spongebob at one point, so it probably exists

The strongest lead now is the emo band "Honor Society;" they had a partnership with USA Pears and played for the Kids Choice Awards in 2009. The wiki is looking into trying to contact someone in the band, and that's where we stand now. If anyone has more details or leads, please add them to the forum or discord. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and pip pip cheerio sianara goodbye.

OK, small update on a development. One of the leads was a band called The Evaporators, they worked with Nickelodeon making music for Catelyn's Way, had an album with pear theming, and have a style that would lend itself to "strange covers of a cartoon theme song." One of the band members has an active online presence under the alias nardwuar and has a website straight out of the 90s. This is the email I sent him through his contact page.

Dear Nardwuar of The Evaporators,

My name is pokematic, I'm a contributor to the lost media wiki and your band The Evaporators has come up as a potential lead for a lost television bumper of "a live action band singing the spongebob squarepants theme song that for some reason has a picture of a pear on screen." Here's our full forum thread for reference. https://forums.lostmediawiki.com/thread/14410/spongebob-intro-pear-live-action Did The Evaporators by chance do a promo for nickelodeon singing the spongebob squarepants theme song against a green screen? If so, do you have any information on where we might be able to find it?

Thank-you for your time.

Sincerely, Pokematic.

PS, I love the fact that your website is still "90s HTML aesthetic." I feel like a kid again exploring the early internet.

This was the reply I got.

Hullo Pokematic !

Thanks for the note and asking !

Appreciate the interest !

No, never did that.

Thanks again !

Doot doola doot doo ...

Nardwuar 

ps. Nardwuar.com has been going since, gulp, 1996 !

I don't know the nardwuar persona at all, but I'm guessing he responded in character and within a couple hours. Nardwuar, you're an internet treasure. Also, in the forum this old Burger King ad came up as a dead lead, but oh man was this a trip down memory lane for a very weird time.