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Underground > Temple >

Fake Bands

22:12 / 13.02.03

A solution in search of a problem:

Invent a band. Give it a name, a good logo, a history, overarching philosophies and/or political stance if applicable, some descriptions of their music (including factoids along the lines of "If you like Mogwai you will probably like [fake band name]"). Put a patch with its logo on your backpack; wear a t-shirt from their 1997 tour.

I don't know what this is for, though. I'm not even playing music these days.

Element of a personality rewrite? The new you has an allegiance to a precise type of music that just happens to not exist.

The lazy listener's/non-musician's route to the creation of new musical styles and meme-spreaders? The band hypersigilly appears and you discover them before they were cool (just before they "sell out", natch).

*shrug* A lump of conceptual playdoh for y'all to do with as you will...

05:49 / 14.02.03

That's a great idea. As soon as I have soem time and some money, I am doing this. I'll post the results. This should be quite fun. Great idea.

08:51 / 14.02.03

Bill Drummond explores this in his excellent semi-autobiographical book, 45. The project involved forming a variety of bands from session musicians in Helsinki, with fictitious names and histories. This was to record a soundtrack to his book, Bad Wisdom. British record labels did not understand the concept, and wanted to sign the individual bands that comprised the compilation. If he is to be believed, the enterprised culminated in pressing the material onto limited edition 45s, which were then distributed around the world from Helsinki. Drummond saw this as giving back to the pop ephemera from which he has drawn so much inspiration.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

09:12 / 14.02.03

I actually did this once, though not for magickal reasons (but it's sounding tempting to do it again with more intent...)

We had an NME interview booked, with a time and everything. It was only when it came to us faxing them our press pack, which just consisted of some hastily-taken photos of fucked people with guitars, rather than the full-on camp punk apocalypse our "press agent" had promised, that they realised we were taking the piss. At which point we embarrassedly cancelled the two bookings we had as well.

But it did make me think on the whole "imagineering" thing... if consensus reality is partially defined by press coverage, and if you knowingly (without collusion) invent stuff that is taken on board... if you, ten years down the line, become a legendary band, without ever having existed...? Is that a change in the macrocosm? If you get in the collective memory? Whoah, if someone invoked the spirit of this band in some kind of music-related working?

I suppose it's how legends and godforms work, really.

Must think more.

14:50 / 14.02.03

Like This is Spinal Tap?

15:20 / 14.02.03

Did this some time ago. And there was a Creation thread along similar lines.

With me, Soldier's Joy have become a sort of thought-experiment, a filter through which I listen to music: when I've got a CD on in the car, I automatically start to arrange it for SJ's performance style and instrumentation—transpose that guitar line to the fiddle, add the mandolin obligato here, give Ricky the harmony and Kaz the high melody there...

I'm not sure what magickal purpose it serves, if any. Maybe I'm subconsciously trying to make them real. Tulpas. Seven people, and all of them me.

15:52 / 14.02.03

Thanks, Jack--I completely missed that the first time around.

Whoah, if someone invoked the spirit of this band in some kind of music-related working?

Shades of invoking John Lennon with ceremonial magic techniques... Hm. What if you started calling up the spirits of great blues musicians who never lived? The 1870s crackpot inventor of the Electro-Guitar?

Come to think of it, why stop with musicians? Why not have a chat with Gustav Mahler's lost nursery rhymes?

16:01 / 14.02.03

I love making up bands - I've got loads.

Never considered involving magickal stuff tho, and never seriously considered actually bringing fictional bands across into the sphere of reality, so to speak. I do have stickers and a T-shirt featuring The Teenage Mice, but that's as far as it's gone.

Along slightly different lines:
a housemate of mine has got into the habit of making posters for 'dream gigs' featuring highly unlikely line-ups of real groups (one featuring the MC5, Slint, Napalm Death and Cat Power currently adorns our hallway). I'm all for putting times and places on the posters and sticking them around town and seeing who turns up and what they do upon discovering there's nothing going on, but, er, he somewhat sensibly decided that wasn't a good idea.

oh, and

The 1870s crackpot inventor of the Electro-Guitar?

Dude - Young Einstein!

00:11 / 16.02.03

*smacks forehead* DUH, I knew that!

01:52 / 16.02.03

Awe man, hahahah, me and my friends did this for a while three years ago... none of us can play a damned thing but we started a band called the Super Fantastics and we had a zine and stickers and flyers for fake shows. We took a bunch of sweaty pics with instruments, which we didn't even own, and photoshopped them onto pics of empty stages (between bands) so it looked like we were playing to big rowdy crowds. Everyone around here knew about the SF and everyone was dying to see us play. We were gonna be the next Blink 182 and once a guy from New Found Glory called us to see if we wanted to open for them at some skatepark, but we took a shit and told them we broke up the band.

If my friend can get the old logo online I'll post it.