10 FAKE BANDS WE WISH WERE REAL

There’s nothing better than a great music movie. But it’s been a while, hasn’t it? With Bohemian Rhapsody last year and now Rocketman it seems as if we’ve moved on full-steam ahead to the rock biopic. [Next, I think we’re gonna need a Fleetwood Mac one -- lies, sex, betrayal, staying in bands with cheating exes and writing songs about them behind their back-- that’s a Lifetime original movie made on the grandest scale, tell you what]. Sure, they win Oscars, give actors the performance of a lifetime, and are shot and edited like the finest MTV music videos these songs never got the chance to have, but our question is: where are the new tunes? It seems like all we’re getting from the movies is recycled versions of songs that we’ve been hearing for the past thirty years. I’m looking at you, Lion King. If “Hakuna Matata” doesn’t have Seth Rogen coughing out bong-rips mid-song, consider us disappointed. I’m honestly petrified to even bring the Will Smith & DJ Khaled rap from Aladdin to your attention. We should bury that one so deep underground that it’s never found again.

I guess what I’m saying is that movie theatres can shove it. With their $15 popcorn and stupid MoviePass that doesn’t work anymore. They can keep their Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Spiderman: Far From Homes, while we curl up with some old familiar favorites and jam out to the songs from the bands that we know and love but don’t actually exist. 

I don’t know if we actually wish these bands we real or we just really love a great music movie. Can’t decide. It’s perhaps more interesting to see fictionalized art come to life in front of our very eyes rather than see these bands fade out into disappointing obscurity like so many of their real life counterparts.  So while it’s fun to say “We Wish [They] Were Real,” we actually just wish they had sequels, with more music that we can treasure just as much as the originals.  Hey Hollywood, you listening?  Give up the Biopic and start focusing on sequels.  Oh, you already do that too?  Well, nevermind then.

1: The Carrie Nations from the Beyond The Valley of The Dolls

Really, I just want to end up at the kind of party that The Carrie Nations would perform at. An acid-soaked hippie romp in the Hollywood hills where some female-drive psych rock would just start an impromptu performance that would change the lives of everybody in the room. That kind of magic just doesn’t happen anymore, Charles Manson and co. made sure of that. Maybe the Carrie Nations will show up for a cameo in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon in Hollywood. That might help scratch the itch a bit. Honestly though, where the hell are my lady-fronted psych bands? I can’t keep listening to Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” on repeat, can I?  Okay, sure, yes I can.  Or I can just get down with Warpaint.

2: Sex Bob-Omb from Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Sex Bob-Omb are the kind of fuzzed out scuzzy indie garage that took off majorly after the film dropped in 2010. I’m not saying that acts like Jay Reatard (RIP) and Ty Segall were directly influenced by the Toronto three-piece, but I am saying that if they can defeat Crash & The Boys and the Katayanagi Twins at the battle of the bands, they’re probably also going to be playing Coachella for six out of the next nine years (like Segall).

3: CB4 from CB4

I mean we have “No Sex in the Champagne Room,” but a Chris Rock rap album is truly what the comedy-music industry world is missing.  CB4 would have been the pioneers of funny rap.  Now we don’t even know who to attribute it to?  Is it Eminem’s “My Name Is” or The Lonely Island’s “Lazy Sunday”?  Comedy-Rap historians know that Little Dicky is derivative, but of who?

4: Crucial Taunt from Wayne's World

Cassandra is a babe, schwing. She wails on guitar, has the voice of an angel that’s got a little devil in her too, and can’t forget to mention the stage presence of a gd superstar.  Sure, she’s made some bad career moves like working with superproducer Bobby Cahn, but she definitely comes through in the end and makes up for it with a set at Waynestock that skyrockets her into the stratosphere.  Maybe now we’d see her on a washed up hair metal tour across state fairs, but for those five glorious years her poster would be up on every boy’s wall aged 8-18.  While the true story might end up more like “the sad ending” or the “Thelma & Louise ending,” we can hold out hope for Crucial Taunt to have left behind a legacy of awesomeness.

5: Stillwater from Almost Famous

Stillwater were just cool, man. They’re likely to have burned out and faded away, just like in the film, but they’d be that awesome band that only you seem to REALLY know about (which we all know is internet (and first-date) gold (JK)). Stillwater would be the equivalent of listening to Blind Melon’s greatest hits and realizing they’re way more than that bee-girl video. Seriously, if I get anything out of this article it would be that more people realize the value of Blind Melon’s entire catalogue. They were genuinely dope. Wait, what band was I supposed to be talking about again?

6: Spinal Tap from This Is Spinal Tap

Spinal Tap have a fucked up story. They’ve had multiple drummers die in strange circumstances, more embarrassing shows than that really bad television show you love to hate, and as many career peaks and valleys as the Andes Mountains. I want Spinal Tap to exist in real life, just so we’d be able to get the rock doc or biopic about them.  Sure Spinal Tap is a great film in itself, but imagining the big Hollywood version has me giddier than Freddy Mercury’s #1 fan during the LiveAid footage at the end of Bohemian Rhapsody. Unfortunately, their story is too damn funny to be real. But, what if it was?  We’d be laughing harder than any other band in the history of time. It would be like Nickelback. 

7: Wyld Stallyns from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey

This one, we’re getting. Bill and Ted 3 is coming in 2020 and the movie, set nearly twenty years after the last one, is looking like it’s going to explore why the hell Wyld Stallyns haven’t already saved the world.  Last time we saw Bill S. Preston Esquire and Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan, they hardly knew how to play their instruments, but the promise of a Utopian Society led by their music had come from the future telling them they would one day be not only great, but really really great. I could take this in real life. With all the strife in our world right now, the message of these films deep down is that the power of music will bring us all together. Nothing wrong in that. I mean we (you, I, readers of WATG) already know that, but do the powers that be?  We just need these two guys to put out their cover of KISS’ cover of Argent’s “God Gave Rock & Roll To You” to make something happen.

8: Sexual Chocolate from Coming To America

Honestly, too many artists hide behind fake emotions and ironic hooks that it’s endearing to see someone like Randy Watson put it all out on the line like this. Sure, he doesn’t have the most talent or presence or quality songs, but he can croon about his feelings with the best of them.  Would Sexual Chocolate be the modern-day equivalent of the Smiths, speaking to a whole new generation of the lost and lonely? Who’s to say? 

9: The Lone Rangers from Airheads

I can’t think of a single band that is as badass as they pretend to be. If real, The Lone Rangers might have the single greatest story in rock and roll history. Want to be a tough guy, macho man? Then put your money where your mouth is and hold a radio station for ransom until they play your goddamn song. Slayer, Anthrax, Pantera wouldn’t have shit on the Lone Rangers.   

10: Sparkle Motion from Donnie Darko

Okay, so Sparkle Motion are dancers and not singer-songwriter-dancer-multi-hyphenates, but this does have us thinking… With the KIDZ BOP kids touring the nation and having just seen BLACKPINK at Coachella, we’re connecting the dots into something really unique here. What if there was a girl-group pop band led by little children? Is that child abuse or brilliant? Both? I guess the question is: what if the Backstreet Boys were actually… boys?  Hmmm...

BONUS: Marty McFly’s band (The Pinheads) from Back to the Future

This one’s a bonus jam, because they were hardly a real band in the film. We all know Marty can rip, as he basically butterfly-effected the past-future-present timeline by plagiarizing “Johnny B. Goode” and essentially making Chuck Berry a song thief in his own right, but outside of a 30-second performance at the Hill Valley High School talent show auditions we don’t get to see them play anything substantial. It’s unlikely (without time travel, hell even with it) that the Pinheads would have ever made it out of their Hill Valley garages. They are like your Dad’s band that never amounted to anything, but “really ripped in their time,” and sounded suspiciously like Huey Lewis.

From deep within the murky depths of the Los Angeles River emerged a creature: 50% raver, 50% comedian, 10% Robotcop. Kurt Kroeber doesn’t own a dog, operates Soundbleed (the world’s only dance party comedy talk show rave), and is down to party with you. Come up some time and say “Hey dude!” But definitely make sure to casually drop the secret Illuminati password.