“Fake Bands” from Film and TV
Listen, making a list is hard. I even have a tough time putting together an itemized gathering of grocery needs, let alone ranking bands, songs, venues, movies or the like. So, this is going to be challenging because I am keeping it to five and I refuse to put them in order. This is my attempt to consolidate my top five “fake bands” from the movies and television. There are so many wonderful groups that have appeared in film over the years.
My first memory is over course Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes. Of course, you must remember this tight seven-piece ensemble from the Mos Eisley Cantina, as they played their swinging instrumentals for staggering patrons of the local watering hole. Not a Star Wars fan? Then never mind.
I loved bands like The Partridge Family, The Monkees, The Blues Brothers, and Josie and the Pussycats growing up, but sadly, none of these are going to chart in this article. There are also so banger animated bands that won’t cut it either like Homer Simpson’s Be Sharps, Boyz4Now from Bob’s Burgers, and Jem and The Holograms. And of course, I’ll leave off a few of your favorites for sure, but here are the ones that hit home for me, again, in no particular order. I even thought I should put them in a chronological directory or place them alphabetically to prove it. Deep breath.
The Commitments is the first fake band that helped shape my musical tastes for the better. The film, by the same name, released in 1991 and was a rite of passage for every kid growing up Gen X. It’s the film that introduced me to the likes of Wilson Pickett & Otis Redding. The movie follows a downtrodden group of Dubliners who form a soul band of all things. The lead character, Jimmy Rabbitte (played by actor and musician Robert Arkins) has grandiose aspirations of creating the ultimate soul group and succeeds in bringing together a bunch of super talented and eclectic characters. However, much like real bands, personalities clash, and the survival of the band is unlikely. The actor and musician, Andrew Strong, who played the lead singer is absolutely phenomenal. Since the movie’s release, Andrew has released numerous albums and has toured with the likes of The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Lenny Kravitz, and Bryan Adams. This film’s soundtrack is just incredible, and it is all performed by the actors in the cast.
My next mention will be Spinal Tap from the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap. If I left this off the non-linear list, my body would be thrown in the ‘you don’t know shit about movies and music’ ditch. I’m pretty sure that it exists.
Crank it up to 11 and enjoy Rob Reiner’s directorial debut as a camera crew follows Spinal Tap, the loudest band in England, as they’re making a comeback with a North American tour promoting their new album Smell the Glove. Marty DiBergi (Rob Reiner) sets out to make a documentary of the legendary rock band’s exploits on the road, featuring front men Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer), bearing witness to the highs and lows of what makes a musician into a true rock star.
This movie is by far one of the funniest movies ever made, and one of the most quoted by some of my closest friends. If you have never seen this flick then we can’t be friends and you should stop reading this now and find it streaming somewhere. Go Now! Also, Spinal Tap II is set to release at some point this year to in order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this iconic movie.
Next must be Stillwater, from Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous. The fictional band Stillwater was based seemingly based on an amalgamation of bands that the young Cameron Crowe toured with when he was a young writer for Rolling Stone. These bands are most notably Poco, Eagles, The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Sidenote, there was an actual band named Stillwater playing southern rock out of Georgia during the 1970s, they were not one of the bands the Almost Famous, Stillwater, was based on.
This is the movie that made me want to be a rock journalist. I wanted to pack up my tape recorder, journal and pens and hop on a bus with some dusty band of misfit dreamers and hit the road. I wanted to find my own Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) and drift away into the night, sleep through the day and rock and roll all night long.
Eddie and the Cruisers also makes it into the five, because, well, in 1983 I thought they were a real band. That’s a pretty great fake, which is also a them in the movie. Here’s the gist, Eddie and his Jersey based band, The Parkway Cruisers, were an up-and-coming group. They had an album and a few minor hits to their credit and the future seemed bright until Eddie was killed in a terrible car crash. Then, like twenty years later a British rock band turns their old songs into monumental mega hits. With this event comes a surge of interest in the surviving Cruisers and, in a rumored cache of tapes that Eddie allegedly made before he died. Meanwhile, a journalist tries to track down what really happened to the former frontman, and delves into the question, “is he even dead?” I don’t really want to give it away, even though the film came out 41 years ago.
There’s a few more I thought of while typing this out too like Hangman’s Joke (The Crow), Wyld Stallyns (Bill & Ted), Steel Dragon (Rockstar), Wayne and Garth, CB4, and I really wanted to put Daisy Jones and The Six on this page as well, but I said five and that leaves Citizen Dick rounding out the lot.
Citizen Dick was a fictional grunge band featured in, yet another Cameron Crowe film called Singles, that debuted in 1992. This was the music that spoke to me then and now, and I never imagined that one day I would live in Seattle and pass by the Singles apartment complex every now and again.
The movie encompasses cameos from a lot of the famous bands from the Seattle music scene of the time, such as Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and PNW favorite Tad Doyle (lead vocalist from legendary Seattle bands Tad and Hog Molly). Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, and Eddie Vedder, all members of Pearl Jam, have small parts as members of Matt Dillon’s character Cliff Poncier’s fictional band Citizen Dick. Their parts were filmed when Pearl Jam was still known as Mookie Blaylock. Late Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell has a cameo as the guy who comes out to listen to a car radio. He also appears in a later scene with his band performing the song “Birth Ritual”. The members of Alice in Chains also appear in the film as a bar band, playing the songs “It Ain’t Like That” and “Would?”. I love that Citizen Dick‘s has a song named “Touch Me, I’m Dick” which is a word play on the song “Touch Me, I’m Sick” by one of my personal fav’s Mudhoney. The movie focuses primarily on the lives and relationships of a group of people around my age at the time. Among them are waitress and aspiring architect Janet (Bridget Fonda), who finds herself obsessed with bad boy musician Cliff (Matt Dillon). Linda (Kyra Sedgwick) is an emotionally fragile environmentalist on the look-out for love and then there is Steve (Campbell Scott), a quintessential nice guy who works in the city’s department of transportation and is trying fix Seattle’s traffic problems. Rounding out this group of characters is Debbie Hunt (Sheila Kelly). Her character is appropriately named because she is always on the prowl for a man. As Steve puts it, “she consumes men instead of food”.
These are my five favorites, but what are yours? Convince me to change my mind our extend this list to 10 or 100.
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