I’ve been playing music since I was fifteen and if there’s one thing I’ve learned besides drummers never get the chicks, it’s that all band names suck. Really, even the best ones will have their members bored and annoyed by the moniker within a year. Very few hold up. Hint: if your band name is a complete sentence, delete your MySpace page and pack it in.
Coming up with a name is a big deal though and I once had a list of potential band names in high school that was over 30 pages long! A lot of those were inspired by some of the ridiculous bands that popped up on TV through the years.
We’re talking fictional groups, not real ones playing themselves. This goes way beyond The Monkees or The Partridge Family. This is about your everyday character deciding he/she is going to back the car out of the garage and start a band. Some shows have a lot of fakers to print novelty tour shirts for; Full House, The Simpsons, Family Guy all had (have) a ton of these groups as did The Drew Carey Show, Married With Children, and for some reason a fist full showed up on Roseanne!
You basically get two naming categories: sounds like they could be real and twist something familiar into a name.
Both are meant to be funny, but even when writers try and be serious, it comes out laughable. For example “Andromeda” on Buck Rogers or “Dimension” from Freaks and Geeks. Then there was the name “Mayhem” which popped up on both Quincy M.D. and Moesha. Somehow I doubt either group lived up to the connotation of their namesake!
“The Electric Shoes” from The Wonder Years was always a personal favorite as was G.I. Joe‘s nefarious Cobra band, “Cold Slither.” Lost made “driveSHAFT” an intricate part of Charlie’s history but the best (definitely longest) name I came across is “Doctor Funke’s 100% Natural Good Time Family Based Solution” from Arrested Development.
We might all agree the funniest are the sound-a-like variety. The Simpsons are kings here with groups like the “Be-Sharps,” but there’s been a lot of great spoofs across the schedule. Here’s a few of my favs:
- “Shower of Power” – The White Shadow
- “Lyzzard Skyzzard” – Dinosaurs
- “Sir Loin” – Aqua Teen Hunger Force
- “The Afro-disiacs” – Diff’rent Strokes
- “Cylon and Garfunkel” – Futurama
- “Geri and the Atrics” – The Muppet Show
Commercials are no stranger to faux rock either. As someone who enjoys his burgers on the simple side, I was a big fan of “The Meaty Cheesy Boys” who sang for Jack in the Box “meat and cheese, cheese and meat and that’s it!” Classy. Burger King followed with a band to promote their chicken fries known as “Coq Roq.” Unbelievable that even got on the air, but even more crazy that real life band Slipknot threatened a lawsuit against BK for likeness infringement. In Burger King’s defense, nobody cares about Slipknot.
“Kandy Floss” is an interesting case as this imaginary group was concocted by the Celebrity Big Brother (UK) producers upon inserting a fake celebrity into the house. Chantelle Houghton was given the cover story of her band’s huge success and told to go in and fool the real celebs or she’d get evicted. The show even composed a song to dupe the other cast members and guess what? She won!!
The joke has turned real more than once. MTV’s “2go+her” was a spoof on the 1990s boy bands that started in a made for TV movie and ended up with their own series and two albums!! The group featured Chris Farley’s brother Kevin and amazingly, recorded better music than the groups they were making fun of!
Sometimes these parts offer an early glimpse into future celebrity. Adam Brody played in “Hep Alien” on The Gilmore Girls before dashing off to The O.C. and a pre Married With Children Christina Applegate played keyboard for Family Ties‘ “The Permanent Waves.” In the music world, former Eve’s Plum (a T.V reference in itself) singer and solo chart topper Vitamin C played “Beverly Heat” in the 1980s show The Equalizer and the aforementioned “Hep Alien” replaced Brody on guitar with Sebastian Bach.
My absolute favorite all time fake band plot is from the classic CHiPs episode “Battle of the Bands.” Like the title suggests, local bands are competing and Ponch and John are called in to investigate when new wave “Snow Pink” has their gear stolen and van trashed by punk band “Pain.” “Pain” features a young William Forsythe as Thrasher, but in the end “Snow Pink” wins the battle and Erik Estrada sings “Celebration” in tight pants. However, nothing compares to Officer Grossman trying to explain the difference between slam dancing and pogoing in the locker room. Seriously, it’s one of the greatest moments in TV history.
I’m not sure when fake bands began, but you can trace the trend back farther than you might think with appearances by “The Esteemed Onions” on My Three Sons or “The Bedbugs” on F-Troop. How a rock-n-roll act made it to post Civil War Kansas may never be known! What I do know is that every series seems to create their own musical act at some point and that those episodes are some of the best around. For those about to pretend to rock, I salute you!
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