Your Terrible Band Concept Stockpile

1/actually, it's a terrible idea, nasty & exploitative. I'm a bit ashamed that I even thought of it.

and

2/I really really strongly suspect that there are certain bands who have already been successfully marketed in exactly that way.

DESIGNED TO BE IGNORED.

I've had many jazz trio gigs like this.

Sea shanty and/or folk versions of early Swans material mostly.

This was a horrible idea, and I'm pretty sure he got it from somewhere else.

When I was 16 I thought there totally needed to be a shoegazer band that went everywhere in robes and cloaks. Like shoegazing monks. With hoods.

Go-Go's tribute band, all chubby guys from West Hollywood. Done in southern California. High point: scored picture wrapped in bath towels on cover of LA Times Weekend magazine insert. Failed.

My newest pipe dream is all about REPETITION. Like The Fall, but more so. I see a band with maybe like three guitarists, two sax players, a bass player, and two drummers. Every song is just ONE RIFF, repeated over and over again. Each band member plays a part of the riff, and has to play the same thing through the whole song. The differences come from who is playing and how loudly they are playing at any given moment. I actually want to do this.

You just invented In C.

Also Matt, if you haven't already, you should check out Naked City's Grand Guignol CD as there are some Messian & Debussy arrangements on there, not exactly rocked up but worth a look IMHO.

I had a friend who wanted to start a female semi-naked ZZ Top covers band, she was going to call it ZZ Topless!

This one's a goer, nabisco! You have to put this band together.

all were to held in secret safe houses by the British security services for the best part of a decade, convening for last minute gigs under assumed names. during this time they only managed to cobble together one (admittedly seminal) EP before the ayatollahs realised they were being used as part of a tacky PR stunt and stepped down the threat.

I always wanted to do something with a proper Drum Machine, ie big meccano-style contraption beating on drums with sticks. (Ideally controlled by 80s style microcomputer like ZX Spectrum.) This could be extended to eg the guitar; twould have to be fretless, with bar moving up and down neck at various angles, while plectrum-studded rubber band strummed all or some of the strings. (Of course this latter idea was rendered obsolete when Loveless came out immediately after my guitar idea, sounding like envisaged.)

Haha nabisco, I read that last post a bit crosseyed – and now I want a full barbershop version of the Rite of Spring!

nabisco you could contruct the papier mache heads so that although the combined equine mass look as though they're staring down the audience, infact the muso's chins are down on their chests shoegazer style. that way they could see their frets/pedals and everything would be good...

http://www.timestereo.com/art/caroliner.jpg

(also: GWAR.)

I'm sure I've got loads more terrible band ideas tucked away in the recesses of my mind. I'll let you all know when they work their way to the surface!

catpower covers in the style of ted nugent or nugent in the style of catpower. cant really find any friends who want to travel down this particular avenue, so ive just started using the name anytime i play in public. all the good names are gone, so i might was go for the stupid or humorous.

http://static.flickr.com/17/22577590_5a3df33ada.jpg
http://static.flickr.com/19/22580682_21c4ce14d7.jpg

After going through two years of trying to find people to put together a band, I rehearsed for six months with me singing and playing bass with a guitarist having everything else sequenced on a Roland XP80. The guitarist ended up bailing, so I don't know what it would have ended up like live, but I don't think it would have ended up working.

I had an electronic group with two other guys using sequences and then playing off the top. Getting the other two guys to actually practice on tunes working towards a set of material proved impossible. At the time, there was not that many opportunities to pull this kind of thing off live in a club or anything anyway.

It never happend more than a couple of jam sessions, but I always wanted to put together a heavy guitar band with two drummers. Get two full kits in a room with two players that have enough trouble keeping time on their own and you get a huge amount of racket with a hard time finding the one.

Appearantly wanting to start an instrumental rock band is just the oddest idea in the book from some of the responses to ads I have placed looking for players. "What you don't want no singin'?"

This is an awesome idea -- I would join this band in a second.

I had a similar idea for a Spacemen 3-type drone outfit with five guitarists, two drummers, and an organist.

Walter: the one I saw was real! I believe there were also PBS pledge-drive interviews surrounding it that verified as much. Beyond which I was sober and paying attention and it was real for real.

This is what I was thinking of but if somebody made a real life verions of it I'd love to see it!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animusic

My friend and I were talking about a band that would play up that "creativity fueled on the animosity between rival members" cliche, and have a member of the Ku Klux Klan on drums and a member of the black panthers on guitar and lead vox.

Other ideas: A group called The Business Men who would all wear suits and sing songs about memos and stuff and would all play briefcases somehow...

...ohh and a friend and I were going to do a band on stage where we'd go through the entire archetypical bands career -- start out naive and idealistic, become challenging, learn to hate each other, go back to original sound, break up -- all within the span of one show that lasted 15 minutes.

-- acb (il...), November 28th, 2005.

is that a joke about wolfmother?

*the first album is called 'We Are STEED', obv.

All the sing titles would be:

RE:Re:Fwd
Fwd:RE:
Fwd:Fwd:re:hello

and etc.

It'd be kinda bedroom math rock.

A kind of vocal harmony group, singing about boring office stuff.

AC/DC songs performed by vocal group, including human beatbox drums.

The aim of this band is to impress readers of The Wire by any means necessary.

The Invisibles are going to rewrite Rock History by being the only band ever to book and 'play' coast to coast shows in every state in the U.S., every other country on earth and the Soviet Space Station ALL ON THE SAME NIGHT.

who's with me on this? You Can Fool All Of The People Some Of The Time - it's a fucking moneyspinner!

you could hook up as support to a major tour - no ego's, no bullshit, no soundchecks. this band would be the dream support for any self-respecting megagroop.

remember, The Invisibles are conceptual reprobates, constantly pushing the boundaries of iconoclasm and with it the audience's very perception of the nature of 'entertainment'. Paul Morley would be eating out of The Invisibles hand.

And why stop with the present and future? The Invisibles could claim any number of legendary scalps - co-headlining with Jimi at IOW, Live Aid '85, a permanent Radio 4 residency in between the shipping forecast and the pips - the possibilities are endless.

do The Awkward Pauses actually exist? bet they do. that's why The Invisibles are gonna wipe the floor with every other concept band out there.

Check this: The Invisibles set will consist of 'the band''playing' John Cage's 4'33" five times over (don't laugh, The Jesus And Mary Chain did this with 'Never Understand' and no one asked for their money back).

At some point during the show, some random bright spark a la Moley will pipe up through the Emperor's New Clothes silence: 'hang on! this is the most moronic bunch of art wank bollocks i've ever been unfortunate enough to experience.' the audience is sucked into the entertainment vacuum - cue mass stage invasion. Anarchy ensues. Ladies and Gentleman, the birth of A New Punk Rock.

Meanwhile The Invisibles slip off into the night. Their Work is done.

apart from STEED of course. this near legendary band has been taking up a disproportionate chunk of the part of my consciousness reserved for such things.

i would point the creative powerhouse of STEED towards the theme tune of a '70's sub-Zorro TV show called 'The Flashing Blade'. The song combines a ta-ran-ta-ran-ta-ran galloping type rhythm with lyrics alluding to some weirdly outmoded notion of heraldic chivalry and would make a fantastic motif for such a noble combo.

i'll try and track it down and post it YSI. essential.

My idea is a girl band sort of like the Spice Girls, where each member can easily be identified with some personality-defining label: the smart one, the outgoing one, the nice one, the bitch, etc. But they would play up their labels/personalities more than the Spice Girls did by singing songs that show this personality, e.g. the "bitch" might sing about how tough and mean she is, or she'd sing a duet with the "nice" girl and they'd have a moral debate in the song. In my head, there is more of a story line in the band, maybe there is an accompanying TV show, or maybe each new single they release tells more about the story, I don't know.

They would be marketed so that there is a lot of fuss about "Which ___ Girl is your favorite?" and paraphrenalia for teenage girls to buy and wear and show all their friends which Girl they are a fan of. Then the fans would get all excited when their favorite Girl is the one singing the band's latest single, etc.

They do exist, and have played shows, but there is no one in the band. They do have a label, though, and a long-promised EP (called "10") which will almost certainly never come out.

http://www.government.devisland.net/

go here and check out vinny miller's top 5 0f 2005. the hype has begun...

oops wrong link let's try again:

http://www.hmgovernment.net/

follow directions above ;)

1. corporate band. forget the name we came up with. uplifting power songs. gray suits and short 80s business pony tails. we'd play exclusively at high-paying corporate gigs like company parties, sharholder meetings, etc. the name might have been Payday. can't quite recall.

2. the most annoying band in town. not overtly so, but in subtler ways. like parts don't really fit together. song goes on a little long for comfort. our gear is of questionable quality and the tone is shitty. things like this. band name: Jar Jar Binks.

3. a band where we only play the big last note of a song where everyone just wails on E or A or whatever for a moment. and those are the song titles: G#, A, etc. band name: Grande Finale. or some such.

actually, i guess people would just think we're a normal, everyday, band about town. except with a worse name than most.

xpost

-- latebloomer (posercore24...), July 2nd, 2006.

This describes at least five different shitty indie bands at my college when I was there.

-- Abbadavid Berman (Hurtingchie...), July 5th, 2006.

heh thats because you went to AWESOME UNIVERSITY

I've seen this band several times -- so long as the riff is in 7/12 time and six bars long, Don Cab fans will eat it up.

We're The Douchebags.

Take a sniff
Pull it out
The taste is gonna move you
when you pop it in your mouth...

To be sung with much imaginary cock-stroking, etc.

What happened to Darth Brooks?

And has anyone heard that one STEED song, "De Canter of Blood?" It's on the B side of "Gaits of Hell?"

Some ideas from back when I was at University:

- an anti-boyband called FU2. Songs about getting drunk, getting into fights, cheating on girlfriends, shoplifting, vandalism, etc. - album was to be called "Y*O*B*S", short for "Yer Original Bastard Sons".

- "Herman Hollerith's Blues Machine" - a band where the drummer is a stuffed gorilla with a drum machine slung around it's neck, the singer is a blow up doll, and the guitarist is a cardboard cutout of Eric Clapton propped up against a large reel-to-reel tape machine on a wooden dining room chair.

- The Vicar & The Warlord. A rip off of a Fry and Laurie sketch, album was to be called "The Personification of Raw Sex".

- The Sick Six - a band with five members, the sixth member being a drum machine, a bit like Lothar and the Hand People, but with regular instruments. I thought that it might be a supergroup made up of people from other student bands, as a way of using up all the crappy half finished songs.

- Tamag0tchi Sex Explosion - gigs would be improvised jams based off "At The Copa (Copacabana)" by Barry Manilow.

- NWA tribute band called "Nigels With Attitude". All white guys, each one playing the role of a stereotype: cockney, nerd, public school posh guy with a monocle, geezer, etc., with names like Dr. Nigel, Nigel Cube, and Easy Nigel. Album to be called "Straight Outta Croydon". Sample lyric: "Straight outta Croydon, a crazy motherfucker called Nigel Cube, from the gang called Nigels With Attitude...".

Some ideas from back when I was at University:

Genre: Bubbleglum (sad bubblegum music)
Stage Name: Sven Diagram

Darth Brooks got the cops called on us once. Our drummer is in 3 other bands so we never get together anymore; a shame too because I put in a lot of work figuring out how to run my bass through every amp I own.

Some of which are guitar amps, of course.

A band that I thought about starting at school:

- "Black Ash", typical 14 year olds' idea of a metal band, the name is funny because I meant "the ashes of destruction", and the usual teenage doom kind of thing, etc., but it wasn't until years later that I realised it sounds like the colour description on a carton of flat pack self assembly furniture.

One word: Banjovi

All banjo Bon Jovi cover band, if you needed that explained...

the mary janes: get a trio of girls, dress them like a modern-day shangri-las, then get them to sing jesus and mary chain covers (with the feedback replaced by reverb). each one calls herself mary-jane, of course.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

2 drummers, 1 bass players, 3 keyboardists, 1 percussionist, 6-8 guitarists, 1 tambourine player, 6 backup singers, 3 regular singers, all doing mid-tempo versions of the classics, i.e. All Along The Watchtower, Produ Mary, etc.

ha ha

a completely straightforward led zeppelin covers band

an anti-boyband called FU2. Songs about getting drunk, getting into fights, cheating on girlfriends, shoplifting, vandalism, etc. - album was to be called "Y*O*B*S", short for "Yer Original Bastard Sons".

Should've gone for it! At the right moment this actually could have been mildly successful in a one-hit-wonder novelty "No Pigeons" type of way.

I did consider it, but for some reason I thought there was a risk that people wouldn't get the joke and instead they would take it seriously. So on the one hand there would be outraged Daily Mail readers who would consider the group a "threat to fabric of society", and on the other hand teenage boys who would think of them as role models. It sounds crazy to say that now, but I was a bit detached from reality at the time.

"Steely Danzig"

A band of multi-instrumentalists called The Gay Taliban, possibly wearing pink/purple burqas with sequins, knocking out lounge-type covers of popular music. We played a few college events/formal balls and so on back in 2002/2003.

Abba Abba Hey - Ramones songs, done in the style of ABBA. (It would be absolutely awful the other way around though - much as I adore the Ramones.)

Google returns 191 results for the phrase, so I guess I'm not the first to hit on the admittedly obvious wordplay, but at a glance, none of these seem to be a cover band concept...

A doom metal band that does cover versions of Chuckle Brothers songs.

Ramones songs, done in the style of ABBA = this would basically sound like the Bay City Rollers, right?

"Steely Danzig"

-- S-, Friday, December 14, 2007 1:37 AM (1 month ago)

this gets bonus points for awesome

<i>this would basically sound like the Bay City Rollers, right?</i>

More girl singing, surely.

I hate to rain on any parades, but explorers of the Ramones-Abba continuum may like to cast their eyes this way:
http://www.gabba.co.uk/

(They got some press a while ago, I think Peel played some of their stuff)

1) A male, effeminate modern synthpop duo, replete with heart-on-sleeve romantic lyrics, called Sucralose.

2) A fake-German one-man glitchy laptop techno project called Mausklicker. First single to be called "Doppelklicker"

I was thinking about creating a cartoon rap persona called Flex Lovely for about one day, then I decided against it...

so what I've been recording for the RPM challenge has turned into a fantasy live record of a duo of clones of myself, set in a distant subterranean future.

It seemed more appropirate to post that in this thread than in the RPM one.

haha omg approPIRATE

N.I. vs N.I.C.

O I FORGOT:

TREKKIN' - a Grateful Dead cover band with lyrics rewritten to involve the Star Trek universe ("what a long strange trip it's been" -> "what a long strange trip through the delta quadrant it's been for Voyager")

DANGER MAN by HOTWIRE

I'm a one man racetrack baybeh!/Faster than a naked eye!
Goin the wrong way/Down a one way street
With mah helmet on backwards and the lights off...

The lights off...

THE LIGHTS OFF!

THE LIGHTS OFFFFFFFF!!!!!!!!

HEY!

[Widdly guitar solo that goes on for six minutes while images of people driving rhino-sized American musclecars straight into each other are superimposed onto the stadium walls, driving half the audience into galloping convulsions]

Baybeh if you like dan-ger/You don't have to look too far......
Baybeh if you like dan-ger/Get inside my fucking car!

All my friends think I drive like a dick/I go too fast and it makes them feel sick
I wanna wanna wanna go really really quick/But they're just jealous about my car!!!!

[The stage is invaded by robot ninjas in a pirate ship piloted by she-bitches from the darkest bowels of heck. They fire spaghetti out of their eyes and into the crowd while security run scared]

[Alastair Stewart from Police! Camera! Action intones over a quintiple-guitar attack solo]:
Look at this bozo - 'e thinks 'e's smart, but the police are smarter. What a berk!

[Movie footage of Alastair Stewart's head being run over several times and then exploding like a rotten old Halloween pumpkin what's got caught on fire]

CHORUS:

I'M A DANGER MAN/THAT'S WHO I AM
I'M A-SPEEDING FAR ACROSS THE LAND
I'M A CHEETAH ON A MOTORBIKE

COS I'M A DANGER MAN...
DANGER MAN...

DANGER MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!

had an idea for a stoner metal band w/a theremin player

all lyrics based on pulpy "it came from OUTER SPACE" sci-fi

loosely psych obv

an Oi! band named Michelle Malkin Hatefuck

When I was 16 I thought there totally needed to be a shoegazer band that went everywhere in robes and cloaks. Like shoegazing monks. With hoods.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/03/Infern0-1152720270_i_1784_full-1-.jpg

had an idea for a stoner metal band w/a theremin player

all lyrics based on pulpy "it came from OUTER SPACE" sci-fi

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, April 13, 2008 4:09 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

loosely psych obv

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, April 13, 2008 4:10 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

who will form this band with me

Screensaver: a pop duo, sort of a cross between Dollar and Kraftwerk during their Man-Machine dummies phase. The audience would never really be sure who the singers were, or even if they were real people. I would be the sinister svengali controlling it all.

black sABBAth.

nuff said.

had an idea for a stoner metal band w/a theremin player

all lyrics based on pulpy "it came from OUTER SPACE" sci-fi

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, April 13, 2008 4:09 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

loosely psych obv

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Sunday, April 13, 2008 4:10 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

who will form this band with me

I would LOVE to be in this band. But my theremin is borked.

About 10 years ago I had an idea for a Nazi disco band. All the band members would have Hitler moustaches and wear jackets with swastikas made of sequins. We would play covers of disco hits with offensive re-worked lyrics (e.g. "I Won't Survive") in thick German accents. I almost convinced some drunk friends to do this at a house party in Santa Cruz. Probably for the best that we chickened out.

It might have gone over better in Russia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbuTV86ZXe0

Suddenly - Nikki Sudden tribute band

Weedwhacker - sXe landscape architects rock out

Britney's Peers - shady Florida promoter assembles pre-fab band of young boys & writes songs for them in the style of Incapacitants

I never got around to actually implementing my terrible band concept - probably due to lack of anyone who remotely knew how to play instruments as well as no venue.

It would basically be a super-heavy droney stoner metal type band that only played one huge loud riff over and over until something - anger from the audience, sore hands, power getting cut off - forced us to stop. We would be called Caveman Simulator and would hopefully be dressed like dirty-ass 70's Hells Angels.

Ebenezer and the Scrooges -- a Christmas-themed Stooges tribute band

"Say It Ain't Surf" the weezer surf cover band

http://www.mediafire.com/?ytyzddtos2m

Steed Lord's debut full-length record "Truth Serum" will be out worldwide in the coming weeks. I wanted to reach out and send you a link to an 11-minute continuous mega mix with teasers of all the new tracks that will be on the record:

Their sound:
This is a very unique live electronic act from Iceland that has huge cross-over appeal to many different audiences. Their sound has been described as "electro-crunk with a serving of legitimate disco."

C'MON

Man I hate the way PR people always say "reach out." Why do they have to do that?

I once tried to push a concept on people where it was a band that followed musical "rules". On every song, there would be simple rules for each instrument that allowed limited flexibility. For example, the drum part would have to hit the top tom once, the snare twice, and the low tom once, in that order, every 2 measures, although the timing of it would be up to the drummer.

I was reminded (correctly) that I was high, and that key signatures in themselves were already a form of limited flexibility, and that the band name Band of Rules was awful.

When I was drunk a couple of weeks ago I thought it would be hilarious to start a twee-as-fuck matching-cardigan group with my wife called The Whale Appliques.

Guys I just started a cover band called MIXTAPE...we basically play whatever covers we want regardless of style or obscurity level that are possible w/ our instrumentation and are trying to incorporate tape related sfx into our live show.

We've also told our friends to make mixtapes for us to learn to play so when their birthdays come around we can play their MIXTAPE set.

by tape related sfx I mean like sudden record button release tape squiggles, pause/stop cracks etc

You have to also stop whatever song you are playing, 30 mins after starting your set, then start the next song, 20 secs later, minus the intro.

The PA stacks should be painted silver, with loads of fake speakers that look like real ones, but are just grilles with nothing behind them...

thought i might start a metal band called OSMIUM

^^^actually quite a good idea

Bardcore - metal songs with Shakespeare as lyrics. Large codpieces. Problem is, someone's already done it.

The Heavy Hitlers

Pop-Metal played by overweight dictatorial look-a-likes

MC Onion. First single: "Rap Scallion"

The American Smiths

man, if i could stand the music of grateful dead enough to re-work the lyrics TREKKIN would be a moneymakin' ass project in these parts.

hoos i will start this sci-fi theremin metal band with you!

Suburban London rapper MC Esher.

Band that hurls bottles of urine into the audience, in particular at British festivals such as the Reading festival, for failing to appreciate band's art to an acceptable degree. T

They do not actually perform any music, mind you, just urinate into bottles and launch them at their congregation.