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Fake Band: Difference between revisions
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== Fake bands that produced real music ==
=== Anime and Manga ===
* [[Beck|Beck/Mongolian Chop Squad]], from the series of the same name. They're a [[Title Theme Tune|hit in the USA]].
* ''[[Gravitation]]'' featured the rising success of fake J-pop group Bad Luck, suspiciously acronymized to [[Boys Love|BL]]. Naturally, once it got adapted from manga to anime, they needed to produce real music.
* The titular band of ''[[Detroit Metal City]]'' is the most popular heavy metal band in Japan and one of the most popular musical acts, beating out rival bands Kintama Girls and Tetra-pot Melon Tea, and rapper MC Kiva. For [[The Movie]], all four released singles (DMC's ''two'' singles also featured the light-hearted J-Pop songs by lead singer's alterego Soichi Negishi) and DMC released a full-length 10-track album.
* The manga series ''[[Idol no Akahon]]'' is about a (fictional) [[Idol Singer]] group called Triple Booking, and the OP song from ''[[Seitokai Yakuindomo]]'' (by the same author) is credited to Triple Booking.
* After-School Tea Time and Death Devil from ''[[K-On!]]'' can qualify. The voice actresses sing the lyrics for basically every vocalized song in the series, but the music is done by others. Albums of the openings, endings, and a number of the insert songs have topped Japan sales charts at least once.
** The seiyuu who comprised After-School Tea Time learned how to play their instruments well enough to avoid embarrassing themselves during the promotional concert for the ''[[K-On!]]'' movie.
=== Comedy ===
* Brazilian heavy metal band Massacration is composed by the [[Five-Man Band]] that forms the comedy group Banana Mecânica. The band appeared as a skit back in their own MTV program, when they were known as Hermes & Renato (sharing the name with said program). They are a downright stereotype of every heavy metal cliché in the book, from being dressed on denim and [[Hell-Bent for Leather|leather]] to singing in <s>English</s> [[Engrish]] to being [[Rock Me, Asmodeus|devil worshippers]], but the joke made so much of a success among viewers, they have two albums out, which are pretty good, [[MST3K Mantra|as long as you don't take it all too seriously]]. Oh, and they also helped make heavy metal more popular among Brazilian teens, along with ''[[Guitar Hero]]''. To understand what their backstory is about, check the [[wikipedia:Massacration|article]] on [[That Other Wiki]]. Think Dethklok, but in a more exaggerated (and [[Reality Is Unrealistic|blatantly lying]]) way.
** Their second album, ''Good Blood Headbanguers'' (intentional misspelling) was produced by none other than ''Roy Z''. How's that for status in the metal community?
=== Film ===
* Amazingly obscure despite its pedigree is ''[[The Rutles]]''—a Beatles parody group which has released several albums and CDs since the late 1970s. Featuring Neil Innes and Eric Idle of ''[[Monty Python's Flying Circus]]'', the Rutles first achieved prominence in ''All You Need Is Cash'', a 1978 NBC [[Mockumentary]] which was also the only known collaboration between the Pythons and the original Not Ready For Prime Time Players from ''[[Saturday Night Live]]''. In 2002, a followup was made, called ''The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch''; both films can frequently be seen on VH-1.
* Two words: Shit sandwich. No, wait... other two words, [[This Is Spinal Tap|Spinal Tap]].
** The later Christopher Guest mockumentary ''[[A Mighty Wind]]'' had several fake folk groups, including The Folksmen, who were played by the same actors Spinal Tap were.
*** And later Spinal Tap toured, with The Folksmen as their opening act—and at least once, [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|''The Folksmen'' were booed off the stage]].
*** This was actually during [[Spinal Tap]]'s "Break Like The Wind" Tour in the early 1990's before The Folksmen appeared in ''[[A Mighty Wind]]''.
* The ''Josie and the Pussycats'' [[Live Action Adaptation|movie]] was better about their music than the animated series was, at least in the sense that the kind of pop-punk music that the new Pussycats play is something that you can more realistically imagine three teenage girls coming up with in their garage.
** On a separate note, the movie was also [[Reverse Funny Aneurysm|eerily prescient]], foreshadowing the replacement of [[Boy Band]]s and pop princesses with power pop (Good Charlotte, Paramore) and singer-songwriters (Kelly Clarkson, Avril Lavigne) following the [[Turn of the Millennium]]. (The movie was made in 2001. The following year, Avril Lavigne, Good Charlotte, and Simple Plan broke into the mainstream.) Maybe the producers recognized that people were getting tired of bubblegum pop?
* The title song from ''[[That Thing You Do]]'' became a chart-topping one-hit wonder, which utterly disrupts the lives of the formerly completely obscure band of protagonists (named, appropriately, the Wonders, originally the "Oneders"). The song, composed by Fountains of Wayne bassist Adam Schlesinger, actually did become fairly popular on Top 40 radio following the movie's release.
* Not quite the same, but certainly similar: The movie ''[[Swing Girls]]'' centres on the formation of such a band, but they're a big-band (and thus they perform covers of 20th-century standards). Also notable because, for the sake of realism, the director cast girls who didn't have any musical experience (they trained while making the film) and portrayed them actually playing their instruments.
* ''[[All About Lily Chou-Chou]]'' follows fans of fake pop star Lily Chou-Chou.
* [[The Cheetah Girls]] were originally a book series, but it did have the same models on every book cover. In 2003 the series was made into a movie, which released original songs by The Cheetah Girls. Ultimately the band was [[Defictionalization|defictionalized]] with Adrienne Bailon, Kiely Williams, and Sabrina Bryan from the movie. This crosses over with "Real bands masquerading as fake bands", since Kiely Williams and Adrienne Bailon were both from the real band 3LW.
* Infant Sorrow, the band fronted by Aldous Snow in ''[[Forgetting Sarah Marshall]]'' and its sort-of spinoff ''[[Get Him to The Greek]]'': The ''[[Forgetting Sarah Marshall]]'' soundtrack included two of their songs, while in lieu of a traditional various artists soundtrack, ''[[Get Him to The Greek]]'' had a tie-in album consisting almost entirely of Infant Sorrow songs (as well as two by other fake musician Jackie Q), including songs that weren't in the movie. [[Russell Brand]] does in fact sing all of the Infant Sorrow songs.
* ''[[Eddie and the Cruisers]]'' included the title band's ubiquitous radio hit "On The Dark Side," which was in actuality performed by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band.
* ''[[Yes Man (film)|Yes-Man]]'''s Munchausen by Proxy, who had four of their songs on the official soundtrack, all of which were cowritten and sung by [[Zooey Deschanel]]. Taken a little bit further in the packaging - the other nine songs on the soundtrack are by [[Eels]], so the liner notes have an essay about Munchausen by Proxy penned by Eels' Mark Oliver Everett and an essay about Eels supposedly written by Deschanel's character Allison Monier.
* All the bands in the film ''[[Scott Pilgrim vs. the World]]'', including Sex Bob-omb, Crash and the Boys, and The Clash at Demonhead. Most of their songs were actually written by [[Beck (musician)|Beck]].
=== Literature ===
* Be*Tween, from the ''[[Avalon: Web of Magic]]'' series, was a fake band whose songs were later performed by Debra Davis and released on the website.
=== Live-Action TV ===
* The ultimate Fake Bands actually were the [[MacGuffin]]s around which entire series were built: ''[[The Partridge Family]]'' (who save for two of them <ref>Shirley Jones was in [[Oklahoma!]]</ref> otherwise weren't musicians) and ''[[The Monkees (TV series)|The Monkees]]'' (some of whom ''were'', but weren't allowed to use their skills on the show during the first season).
* The 1977 [[Summer Replacement Series]] ''[[A Year at the Top]]'' was about a band (composed of Greg Evigan and Paul Shaffer) who make a [[Deal with the Devil|deal with the son of the Devil]], and trade their souls for a year of fame and fortune.
* The short-lived series ''[[The Heights]]'' was centered around a band of the same name, formed for the show. A song from the show, "How Do You Talk To An Angel?" made it to #1 in the United States a [[Breakaway Pop Hit|few weeks after the show was canceled]] (only one cast member, Jamie Walters - who sang lead vocals - performs on the song).
* ''[[California Dreams]]'' features a Fake Band of the same name that also doubled as your standard teen comedy [[Six-Student Clique]].
* Washed-up rock star Charlie Pace from ''[[Lost]]'' has a character background as the former bassist and songwriter for one-hit wonder alt rock band DriveSHAFT, who produced the song "You All Everybody", a song deliberately designed by the producers to be as lightweight, vapid and meaningless as possible. (The song's incomprehensible lyrics are taken from a rant many years ago on the Phil Donahue show.) The actual song we hear on the show was recorded by LA singer/songwriter Jude; the producers have joked that they hoped for it to become a hit on iTunes, which it has yet to do (though it did show up in a cameo on another J.J. Abrams show, ''[[Alias (TV series)|Alias]]'').
** In-show band Geronimo Jackson is currently{{when}} being [[Defictionalized]].
* The comedy-improv show ''[[Whose Line Is It Anyway?]]'' had a regular sketch where a "theme album" CD is being hawked: Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie would give Wayne Brady a made-up song title and a (real) band/singer, and Wayne would have to improvise a song in that person's style. One time, Colin also made up the ''musician'': a Scottish blues singer named "Wet Biscuit" McGlee, who is so old and grizzled you can't actually understand anything he says. Wayne came through, and the character still gets mentioned in joking "histories" on the Internet.
* [http://www.angelfire.com/on/freshstep/index.html "Fresh-Step"] was a parody [[Boy Band]] which appeared on ''The Late Show with David Letterman'' and ''TRL'' in 1999.
* [[The Colbert Report|Stephen and the Colberts]] with their 80s-styled hit "Charlene", which is about Colbert stalking a love interest with that name, and found its way onto the Rock Band platform.
** Of course, it's actually rather good. Gotta love that solo.
* The [[Nickelodeon]] show ''[[Big Time Rush]]'' is essentially this.
** Although, the [[Boy Band|band]] has been defictionalized - to an extent - ala [[Hannah Montana]], releasing two albums that aren't necessarily soundtracks, which feature writing from the band members and don't have some of the songs the band releases in the show, making separate music videos for songs which have different, completely filmed music videos in the show and going on tours with very little in reference to the show itself.
* Green Leaves, a Japanese [[Boy Band]] famous for the internet sensation and runaway sleeper hit ''[[wikipedia:Yatta!|Yatta!]]'' written by [[Keroro Gunso|Hideki Fujisawa]], was featured on the Japanese sketch comedy show ''[[wikipedia:Silly Go Lucky|Silly Go Lucky]]'' (the band members were actually some of the show's cast members). The song was intended to be a joke, so the producers were astonished that it topped the Japanese charts and went triple-platinum shortly after it was released as a single.
* Crisis Of Conformity were an [[Affectionate Parody]] of 80's [[Hardcore Punk]] that appeared in a single ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' skit, where they were played by Fred Armisen, [[Foo Fighters|Dave Grohl]], and Ashton Kutcher. Not too long after that, the indie label Drag City quietly released "Fist Fight", a seven inch single supposedly by the band, but actually [[I Am the Band|written and performed entirely by Armisen himself]]. Both Dave Grohl and Fred Armisen have been in ''real'' hardcore bands - the collage on the cover of the single includes a picture of a young Fred Armisen singing for his old band, as well as one of a young Dave Grohl in a crowd shot (presumably in the audience for a different hardcore band's show). To top it off, their record was produced by Brendan Canty of Fugazi.
* ''PJ and Duncan'' spun off from children's soap ''[[Byker Grove]]'', whose characters [[Captain Obvious|PJ and Duncan]] formed a band. They released three albums of light hip-hop under that name, and another more soulful (and less successful) one as [[Ant and Dec]], the actors' real names. They did their own singing but didn't write the songs.
* [[w:Lenny and the Squigtones|Lenny and the Squigtones]], composed of characters Lenny and Squiggy from ''[[Laverne and Shirley]]''. They released a very real album in 1979, ''Lenny & Squiggy Present Lenny and the Squigtones'', which is now a collector's item -- mainly because Lenny was played by Michael McKean (later of ''Spinal Tap'' and ''A Mighty Wind''), and the album featured future Spinal Tap member Nigel Tufnel ([[Christopher Guest]]) on guitar, clarinet, and vocals.
=== Newspaper Comics ===
* Literary twist: The comic strip ''[[Bloom County]]'' had several of its main characters as members of the group Billy and the Boingers (originally named Deathtöngue). The book "Billy and the Boingers Bootleg" actually included a floppy vinyl "45" containing two songs, "U Stink But I (heart) U" and "I'm A Boinger", supposedly recorded by the band. (They were actually recorded by bands who were fans of the strip.)
=== Professional Wrestling ===
* The fake band/fake musician is a pretty standard character in [[Professional Wrestling]], with The Honky Tonk Man, "Double J" Jeff Jarrett, the West Texas Rednecks, and 3 Count all laying claim to the title. Most of them will produce real music, either in a live performance on the wrestling federation's television program, or a "music video" aired on the show (if we're lucky, the song will be lip-synced, and sung by somebody who actually knows what they're doing rather than the wrestler himself).
** The Double J example is actually a ''triple'' subversion, as they ran a story admitting that Jarrett wasn't singing his tune... then claimed another wrestler (now known as B.G. James, at the time, playing Jarrett's roadie) actually sang it... which he had in real life, and not badly either!
** However, actual bands formed by wrestlers, namely Chris Jericho's metal band Fozzy, rarely appear on wrestling television shows ''so'' people don't think that these bands are fake.
=== Video Games ===
* The ''[[Grand Theft Auto]]'' series has ''Love Fist'', an [[The Eighties|eighties]] hair metal pastiche band who perform songs like "Dangerous Bastard" and "Fist Fury" on the in-game radio stations and wind up being carted through various missions by the player in ''Vice City''. Later installments in the franchise have featured actual musicians as fake ones, such as rapper Ice-T playing Madd Dogg in San Andreas.
* ''Phantasm'', an indie band that produced [[Suspiciously Apropos Music]] in ''[[Chaos;Head]]'', had three singles and an album released. Voice actress Yui Sakakibara was already a visual novel and anime singer, so producing the music for Phantasm wasn't a large stretch.
** And they recently released their fourth single, titled as ''Unmei no Farfalla'', this time was the single with the ending theme of the game for [[Xbox 360]] called ''[[Steins;Gate]]'' from the company ''Nitroplus''; the same company that developed the game ''[[Chaos;Head]]''.
* ''[[Kirakira]]'' is all about a band formed by the main characters. Various songs are played during the story, and the developer sells actual d2b (the name of the band) CDs containing the music played by the band in the game. As the game is about a band, there are also plenty of other bands in the game, of which two (Star Generation and [[Happy Cycle Mania]]) also have songs that are actually played in the game.
* ''[[Left 4 Dead]] 2'' brings us the Midnight Riders, whose cancelled concert is used by the survivors to alert the rescue helicopter in the second campaign. Two of their songs, ''One Bad Man'' and ''Midnight Ride'' are played during the finale (with lyrics- apparently, the Riders were planning to mime) and come up at random on the jukeboxes in other campaigns. A third song, ''All I Want For Christmas Is To Kick Your Ass'' was also published on youtube, and ''The Passing'' DLC added ''Save Me Some Sugar (This Won't Take Long)'' to their repertoire. [http://www.midnight-riders.com/ Check out their website!]
** "One Bad Man" and "Midnight Ride" are also available as ''[[Rock Band]]'' DLC.
* Trip Cyclone from the PC game ''[[Shivers]] 2: Harvest of Souls''. Full song versions of the snippets used in the game are found as tracks on the second disc of the game.
=== Web Comics ===
* [[MS Paint Adventures]] has introduced one of these, [http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/album/midnight-crew-drawing-dead-2 Midnight Crew], with an entire album of dark jazz music. The creator has suggested that there will be other fake bands in the future.
** The Midnight Crew's nemeses, the Felt, have apparently formed [http://homestuck.bandcamp.com/album/the-felt an electric-orchestral band with temporal effects], or "temporelechrestal", in the words of the author.
* ''[[Questionable Content]]'' has Deathmøle, the male lead's band, with him as guitarist. They have released several albums of actual music, composed entirely by author Jeph Jacques.
=== Web Original ===
* The creators of ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' have created at least two heavy-metal Fake Bands as a [[Running Gag]] for their website—hair-metal parody Limozeen and death-metal parody Taranchula. Both "bands" contributed songs to the website's soundtrack album, ''Strong Bad Sings! And Other-Type Hits'', and both bands' names were coined by Strong Bad, following [[A Good Name for a Rock Band|the band naming philosophy of taking a cool-sounding word and misspelling it]].
** Limozeen recently performed [http://youtube.com/profile_videos?user=tdougland a real live show] in Atlanta, Georgia, and both Strong Bad and Limozeen's music have been featured in the ''[[Guitar Hero]]'' series ("Trogdor" in ''II'' and "Because, It's Midnite" in ''Rocks the 80s'').
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*** So, to recap: a fake band which is a spinoff from a comic that is a spinoff of a (somewhat) spinoff fan mail series, originating as an off-hand reference in the fan mail series to an episode of the comic spinoff, which is now doing holiday-themed spinoff music videos.
** The characters of the cartoon themselves have formed their own bands: Marzipan, The Cheat, and Strong Mad perform in a folk-rock trio known as "Cool Tapes", Coach Z and Bubs apparently jam together as the Two-O Duo on occasion, and in the Strong Bad Email "senior prom", the Poopsmith and the rest of the King of Town's servants performed at the "Entrapment All Up On The Moon" Dance as "All The King's Men". In the game ''Baddest of the Bands'', Pom Pom and Homestar form Pomstar, while Strong Bad{{spoiler|, the King of Town, and Homsar}} start DOI.
=== Western Animation ===
* Dethklok, the protagonists' death-metal band on ''[[Metalocalypse]]''. Notable because not only did they produce real music, but ''The Dethalbum'' is the best-selling death metal album of all time, and that record was beaten by ''Dethalbum II''.
** To be fair, it is a really good album.
** Subverted when Brendon Small, series creator and composer, assembled three other real musicians to conduct Dethklok tours.
** Not many Fake Bands are created by [[wikipedia:List of alumni of Berklee College of Music|alumni]] of the [[Badass]] [[wikipedia:Berklee College of Music|Berklee College of Music]].
* The titular band from the cartoon ''[[Josie and the Pussy Cats]]''. Note that Josie was not originally conceived as a Fake Band character—Josie was just an Everygirl high school student in the same vein (and universe) as Archie and Jughead, but her comic title, ''She's Josie'', was clumsily retooled as a comic about a wildly popular pop band in order to boost sales enough to justify a TV series (while providing for shameless media tie-ins).
** The original Josie and the Pussycats Fake Band was a genuine fake band—i.e. a band that existed outside the show's universe, for whom they hired three real female musicians to provide the singing voices of the cartoon characters, appear in album art and actually cut an album. They probably would've gone on to tour in-character as "Josie" and her friends had the album actually made any money. Interestingly, there are countless disparities between the band as it actually appears in the show and the band we hear in the musical numbers. Josie, for instance, is presented as the band's lead singer, but most of the lead vocals on the songs actually come from Patrice Holloway, who played Valerie Brown. Moreover, the formula used for the band's songs was a heavily studio-produced R&B sound, while Josie's band in the comic is a three-piece band with two guitars and a drummer. Almost always, fans of the show were treated to scenes of Josie's band rehearsing at home, playing in concerts or giving ''impromptu live performances'' with mysterious orchestral string sections or flutes or synthesizers coming out of nowhere.
*** ...Not that this isn't depressingly common in "live" pop performances nowadays, but still.
* And speaking of Archie and the Riverdale gang, they also formed a fictional band, the Archies. (Which, while generally less famous than Josie and the Pussycats in their shared milieu, produced the real-world #1 hit, "Sugar, Sugar".)
* The short-lived cartoon ''[[Generation O!]]'' had as its short-lived, somewhat creepy and frightening premise that an eight-year-old girl known to the media as "Molly-O" is the world's most popular rock star. The titular band was portrayed by the real-life band Letters to Cleo, whose lead vocalist, Kay Hanley, apparently really can sound eight years old if she tries. (Hanley was also the singing voice for Josie in the ''Josie and the Pussycats'' movie.)
* The animated version of [[Discworld/Soul Music|The Band With Rocks In]] produced some pretty decent rock'n'roll pastiches, which appeared in full on the soundtrack album.
* The Subdigitals of ''[[Code Lyoko]]'' (known as the "Subsonics" in Season 2, but renamed as there was already a real band with that name) not only have a pretty heavy presence in the series proper, but an actual album released in English and French. It's above-average French pop, though it is worth note that the English release is not so much a "translation" as a complete rewrite with varying levels of success. The song "S'envoler/Break Away" is adapted from the show's ending theme, and it and "Planet Net" are featured in the episode "Music to Soothe the Savage Beast."
* [[Gorillaz]], an animated band fronting for a group of real musicians.
=== Actual bands ===
* The [[wikipedia:Ohio Express|Ohio Express]] were more of a record company's marketing identity than a real band, and consisted of whatever musicians were available at the time. [[The Eagles|Joe Walsh]] is suspected to have been a member of an early version, and the final version eventually became the "classic" lineup of 10cc.
== Recurring fake bands in other series ==
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