Dormant Projects--a NEW One: Better Than the Original
davemerrill's most recent "Found Sound" entry reminded me of something that had been brewing in my mind for a couple weeks. It's a story of musicians, in the vein of Eddie & The Cruisers and That Thing You Do!...and is a twist on that theme.
Like The Walk-On, Better Than The Original starts with would-be entertainers down on their luck. They're a small-time rock band, playing dives in one-horse towns and getting nowhere. (This is set in the present day, by the way.) Well, one of the musicians goes to a relative's funeral, and finds himself reading a scrapbook...and comes upon a reference to an obscure band from the Fifties/Sixties. Little by little, he comes upon the idea that his band should become the previous band's impersonators. At first, his idea is met with skepticism from the others...
"We're going to mimick a band that never was famous? Never recorded? Nobody remembers?"
"And that's the beauty of it! Nobody remembers! We're free to do what we want as long as we look the part!"
So, they try it out--and it turns out somebody DOES remember...a kid brother of one of the original band's troupe. But he gets on the new band's side because--
"To put it in terms you understand, they didn't become famous because their music sucked!" He goes on to say that the old band never performed any original material (drawing instead from whatever they liked from the Hit Parade), and because one of their bandmates was black (but disguised himself as white on stage) they couldn't tour in the South. And the "tragic bus accident" that killed them off was because one of them got his draft papers for the Army and they were trying to run for Canada.
And thus the "kid brother" uses the opportunity to make the new band rewrite history. He rearranges their modern songs to fit the musical styles of the past, and books them into venues where he can guarantee them friendly audiences. And they have all sorts of fun with it.
And there are any number of possibilities about where to go from there.
FP
Like The Walk-On, Better Than The Original starts with would-be entertainers down on their luck. They're a small-time rock band, playing dives in one-horse towns and getting nowhere. (This is set in the present day, by the way.) Well, one of the musicians goes to a relative's funeral, and finds himself reading a scrapbook...and comes upon a reference to an obscure band from the Fifties/Sixties. Little by little, he comes upon the idea that his band should become the previous band's impersonators. At first, his idea is met with skepticism from the others...
"We're going to mimick a band that never was famous? Never recorded? Nobody remembers?"
"And that's the beauty of it! Nobody remembers! We're free to do what we want as long as we look the part!"
So, they try it out--and it turns out somebody DOES remember...a kid brother of one of the original band's troupe. But he gets on the new band's side because--
"To put it in terms you understand, they didn't become famous because their music sucked!" He goes on to say that the old band never performed any original material (drawing instead from whatever they liked from the Hit Parade), and because one of their bandmates was black (but disguised himself as white on stage) they couldn't tour in the South. And the "tragic bus accident" that killed them off was because one of them got his draft papers for the Army and they were trying to run for Canada.
And thus the "kid brother" uses the opportunity to make the new band rewrite history. He rearranges their modern songs to fit the musical styles of the past, and books them into venues where he can guarantee them friendly audiences. And they have all sorts of fun with it.
And there are any number of possibilities about where to go from there.
FP