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Building Musicians From Scratch
Sometimes imaginary rock stars are better than the real thing. Today: a look at fictional musicians in pop culture, from "Spinal Tap" to the Dylan-esque characters in novels by Don DeLillo and Nick Hornby. We’re joined by Ben Greenman, New Yorker editor and author of the rock novel Please Step Back, and Yuval Taylor, author of the book Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music. Plus: artist Josh Gosfield talks about his French pop creation, Gigi Gaston.
Watch the Gigi Gaston trailer
"Je Suis Perdue" video starring Gigi Gaston
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No one has mastered the "fake musician" better than Peter Shickele - aka PDQ Bach. He's built a whole ouevre around his alter-ego and is every bit as respectable as many of today's serious composers.
Chris Gaines rules!! (but only in an ironic way).
... or is it a way to make fun of musicians' quirks without directly pissing anyone off?
Life imitates art -- U2 had a Spinal Tap moment when they couldn't get out of their Faberge egg.
Of course, authors are going to tap into musicians and artistes as inspiration because they're a treasure trove of weirdness. Just hang out around NYC. You can't make up some of the characters you come in contact with. It's amazing for creative inspiration.
What about having animated fictional bands? I recently discovered the fictional death metal band Dethklok on Cartoon network that is 100% pure death metal and quite extreme. These guys even have a tour now.
Re. U2's "Spinal Tap" moment, Muse's Matt Bellamy supposedly got stuck inside a white cone onstage once, although I've yet to see a pic or video of that inimitable moment.
Back on point, XTC invented a fake lost psychedelic 60's group, "The Dukes of Stratosphear," in the mid-80's... and they (the Dukes, and XTC faking it as such) were really terrific!
It's because Music has more sex appeal!!!
There is also more merchandising opportunities with music.
The lo-fi recording sounded a lot like a Guided By Voices parody.
Another point, in the case of Victor Borge and PDQ Bach, both have gone against the grain of classical music as being a "serious" art form. It creates a greater cognitive dissonance than in pop, where humor is more familiar.
You get the point despite the poor grammar.... cds, t-shirts, tours, etc.
I'm wondering how Talking Heads fits into this discussion. Byrne, Weymouth & Franz started out as art school students. Watching "Stop Making Sense," I feel like Byrne is more of a performance artist than a musician.
Please don't call the Monkees fake. Nesmith, Jones and Tork were all working musicians before the Monkees' formation.
Additionally, serious musicians like the members of the Lovin' Spoonful and Stephen Stills auditioned to be be in the Monkees!
And really is there any difference between the Monkees only singing on their records when their label insisted sessionmen be on recordings by the Byrds, the Beach Boys, the Kinks and Paul Revere?
Gigi Gaston is fantastic. Great stuff. Authors have pen names and persona why not musicians.
Dave
The fake trailer is OBVIOUSLY way too fake. Seems very contrived (though you'd have to grade on a curve for effort.)
I'd prefer to have heard John Lurie discussing his fake nemesis Marvin Pontiac. At least in that case the music is real and tremendous.
- Ben
Re. Talking Heads -- it's an interesting point. They were art students first who initially called themselves, tongue-planted-firmly-in-cheek, The Autistics; Byrne esp. was always a po-mo kind of guy, although the Polaroid cover art for More Songs... was borrowed from his lover Andrea Kovacs. Other deft touches: Byrne's dadaistic, Eno-influenced approach to songwriting, and their high-concept "Naive Melody" (an instrument-switching exercise). You could say they started out as a lark but matured into a real and very serious band.
“piano as a rock instrument”? Ye gods, have you never heard of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis or Fats Domino? They had hits.
“piano as a rock instrument”? Ye gods, have you never heard of Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis or Fats Domino? They had hits.
I heard the show while I was driving and am home now. I didn't care for the fake Frenchie but I liked the discussion before with Yuval and Ben. I have heard Ben a bunch of times on your show and others and he's always very focused on the topic. It's nice to hear a non-lazy discussion of something like this, though to really unpack it you'd need hours. What about the Fabulous Stairs? What about Paul McCartney's original idea for Sgt. Pepper's? What about Blind Boy Grunt?
Gigi Gaston sounds like a thoroughly fun project; wish I'd thought of it! I do think that was Joe Pernice, on an unfortunate (intentional I assume) half-effort take as usually he's stellar.
My question is how do the real bands react to the "face" of their music making all the difference; the singers behind Milli Vanilli and Black Box, John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, the performers that did all the soundtrack for The Soggy Bottom Boys, that kind of thing. Laugh all the way to the bank or mope all the way back to relative obscurity?
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