Your Terrible Band Concept Stockpile

Message Bookmarked
Bookmark Removed
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (193 of them)
Those rubber ball marimbas sound incredible!

The Vintner's Lipogram (OleM), Monday, 14 November 2005 12:52 (eighteen years ago) link

That drum machine idea also sounds like the "music boxes" at House on the Rock in Wisconsin, except that I think some aspects of the music boxes are fake (ie, prerecorded). It's hard to tell though.

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

n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 14 November 2005 15:24 (eighteen years ago) link

you guys ever see captured by robots? (there's a ! in the name somewhere) it's exactly what yr talking about. as in, a lot of robots. playing real instruments, though i think the rhythm guitar was tuned to a power chord, cos there were little pneumatic bars that went across on every fret. i think the guy (who dressed up as the slave of the robots, heh) had some ancient midi rig that he wired up to control them all. too bad the songs weren't better but it quiiiite a show.

geoff (gcannon), Monday, 14 November 2005 16:09 (eighteen years ago) link

Also: Octant.

n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 14 November 2005 16:23 (eighteen years ago) link

My musical life is littered with the debris of band failings with structural faults.

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'?"

earlnash, Monday, 14 November 2005 17:24 (eighteen years ago) link

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.

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.

MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Monday, 14 November 2005 17:52 (eighteen years ago) link

I've seen that rubber ball marimba thing. It's a 3D animation, not an actual machine.

walter kranz (walterkranz), Monday, 14 November 2005 18:16 (eighteen years ago) link

Yeah, Captured by Robots -- also Servotron, wasn't that basically the same idea?

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.

nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 14 November 2005 18:19 (eighteen years ago) link

Servotron weren't captured by robots, they WERE robots.

n/a (Nick A.), Monday, 14 November 2005 18:23 (eighteen years ago) link

I always wanted to have a band called The Abdicators who, a song and a half into their set, would suddenly rush out into the audience, grab random people, stick their instruments in the random people's hands, yell "We're not the Abdicators any more! You're the Abdicators now! Get up there and play!," and then run out of the building.

Douglas (Douglas), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 03:20 (eighteen years ago) link

Walter: the one I saw was 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

walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 06:01 (eighteen years ago) link

verions? wtf?

walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 06:02 (eighteen years ago) link

Ha, shit, Walter, I might actually be an idiot: the "Pipe Dream" one pictured there is pretty much like the one I remember. Except that, umm, that looks really obviously 3D animated, whereas the thing I saw, umm, really didn't! (And I can tell, and all -- I mean, half of my friends in Chicago were animators, I usually know how it works!) I dunno, maybe they later re-modeled or re-rendered it at much higher quality. And my TV reception can be pretty shitty sometimes, so that might have had something to do with it. But, umm, yeah, that kinda does seem to be, umm, it.

nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 07:24 (eighteen years ago) link

I seriously thought someone had bothered building all that shit. This is worse than when "Santa" brought presents I'd seen my mom hiding in the laundry room the week before.

nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 07:26 (eighteen years ago) link

(And now I'm watching the obviously-3D "AquaHarp" on their website, and I remember seeing that, too, and which doesn't even make a pretense of realness -- WTF, maybe I wasn't sober that day? Still, I liked life better thirty minutes ago, when I was "sure" it was real.)

nabisco (nabisco), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 07:34 (eighteen years ago) link

Sorry! Actually though, those pictures on the wikipedia page look really fake but I remember seeing a video that was passed around the web a few years back that looked much more convincing so maybe they did render out different versions. Of course really good weed is also a possibility here.

walter kranz (walterkranz), Tuesday, 15 November 2005 08:42 (eighteen years ago) link

Black metal acapella band with blastbeatboxing.

moley, Sunday, 20 November 2005 00:25 (eighteen years ago) link

A band that plays Black Sabbath-style cock rock that works as dance music. The name: Wolf Trucker.

acb (acb), Monday, 28 November 2005 12:56 (eighteen years ago) link

I've had TONS of ideas like this.

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.

33!!22, Tuesday, 29 November 2005 06:08 (eighteen years ago) link

I had an idea for a completely fictional boy/girl band whose entire history was planned out before them from first single to split, with several traumas in between. They start asthe most innocuous, colourful and fluffy band imaginable and by the end of course, one of them is on skag, another has started a Black metal side project, two of them have become gay and the last is dead. And it all turns out the band manager has been puppeteering them into oblivion to generate controversy and boost sales.

dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 15:58 (eighteen years ago) link

A band that plays Black Sabbath-style cock rock that works as dance music. The name: Wolf Trucker.

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

is that a joke about wolfmother?

petesmith (plsmith), Tuesday, 29 November 2005 18:09 (eighteen years ago) link

Maybe I'm dense, but "Black Sabbath = cock rock" makes no sense to me at all.

martin m. (mushrush), Wednesday, 30 November 2005 16:43 (eighteen years ago) link

I still want to start a band and call it
                  
.

Pleasant Plains /// (Pleasant Plains ///), Wednesday, 30 November 2005 17:30 (eighteen years ago) link

I'm putting all my money on STEED. The second album* should be called 'Galloping to Oblivion'.

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

moley (moley), Thursday, 1 December 2005 03:35 (eighteen years ago) link

In a similar vein, I'd like to propose a metal band named Gauntlet who dress in tights and codpieces and doublets, and sing ornate songs about chivalry and jousting, alternating between madrigal-type acoustic stuff and HEAVY ROCKIN stuff when the lyrics turn around the subject matter of seeking the holy grail.

moley (moley), Thursday, 1 December 2005 03:38 (eighteen years ago) link

First album: 'I Challenge Thee to a Guitar Duel'

moley (moley), Thursday, 1 December 2005 04:14 (eighteen years ago) link

Moley - you ought to check out Rhapsody and Three Inches Of Blood and just about every power metal band ever.

dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 1 December 2005 14:14 (eighteen years ago) link

The Blind Carbon Copies

All the sing titles would be:

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

and etc.

It'd be kinda bedroom math rock.

jel -- (jel), Thursday, 1 December 2005 18:42 (eighteen years ago) link

The Key Note Speakers

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

jel -- (jel), Thursday, 1 December 2005 18:45 (eighteen years ago) link

Make that happen, please.

Casuistry (Chris P), Thursday, 1 December 2005 21:20 (eighteen years ago) link

AC/CApella

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

moley (moley), Friday, 2 December 2005 00:46 (eighteen years ago) link

The Art Wankers

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

moley (moley), Friday, 2 December 2005 00:47 (eighteen years ago) link

A band called The Hey Hey Jump Up and Down. We'll sound just like whatever 70s or 80s band is being revived at the moment and pay off bloggers to hype our CD.

Abbadabba Berman (Hurting), Sunday, 4 December 2005 16:50 (eighteen years ago) link

The Invisibles have only mastered one song. John Cage's 4'33. Pure silence. The audience can hear only themselves clearing their throats and witnessing 'the band' 'onstage'. except the band's invisible - no one can actually SEE them.. in fact the 'gig' only starts when the audience is ready for it to begin. The ultimate in rock 'n roll mystique - no one knows at what point The Invisibles have actually left the building.

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!

john clarkson, Sunday, 4 December 2005 18:03 (eighteen years ago) link

i'm warming to this. zero touring costs. all you have to do is book the show and get the promoter to wire you the money.

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.

john clarkson, Sunday, 4 December 2005 22:23 (eighteen years ago) link

I have a stage name: Kel Surpreez.

moley (moley), Monday, 5 December 2005 06:35 (eighteen years ago) link

Given that is my name, what should my band be called and what would the music sound like?

moley, Monday, 5 December 2005 07:57 (eighteen years ago) link

The Invisibles sound suspeciously similar to a band that I've been managing for years now called The Awkward Pauses.

Casuistry (Chris P), Monday, 5 December 2005 11:45 (eighteen years ago) link

Casuistry, wanna take another band on to your roster? The Invisibles need canny management like nothing else.

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.

john clarkson, Monday, 5 December 2005 21:18 (eighteen years ago) link

that's why The Invisibles are gonna wipe the floor with every other concept band out there.

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.

john clarkson, Monday, 5 December 2005 21:32 (eighteen years ago) link

Weren't The Awkward Pauses originally just a side project for that one guy in The Pinters? Whatever happened to those guys?

martin m. (mushrush), Monday, 5 December 2005 21:43 (eighteen years ago) link

i'd really like to do a solo laptop set where i'm sitting in a leather office chair in a cubicle set up on stage complete w/ tacky pictures of relatives and inspirational calendar. while i relax in my chair and play, prerecorded projection of a computer solitaire game, interspersed with e-mail checking, goes on above my head. encore to cards cascading across screen.

fauxhemian (fauxhemian), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 02:28 (eighteen years ago) link

Sorry if this idea has been posted already, I just found this thread and haven't read through all the posts (though the ones I have read are quite funny!)

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.

Amy H (diotrans), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 17:00 (eighteen years ago) link

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.

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.

Casuistry (Chris P), Tuesday, 6 December 2005 18:18 (eighteen years ago) link

three weeks pass...
revive!

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

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

jogged out, Sunday, 1 January 2006 14:59 (eighteen years ago) link

The Awkward Pauses is the best band name I've heard in a while and if it were real I would want to hear the tunes...

Sandy Games (Sandy Games), Wednesday, 4 January 2006 03:02 (eighteen years ago) link

xpost

oops wrong link let's try again:

http://www.hmgovernment.net/

follow directions above ;)

jogged out, Friday, 6 January 2006 19:52 (eighteen years ago) link

former bandmate and i came up with some ideas, some similair to a few of these 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.

andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:29 (eighteen years ago) link

Grande Finale is hilarious to me. I want to try that.

jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:33 (eighteen years ago) link

Yeah, and you can include all the traditional ways of ending songs too (blues tags, etc.). Awesome.

Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:36 (eighteen years ago) link

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!

NZA, Wednesday, 25 January 2012 00:02 (twelve years ago) link

nine years pass...

Suburban London rapper MC Esher.

Van Halen dot Senate dot flashlight (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, 20 June 2021 17:20 (two years ago) link

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

Deflatormouse, Saturday, 3 July 2021 14:21 (two years ago) link

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

Deflatormouse, Saturday, 3 July 2021 14:25 (two years ago) link


You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.