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It's been a while since I made one of those! This actually came up yesterday in conversation with a friend.

Essentially, the best fictional band to appear in a movie (let's leave TV shows out to keep the field manageable). You choose the criteria - because the music is great, or the charisma, or whatever. The only requirement is that the band's music has to be featured in the film, it doesn't need to be original music, but they have to perform.


My pick is Spinal Tap - one of my favorite films about rock bands in general, and absurdly hilarious at that, and actually features some pretty decent tunes (which the actors play and sing themselves)

Sex Bob-Omb - despite being canonically a terrible band, they have some pretty damn good garage rock.

Stillwater - They're essentially Led Zeppelin, plus "Fever dog" is awesome.

Honorary mention to The Angry Inch, since I adore that movie, and the music is also great.

No love for Maxwell Demon and The Venus in Furs or Curt Wild and the Wylde Ratts, both from Velvet Goldmine? :(

EDIT: Fucked up the movie title :P

Quote from: Syt on February 23, 2025, 10:54:00 AMNo love for Maxwell Demon and The Venus in Furs or Curt Wild and the Wylde Ratts from Velvet Underground? :(

Fuck, it's even one of my favorite movies about rock music :D

I'm always going to forget some obvious ones when making these lists.

Blues Brothers, as they're the ones who most successfully transcended their movie big-break to become a 'real band'.

That's not to say they're the most musical or successful of the one's you've listed, just that they've grown most?

I also have the Spinal Tap albums, but haven't played those for many a year.

Sex Bobomb.
Actual good songs I sometimes listen to.

Also Detroit Metal City. Fantastic fantastic Japanese film about a band. Gene Simmons shows up to challenge them.

Buckaroo Bonzai's Hong Kong Cavaliers were amusing.

Marty McFly and The Pinheads.  :P

The Louisiana Gator Boys from Blues Brothers 2000 are undoubtably the most talented fictional band ever to appear in a movie.

 ;)

Of the ones listed, I think The Blues Brothers Band is the best; even though they don't play every song, the soundtrack is a classic.

Quote from: celedhring on February 23, 2025, 10:47:17 AMMy pick is Spinal Tap - one of my favorite films about rock bands in general, and absurdly hilarious at that, and actually features some pretty decent tunes (which the actors play and sing themselves)

Sex Bob-Omb - despite being canonically a terrible band, they have some pretty damn good garage rock.

I mean I think Spinal Tap is the obvious answer really.

Was Sex Bob-omb "canonically terrible"?  They did pretty good at the battle of the bands thing.  I rather like mid-2000s rock (think White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand) so their music is right up my alley.

Now - a "canonically terrible" band was Wyld Stallyns, even though I love those movies, we never really heard them play anything.

Spinal Tap and the Oneders.

I love one hit oneders.  That Thing You Do is a legitimately good song.

Quote from: Barrister on February 23, 2025, 04:26:41 PMNow - a "canonically terrible" band was Wyld Stallyns, even though I love those movies, we never really heard them play anything.

They do play a track at the end of Bogus Journey.

Also, canonically their music brings universal harmony. Can't get much better than that!

Other (and it had to be a Todd Haynes film :lol:) - the Venus in Furs in Velvet Goldmine. Bowie wouldn't let his music be used so lots of covers of Lou Reed, Roxy Music, Brian Eno, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop instead.

And the band itself was Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood from Radiohead, Bernard Butler from Suede, Andy Mackay from Roxy Music - and I think for one song, Jarvis Cocker.

Cold Slither

I'm going to vote for the Hong Kong Cavaliers.

Quote from: Neil on February 23, 2025, 08:00:41 PMI'm going to vote for the Hong Kong Cavaliers.

That is awesome too.

Quote from: Syt on February 23, 2025, 10:54:00 AMNo love for Maxwell Demon and The Venus in Furs or Curt Wild and the Wylde Ratts, both from Velvet Goldmine? :(

EDIT: Fucked up the movie title :P

A lot of that music (and the best) was not fictional. Off the top of my head I can recall TV Eye (Iggy Pop) and 20th century boy from T Rex.

Quote from: celedhring on February 23, 2025, 10:47:17 AMStillwater - They're essentially Led Zeppelin, plus "Fever dog" is awesome.

I think the band is supposed to be American early-mid 70s Southern Rock, like Allman Bros or Skynyrd. It's the opening drum part on Fever Dog copying John Bonham that is throwing you off.

No I am pretty sure they are supposed to be Zeppelin

Ok . . .
Stillwater is portrayed a young American band and the premise is that they are not yet well established (the main character is sent to cover another band for which Stillwater is the opening act).  Page and Jones were well-seasoned British session musicians, already quite famous in their own right in the 1960s.  It's hard to imagine Zeppelin as a relatively unknown opening act in the early 1970s.

Now I can't stop thinking about it . . .

There's an online collection of all of Cameron Crowe's writing including the Rolling Stone articles: http://www.theuncool.com/journalism/

It turns out he did write a big story on Led Zeppelin in 1975, two years after the movie is set.  Jimmy Page initially refused to be interviewed, which would fit the plot of Almost Famous.

However, in the 1973, the year the movie is actually set, he ran two stories on the Allman Brothers, one short one and a longer one which was his first cover story - which also fits the plot of the movie.  On the cover story, he gives the following account, which should be very familiar to anyone who recalls the movie:

Quote"I was 16 when Rolling Stone sent me out on the road with the Allman Brothers Band. I spent over two weeks amassing interviews with all the band members and their roadies. The night before I was to leave, Gregg Allman – still mourning the recent deaths of his legendary guitarist-brother Duane Allman and bassist Berry Oakley – had a late-night vision that the FBI could possibly be using me to investigate his band. He demanded all my tapes back until further notice. I left the tour in an emotional mess and wound up catatonic in the San Francisco airport, where I ran into my then-stewardess sister Cindy. She cheered me up and sent me home. Days later, the tapes arrived at my house with an apology note from Gregg Allman. I never told the magazine. It was my first cover story."
– Cameron Crowe – Summer 2000

Stillwater is obviously not a real band, it is a fictional composite.  But it seems clear that Crowe's experiences covering the Allman Brothers are the most important inspiration.

Huh, didn't realize almost famous was a flop and didn't recover its budget at the theatres.