Fictional Bands I Wish Were Real

And *coughcough* Cute Fictional Band Members...

If you've hung around on this blog for a while - if so, hey ;) How are you doing? - then you probably know about my obsession for music, in particular bands. I also love reading books and watching television shows with bands in (I'm living the dream in my head because no one in my friendship group likes the same music as me) and it's always really annoying when you discover that they aren't actually real. So here is a list of fictional bands I wish were real, and the reasons why.

Where's Fluffy, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
If you're particularly careful at reading this blog, you might have noticed that - well, I've brought up the book/ very inferior but still enjoyable film "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" a few times. Namely here in which I discuss the playlist of the film briefly, and this one in which I did a short review. In the film, the characters are on a soul quest to find the elusive indie band, Where's Fluffy, but in the book the characters actually get to see the band play, (they're a punk band in the book) and we learn quite a bit about them. With songs like "Take Me Back, Bitch" and "You've Got That Just Fucked Look Yoko", they were named for "the fucking apathy of a xenophobic fucking nation oblivious to the fucking terror its leaders wreak on the rest of the world because they're too busy worrying if their cat might be stuck up a tree or something." Apparently they can actually "play instead of wail like fucking pop-punk goof offs." And they open their shows "pro-NRA, anti-choice, homophobic - to remind their listeners what's worth fighting for." They advertise their shows by scrawling graffiti in toilet stalls. I'm sorry, but tell me that you don't want them to exist. I dare you!

Sex Bob-Omb, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
Technically, this fictional indie rock band recorded some songs as part of the film based on the graphic novels, but that doesn't stop me wishing they actually existed. With a great semi-nerdy name like "Sex Bob-Omb", a badass female drummer Kim Pine, Scott Pilgrim on bass, Young Neil (as biggest fan and understudy bass), and Stephen Stills - vocals and guitar; I can totally see why Knives loves them. Who cares if we know from the novels that they are "average" and that Ramona, Wallace and Julie hate them. My love for this band has (cough) nothing (cough) with my out of control crush on both Scott and Young Neil. No sir. With songs like LaunchPad McQuack, Erasmus the Enchanter and Herself the Elf, I can completely sold! They have to exist! In volume three, Kim says "We are here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff!!" and as a bit of an emo, to be honest, this is sometimes just what I want in a band.

Dingoes Ate My Baby, Buffy The Vampire Slayer
The music of Dingoes Ate My Baby was actually composed and performed by real life band, Four Star Mary; but the songs are mostly backing - we don't see that much of the band. I don't see why though, because what we do hear of the rock back is great, and with a logo and name as snazzy as theirs is, I don't see why they can't come to my hometown, and um, live there. If they weren't fictional, of course. And yes, I know they broke up because Oz left to go be a werewolf elsewhere, and I know that the only formal review they got wasn't great - but Willow loved them and I completely trust her judgement. I also think that Oz was one of the best characters - "I mock you with my monkey pants" and he knew a lot about amps, so he must have been good at bass, right?

Big Fun, Heathers

Sure, it was all a ploy for JD to mass murder everyone in school. But hey, they have a good name, and the song "Teenage Suicide, Don't Do It," well the title at least shares good messages right? Okay, I lied, maybe I don't wish this one was real...

The Weird Sisters, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
With songs like "Do the Hippogriff" and "Magic Works" (no shit, Sherlock), these guys were good enough that Dumbledore hired them, and I like to imagine that Dumbledore had pretty awesome taste in music. Right? Right. Among the band's instruments were a set of drums, several guitars, a cello, a lute, a double bass and some bag pipes. When performing in Hogwarts during the Yule Ball, they performed on a magically-appearing stage, which, puh-lease, I totally need that kind of the technology. They were all very hairy, apparently and wore "artfully torn" black robes - which makes them sound all kinds of awesome. To be honest, I was sold when I learnt that they played the bag pipes and the lute. Who doesn't want a sassy band like that?

Dr Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, The Muppets

God, I love The Muppets. This band debuted in The Muppets: Sex and Violence, and that pretty much sums up just how edgy this band - the band with the world's best band name - really is, despite the furriness of the players. With Dr Teeth on keyboard and lead vocals, Animal on drums (god, I love you Animal!), Sgt Floyd Pepper - the original hipster - on bass, the sexy sexy Janice on lead guitar, Zoot on saxophone and occasionally Lips playing the trumpet, this is one band I completely want to get in on. There's a reason "Muppets Treasure Island" may well be my favourite film, and it is largely due to these players.

I suppose I'll just have to continue loving these bands in my imagination...*wipes away a solitary tear*

See you later

Bella

How Music Affects Film

And Television...And Real-Life

I only really noticed this when I was sitting doing homework and Spotify was dying on my computer. The lack of the music that I have normally throughout most of my life was disconcerting at best. Thoughts of exam halls, of silent work in classrooms, or scarier things like being in an empty house after dark filled my mind, and I couldn't quell the feeling, until I had made a slap-dash playlist on Youtube and I could resume to annotating my Art GCSE work.

But it got me thinking, about why it is that I now feel that music is the soundtrack to my life. It doesn't really matter what type it is. Of course I have preferences. When I write my novel (80802 words and counting!) I like having relatively plain music, such as film scores. Right now I like the "How to Train Your Dragon" playlist by John Powell, but when I started the book, I found the fast paced guitar chords of Blue Skies songs a good way of making myself writing quicker. When I play Tetris, I listen to heavy metal, or occasionally Falling in Reverse. When I am just browsing, I put my entire playlist on shuffle. When I walk across the heath, often on my way to acting I like listening to the Blink-182 album "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket", because I feel like I'm in the opening credits of a teenage coming of age film. Think Breakfast Club. But even without the music I prefer, I always want there to be music. I'd rather have anything, from deathmetal, to bubblegum pop, to baroque (and I hate baroque music) than silence.

In fact, I often use music to write entire film scripts. I used to do it with playlists. I would take characters and make playlists of songs that would play while their story evolved. Then I would sit and listen, editing and watching the characters like my own personal movie. Now I am more likely to direct music videos. I have the most in depth ideas for the songs "Bulletproof Heart" and "The Only Hope for Me is You" by My Chemical Romance, with ideas blooming for "S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W". The nerdiest part is that the plotlines are entirely original with both canon and alternative characters, but also work as a canon prequel to both the music videos and the comic books. So far, they also do a pretty good job of explaining things.

My question is why I feel the need to fill my life with music in this way, to the extent that it feels eerie without it. Whilst it probably has something to do with my undying unhealthy love for music, it's probably been influenced by the media that I surround myself by. The majority of this is film and television, and if you notice, everything shown on the television is wrapped in swathes of music.

Whether it be a film with a majorly hyped up soundtrack - "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist", a musical - "Miss Saigon", or just clever use of music in the background - "The Amazing Spider-Man" practically everything shown to us on screen uses music of some kind.

I think it was knocked home to me the most when I watched the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Body". This episode used no music at all, to attempt to weird the audience out. "Music comforts an audience," proclaimed writer Joss Whedon, and he was right. The lack of music made the episode chilling, stilted and awkward - which perfectly summed up the emotions that the plotline evoked. However, it also proves that essentially music is necessary, if we do not want our films to come across as jarring and strange.

Most of us assume that film is mostly visual, but this could not be further from the truth! We do get a visual experience, yes, but much of the emotion is communicated via music. Films are our fantasies, and fantasies defy logic and reality. Even if a film is not "fantasy", the dialogue is polished, the events more extraordinary than your average day. They conspire with your imagination, working with the unconcious mind to give you an entire experience of illusion, which alters our emotions. Because so much of the experience does not happen in our concious mind - instead we receive a feeling in our concious mind - we often do not notice the soundtrack to a film unless it is a breakaway hit, such as Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic. If I were to say to you - hum the background music from your favourite film - no matter how familiar you were with it, you would probably struggle to recall more than a few phrases.

Nino Rota wrote the score for The Godfather, and used a lack of music to heighten intensity in the scene when Michael Corleone shoots his father's enemy. Instead we heighten panic by using the device of hearing a train screech to a halt outside. But whilst we have already established that a lack of music can be jarring, so too can cleverly composed scores. Hitchcock originally decided that his iconic shower scene in Psycho would have no music. However, a, Bernard Herrmann wrote a composition of jabbing, jarring notes which reminded listeners of dying animals. Hitchcock used the score to great success.

Sometimes, we use science to ensure music really has the effect we want it to. Films such as Irreversible used infrasound, which has been demonstrated to cause anxiety, extreme sorrow, heart palpitations and uncontrollable shivering. Infrasound has been noticed naturally occuring around areas of "supernatural activity", and is also produced prior to major storms and earthquakes. The infrasound caused the audience to feel "disorientated and physically ill", and was used in parts of the film prior to the main shocking visual sequence.

Aside from soundtracks, some movies use songs to promote a certain era, setting or clique. For instance, in the film "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", music such as "Asleep" by The Smiths shows Charlie's depression and mental health issues, whereas songs such as "Heroes" by David Bowie show how he is happier with his friends, and has ultimately grown as a person.

If you still do not believe that music affects how we view cinema, then watch this ingenious clip in which a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean which has no speech has different styles of music played over it, inducing very different emotions and feelings to the film in each one.

I hope this has been interesting or enlightening. What do you think? Can you name songs from your favourite film? I'd love to know.

Bella
@ThatBellaFern

Music Slut

Music Slut

The other day, my wonderful friend called me a "music slut". I'm still not entirely sure what this is, but when I asked the person in question, they simply referred me to my own main Spotify playlist, which currently has 1153 tracks and is 64 hours long, and expands regularly. Whilst I still don't have a definition for music slut, looking at those statistics, it looks like he might have a point.

I decided to make up a few questions, and answer them. Because #yolo literally my entire life is one drawn out playlist of songs and music. The same wonderful friend described me as "Lost in Stereo," a few minutes after this. Feel free to answer these questions if you like :)

Favourite 4 bands?
[4 is a good number, okay. It leaves room for the all time favourite band, and the others that you know deserve mention!

My Chemical Romance. I've said this before. They're amazing, they have a wonderful evolution through the albums and were definitely one the best post-hardcore, and later punk rock bands I've heard.
Falling in Reverse - they're one of very few bands that I literally love all the songs to. That might be because they've only released 2 albums, but I remain the eternal optimist.
Green Day. They are a staple, they make up the bulk of my main Spotify playlist. I love at least one song from every album, and there are a lot of albums.
Blink-182 got me into skate punk, and are now to blame for my current obsession about learning to skateboard.

Favourite solo singers?
Marilyn Manson, David Bowie and Bribry. Although Tom Milsom's music is really happy and uplifting and always makes me smile. And he has flipping awesome hair. I would steal it if I could.

All time favourite song?
Jesus of Suburbia.

First album you bought?
I was a bit of a pop-punk obsessive when I was around seven so I do believe it was Room on the 3rd Floor by Mcfly.

Current obsession song?
Walking Disaster, Sum 41. Don't ask me why. I won't remember in a week. Two days ago it was "The Drug in Me is You."

Favourite Cover song?
"Beautiful Delilah", covered by The Strypes. "Maybe Somebody That I Used to Know" by Mayday Parade. Or maybe Korn and "Kidnap the Sandy Claws"

What's your genre?
Mostly punk rock. A bit of skate punk, a bit of punk pop. Other stuff. I don't know...

First concert?
The Strypes, at the Electric Ballroom in Camden.

Favourite rock opera?
The Black Parade. Definitely.

Favourite "small band"?
Uptown Mayhem. Just listen to them. They're wonderful. Punk rock and grunge with a powerhouse of a singer in Abby, they're amazingly talented. I wish I lived in Chicago! So badly...

Secret Musical Indulgence?
Musicals. All the musicals. West Side Story, Matilda, anything really. And then I belt it out in the shower. Same goes for Disney songs. And Starkid! So much Starkid! love.

What were you listening two a year ago?
I was going through my indie/ rediscovering old records-ey phase. A lot of The Undertones. A lot of Blondie. Squeeze, obviously. Stuff like that. And Teenage Dirtbag on repeat. I never will get Wheatus out of my head.

Two?
I went through a grunge phase, although I was pretty narrow minded when it came to bands. Mostly Pearl Jam and Nirvana, to be honest. But a lot of those bands. I've always been obsessive about music. I need it in the background of my life.

What are you currently listening to?
My playlist is currently on Shuffle. While I wrote this answer, it just shifted from Ruby Tuesday by The Rolling Stones to Strange Love by Karen O to Fuck the Rest by Falling in Reverse. (I got a cup of tea halfway through.)

Can you play any instruments?
I sing, quite well. Classical Italian and Musicals. I play the harmonica kind of decently, mostly because I heard Billie Joe play it in Minority and I really wanted to learn the part. I was an annoyingly fangirl-ey 13 year old...

Lyric that you wait for the perfect opportunity to quote?
Nobody's perfect and I stand accused. Please, someone call me perfect. (Pfft that will never happen.)

Are you in a band?
I wish. None of my friend are into the same kind of music as me. I've been trying to form/join one for about a year now, because it's all I've ever wanted to do.

Have I missed anything important out? I can't remember. Never mind. This is another one of the those annoying stuff about me posts, so I'll try and cut them out in future. Hey ho. Ho hey.

Bella x