The Rocklopedia Fakebandica

We are deep, deep, DEEP in the holiday season right now. And while some of us were a little too Bob Cratchit-ty and wanted the time off to be with their families, Charles said no, let’s slap together a podcast with three random holiday movies with fake musicians in them. Here it is!

Join us on a trip back to the late 1970s, the era of disco, stagflation, and holiday specials where there’s really no Christmas content at all. Instead of jingle bells and chestnuts, we had washboards, cigar boxes, and washtubs.

Grab three to five friends, gel your hair, unbutton your shirts, practice your harmonies, and work on your dance moves, because it's time to run through 26 fake boy bands, one for each letter of the alphabet.

We continue our multi-part series on the fake bands of Saturday Night Live with a discussion of the year that almost killed the show, the long fruitful years after,...and the year that almost killed the show. Kinda like a Double Stuf Oreo, except instead of double stuffed, it’s octuple stuffed, and instead of being sandwiched together with cookies, it’s sandwiched together by turds. Good luck getting that image out of your mind!

This week, we celebrate that day long ago in Plymouth, Mass., when Americans broke bread with some illegal immigrants. Or Pilgrims. Maybe we should call the immigrants  Pilgrims. Anyway, we choose to mark the holiday by discussing Native American fake bands in pop culture. Because let's face it: Native Americans are the reason we have Thanksgiving in the first place. And it's also hard to find fake bands filled with Pilgrims or turkeys.

This week's writer introduced the world to the hardest-working music geek in all of Ireland, the great Jimmy Rabbitte. While Jimmy may think he's shite, possibly overproduced, and less musical than And And! fecking And, we are all fans of novelist Roddy Doyle, the third member of the Fake Band Hall of Fame's latest class of inductees!

The Fake Band Hall of Fame's new members are two of the biggest TV stars of the past 50 years. Plus, they have also played fake musicians on TV, in movies, on streaming, and even in video games. Please welcome Lynda Carter and Lily Tomlin to the red, fake carpet!

With the election right around the corner, we look at politics and fake bands, and the warnings that Hollywood keeps giving us, over and over again. Get out and vote, then listen!