I Have Seen The Future Of Music...

About a year ago a singer-songwriter I’d fallen in love with but never seen live was playing at a small venue about 90 minutes from here and very close to a friend’s weekend house. (First-world life hack: Always have friends with weekend houses instead of owning one yourself, as I hear from reliable sources they can be a serious time suck.) So we saddled up and made the trek, which was very fun, and now I get emails from the venue about every other day, which is less fun but does give me a window into that stratum of the performing arts hierarchy.

Lately it’s mostly tribute bands, about which I would be snarky had I not heard a really good one two years ago. (Sometimes I make fun of things I know nothing about, which I realize is wrong but I blame my parents.) It was a very rainy night in Savannah, and The Wildflowers—“North America’s premier touring tribute to Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers”—were playing in the performance space that occupied most of the lobby of our hotel, so it seemed the thing to do. Not only were they really good, but I think we brought the median audience age down a bit, which is always welcome.

Tribute bands are bigger business these days than I certainly thought. The Beatles, Grateful Dead, and Led Zeppelin each have dozens, and god knows how many Elvis impersonators there are. But Abba, Queen, Fleetwood Mac and others are solidly into double digits. As good as some of them I’m sure are, I’m not making a three-hour round trip for any of their shows. But yesterday the plot thickened with the appearance of a notice for Bostyx, “the ultimate tribute to Boston and Styx.” This is to my mind a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup-level genius idea, especially since I could never tell the two bands or their music apart anyway. In fact, you could add in Kansas and Foreigner and not only kill four birds with one band but corral the essence of 1980s America into a 90-minute set. Boskanforstyx, or Kanstyxforbos, or wait, I’ve got it: BKFS. Their fan base will take it as short for breakfast, their favorite meal of the day because it’s the one they’re most awake for.

Rarely do entire new categories of popular musical assemblages emerge from whole cloth, whatever that means, but I hereby declare, by the authority vested in me as an official Spotify artist—I have two original songs on there—that the Poly-Band Tribute Band, or PBTB, is now and forever more an actual thing. Here are some of its charter members:

Red Hot Chili Vanilli: Combining these bands is a natural, as one has a bassist named Flea, and the other had to flee when everyone found out they were massive frauds. For authenticity, all of the band members’ many tattoos are fake.

Bachman-Ike and Tina Turner-Overdrive: Sadly, this tribute band plays but one song, Proud Mary, over and over, because in a true tribute to BTO, band members only know three chords, and Proud Mary is the only Turner song they can play.

My Chemical Rage Romance Against the Machine: I most certainly do not know the difference between emo (My Chemical Romance) and nu metal (Rage Against the Machine), but my sense is if a minimally talented band blended them into a fusion sound no one could tell what it was anyway.

Pearl Traffic Jam: You’re telling me you don’t want to see three people try to emulate Steve Winwood, Eddie Vedder and Dave Mason on the same stage? You should. I’m imagining the three of them singing into the same mike and getting their hair all tangled into one big mass from excessive head gyration. Good times.

Jimmy Eat Meat Loaf: It’s challenging to be a poly-tribute band when one of the tributees is a one-hit wonder—Jimmy Eat World’s The Middle—but these plucky performers sail past that challenge with such commingled testimonials as You Took The Words Right Out Of The Middle Of My Mouth, I’d Do Anything For The Middle Of Love, and Paradise By The Middle Of The Dashboard Light.

The Beastie Beach Boys: Before you Baywatch wannabes get your trunks in a knot, know this: the score in total Grammy Awards is Beastie Boys 11, Beach Boys 2. That’s right, the Jewish rappers from NYC have almost a dozen of the utterly meaningless statuettes awarded by the spongy center of the music business, while the SoCal geniuses behind Pet Sounds have a paltry pair. But you’ll love this band’s encore, a rap version of Surfer Girl where the title character dies after becoming impaled on her own board.

Hootie and the Anthrax: Another natural, as both anthrax and Hootie’s original partners, the Blowfish, can kill you if improperly handled. But an incredible challenge for the band’s front man, as blending Darius Rucker’s rich and raspy baritone with Joey Belladonna’s piercing tenor is no Monday NYT crossword, nor is finding a happy medium between songs like Hootie’s One Love and Anthrax’s 1000 Points of Hate. Artistic challenges abound. As an aside, the band’s other idea was Death Cab for Cutie and the Blowfish.

But why limit tribute bands to music? How about a few for some easily swirled together stars of stage and screen, like:

The Ryans: One after another, lookalike actors render classic scenes from the collected Gosling-Reynolds-Phillippe filmography. The show’s climax arrives in the form of an ab-off as the trio flexes their six-packs in an objectively tasteless manner to the squealing delight of their fans.

The Hamlets: Actors portraying actors who portrayed the Prince of Denmark fill the stage, and vaguely resemble Richard Burton, John Gielgud, Kenneth Branagh and many more. The “To be or not to be” soliloquy is done as a six-part round, which is only marginally as dismal as it sounds. The oddly surprising guest star, given he appears in every show, is a mimic of Russian megastar Innokenty Smoktunovsky, whose 1964 film Hamlet was called by none other than Laurence Olivier “the most brilliant I have ever seen.” Smoktunovsky lapped the Hamlet field in the 1966 film Watch Out for the Automobile by playing an insurance agent/car thief who plays the tormented Dane in a community theater production, and in 1974 he played FDR in Take Aim. The Urals got nothing on that Russian’s range.

The mind reels with possible mash-up categories, but even if you stick with music, the pit is semi-bottomless, to wit: Kool and the James Gang, Queen Crimson, The Jackson Five for Fighting, The Ben Folds Five for Fighting, Maroon 5 for Fighting, and so many more. We really do owe Bostyx founder David Victor a debt of gratitude. David’s path is also worth a mention, for it was while playing in a Boston tribute band called “Smokin’” that he was discovered by Boston band founder Tom Scholz, toured and recorded with the real Boston for a few years, then left and formed Bostyx. Also, because it wasn’t already confusing enough, then he founded ProTributeBands.com, your one-stop PBTB shopping headquarters.

And now, how about some actual jokes with PBTB punchlines:

“Don’t you think this part of the essay is a bit of a stretch?”

“Yes No Doubt”

“What’s everybody’s favorite band on Sesame Street?”

“AC/DC/ZZ Top”

“What’s a mash-up I like as a punchline but can’t think of a set-up for?”

“Celine Dion and the Belmonts”

Apologies for that last one to anyone born after 1970. It’s very fun to have a readership that ranges in age from about 22 to 96, but sometimes it does make picking cultural touchstones tricky. In that vein, I do think I’ve thought of the perfect solo PBTB to span the full range of my readership and bring this endeavor to a close. After all, who wouldn’t want to experience the musical genius that is James Taylor Swift.