They Almost Write Themselves
For years, I’ve been thinking about writing a series of short stories (or short films!) all with plots based strictly on band names, and while I may never get to them, I figured it best to throw the idea out there, and ask for a percentage of sales, should you be so inclined to tackle the idea yourself.
Consider that “Thurston Harris and the Sharps” could be the gripping tale of a germaphobe janitor working in the ER of a busy hospital in the inner city. Or “Butthole Surfers”, which has “animated feature” written all over it. Making a tapeworm appear personable may be a challenge for some animators, but we can always consult with Obama’s people for tips.
Mind you, there is a band named “Evil Edna’s Horror Toilet”, which is fucking brilliant (and we haven’t even mentioned their cover art for their EP “Too Much Gristle In The Blancmange”, which features a creature with very ambiguous genitalia, sparking the question as to which toilet it might use in the first place… which, in retrospect, may be just the horror of it all to begin with). I’m just going to leave that there. Along with “Midget Handjob”.
Although “Insane Clown Posse”, if written as a 1940’s serial would be awesome. They could hunt Nazis, and we could tie it in with “Adolf Hitler’s Nipples” (BETTER: A time-travel, space opera that crosses over into “Disco Tits”, “Jefferson Starship”, and finally “Frankie Goes to Hollywood”, the tale of a one of the posse who splits off all Lancelot-style, to become a third-rate actor who makes it big playing cadavers in true crime period works, only to have his career become the spark of a never-ending war, culminating in a three-hour Peter Jackson adaptation of the second paragraph of the story, which merely involves Frankie going to the store for deodorant… Having the whole thing (finally) wrap up in grand Arthurian style with it being revealed that Hitler is Frankie’s father, and a whole “father-kills-the-son-and-the-son-mortally-wounds-the-father” sort of tradgedy, but with a little Shakespearean twist involving an affair and many made-up words).
As fun as that would be, one that has me fascinated as a title is “Suburban Kids With Biblical Names”. OK, and “Son of Dork”, which my son could write. We’ll leave the easy ones, like “Supertramp”, “Buster Poindexter”, “Bronsky Beat” and “Ned’s Atomic Dustbin” for later. “Adam and the Ants”, while a great comic book title, may work even better as a side project of this side project; I could take a band, and follow it as they splinter-off, writing tales based upon the names of the new bands formed. Imagine “Bow Wow Wow” as a sort of William S. Burroughs tale (there would be a sort-of precedent here, seeing as Steely Dan is named after a marital aid in “Naked Lunch”, which really brings this idea full-circle). However, there is a guy who wrote stories based on Springsteen songs, but those work from, well, imagery already there, so this is off in a land all its own, and probably begging for a cease and desist or two.
…and don’t even get me started on the potential of “Chumbawumba”. Or “Sha-Na-Na”. Either of these in the style of Clive Barker would be fascinating.
