I’ve decided to install one monthly feature here on Big Ole Schleep. On September 4th, I posted an entry that asked if you could be in one of your favorite bands, making no decisions but coasting along for the ride through all said band’s trials and tribulations, who would you choose? I’ve gone over some obvious choices like the Ramones, Cockney Rejects, Slade, Brainbombs, the Band, and Creedence. Slayer ultimately came out on top. But that entry was so fun to think about and write that I want to try and do it once a month, every month. Hopefully I can keep it up. In the words of the Staples Singers, let’s do it again:

1) POISON IDEA

In addition to playing on some of the most raging records of the 80’s and 90’s hardcore scene and being categorized as a punk institution, when you joined PI you signed on to career full of missing teeth, extreme unemployability, haircuts and outfits straight out of the trailer park, and a voracious appetite for drugs and alcohol that would fell a Clydesdale. When Pantera covers your song “The Badge”, you make at least 60 grand right off the bat, then turn around and cash the check to a fast-talking twitching urban “profiteer” and everything’s gone. You sputter across the US and Europe for the next ten years touring on records that no one bought. Your lead guitarist has gotten so fat he plays in a chair onstage and then eventually quits the band, thus negating most of the crowd’s thrill of watching a bunch of fuck-ups destroy themselves. When he dies, he’s a legend, but your side project band plays for ten bumps and forty dollars at the end of the night.

2) CHEAP TRICK

Despite the fact that your lead guitarist and drummer look like teachers/pederasts, you wrote plenty of anthems for middle America to kick ass to in the 70’s, destroyed Japan, then you dressed up like gay milkmen on the cover of Dream Police and everything went to hell. Your first four albums are untouchable, but pretty soon the 80’s rolled around and 1/2 of your band wasn’t pretty enough to stack up to more inferior ensembles. After record company problems that get you dropped from Epic then ignored by Warner Brothers, you set up your own label and start touring Ribfests. You’re still a sweet band that people will go see, but making up for lost time in the age of the internet is going to be one tough sell.

3) THE BEATLES

Where to start? Since your original manager who had his shit together OD’ed on pills, you are faced with a lack of business cohesiveness but luckily the weekly entreaty for a handjob is over. Allen Klein takes over after fucking the Stones and gets a large chunk of your publishing for years. Yoko? Linda? Proof positive that significant others need to start their own bands and not fuck with yours. After everyone is mad at each other for some reason that somehow doesn’t compute since you’re the biggest fucking band in the world, you’re recording your albums that you won’t tour on in four separate rooms with everyone tearing away at the fabric of the band for songwriting credits. Lennon is doing smack and barfing on Bob Dylan. Somehow Ringo has sang kids songs on all your studio records. Phil Spector is just getting out there enough to make sure your last record doesn’t sound too good, and you fizzle out and everyone’s solo career basically blows. All the hippie shit you did is out the window in the 70’s and eventually you do a Playboy interview and play some all-star benefit and get covered in blow backstage. You die boring later and all your boxsets get fake studio trickery thrown on them to make your ungrateful ex-wife a few extra bucks.

4) SABBATH

You have stolen the Devil’s own riff and written a song called “Black Sabbath” for the debut album Black Sabbath of your band Black Sabbath. You’re the heaviest thing since, well, no one is heavier than you. But you’re so blown out of your mind on chillums of hash, Hollywood rails, and taking acid everyday for two years that you start making records like Technical Ecstacy in the 70’s. After you realize you signed a shitty contract and have no money, it’s too late and your original lineup is too wasted to perform. So what do you do? Hire a tiny, marginally more handsome Mortiis named Dio to sing and keep going. By the time people realize again that you used to fucking rule twenty years later, Ozzy has married your manager’s daughter and already been popular making warmed-over 80’s garbage metal for fifteen years. After successful reunions in which you show you can still kick ass despite Ozzy reading his lyrics from a Teleprompter, you no longer own the rights to your name (Ozzfest does), and you have to rename yourself to take the lil’ man back out on the road. Bum digs.

5) THE NERVES

As if writing “Hanging on the Telephone” (one of the greatest power-pop songs of all time) wasn’t enough, a bunch of hacks like Blondie cover it on a disco record after no labels gave a toss about you in 1977 and it becomes a huge hit. You moved to LA and gave a ton of great upstart bands shows to play on, but can’t catch a break. Somehow all your songs are good and no one notices. When you break up, everyone starts another good band or writes a song that garners minor attention, but everything eventually fades away. Next thing you know you’re getting jealous of the other guy in the band being in Valley Girl back in the 80’s or embarrassing yourself at Radio Heartbeat Fest in the past year. When your record gets reissued 30 years later, power-pop geeks are stoked on it but you’re still playing coffeehouse rock n’ roll to other old people since you don’t care about punk anymore.

The winner for this month is:

THE EQUALS

For starters, you’re one of the few multiracial bands back in the 60’s, so you already have enough soul to be accepted by almost everyone. And did I forget to mention you’re the most fun band of all time? You can seamlessly throw together pop/rock/soul/funk/mod/R&B into a blender and write songs that make girls wet as soon as the fuzz guitar starts. All your songs make someone different happy and get covered years after you break up. Even though you barely make a dent in the US, women in England, Germany, and the rest of Europe are all over you and that’s where the really freaky stuff happens, so your cock is hard for the next eight years. Since you can grow an Afro and wear a handsome leather jacket after 1968, you look fucking great and wreck tang all over the Old Country. Years later whenever anyone with taste hears you for the first time, they say “Where has this band been all my life?!” and then proceed to dance. And even though Eddy Grant split to do “Electric Avenue” and waste everyone’s time, you had a good run and made a lot of people stoked. Sometimes that’s the definition of success, because you could always be in Godsmack with the rest of the guys who should be working at AutoZone.

Look for a new one next month, and send me some suggestions if you want to have some fun. Till next time!