Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Satire
Approximate word count: 40-45,000 words
Availability
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Author:
“The Blade”
is the pseudonym of a small-town Texas boy turned big city journalist with an
obvious U2 fixation. You can find more on The Funky Butts page on Facebook.
Description:
A satirical
biography of a non-existent band.
“After
nearly 20 years, the story of the Funky Butts can finally be told. In the brief
period before grunge and after the explosion of MTV, one band represented the
last gasp of pure, harmless, and good-natured rock and roll. One band
challenged the music establishment by breaking the rules and making up new ones
along the way. One band weathered controversies and scandals, and yet stayed
resolute and true to its original mission of telling lies and having fun.”
Appraisal:
If you’ve
ever read a rock band biography or even watched an episode of VH1’s Behind the Music you’ll appreciate the
satire in this “unauthorized autobiography” (you’ll have to read it to figure
out how that could be). Formed by some college buddies while going to school in
Denton, Texas, Funky Butts has many
of the music business clichés: the band member who dropped out just before the
big break, bands with style over substance, hype that builds “the next big
thing” up well beyond what their actual accomplishments warrant, and music
label shenanigans. Yet these are clichés only because we’ve heard and seen them
so many times before.
For the
music geeks, Funky Butts name checks
bands from big (Led Zeppelin) to Big Star (the best band most people have never
heard of), with plenty of actual rock history woven into the fiction. Before
reading this, I thought the best band to ever come out of Denton, Texas was
Slobberbone, but may have to revise this opinion.
One thing
that struck me was that the song lyrics quoted in the text didn’t seem nearly
as awful as most novels with fictional bands. They weren’t Lennon and
McCartney, but they might rival The Ramones. It turns out the songs are real and
there is even a soundtrack album available. Are we sure this is a
fictional band?
Format/Typo Issues:
No
significant issues
Rating: **** Four stars
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