The Friday Five for 6 December 2024

[anais_pf]

These questions were written long ago by jessycat_techie.

1. Take a book you've read. Now take the main character. put them in a band. What would the band's name be?
2. What instrument would that character play?
3. Who else would be in that band?
4. Would they stay underground or get popular?
5. Why did you choose that book?

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Comments

[anais_pf]

I realized somewhat belatedly that this set of questions never asks you to identify the book. Interesting.

[softfruit]

Indeed! I did with my answers, slightly noticing that along the way but not quite enough to put it in words in the answer. But that is a fun kind of mystery game for all-read-very-similar-books gaggles of friends. Identify the book by the band name of a central character...

As mine is f-locked

[softfruit]

1. Take a book you've read. Now take the main character. put them in a band. What would the band's name be?
Aziraphale from Good Omens, the Nice Quiet Harp Band, formerly the Radical Harp Band, formerly the Band Of Harpists.

2. What instrument would that character play?
A harpsichord, due to an error when shopping, but that would play exactly like a harp nonetheless. As would the drums and acoustic guitar of other, perpetually confused, band members.

3. Who else would be in that band?
I'm not sure of the fleeting backing band members, who may just be passers-by who have been miraculously inducted. But that time Crowley did a guest appearance due to the drummer being unable to make it, where his electric guitar sounded like an electric guitar most counterintuitively for the fanbase, and it caught fire part way through the set, was most memorable according to fans and not least for how for one night only they were introduced as "F Harp"

4. Would they stay underground or get popular?
They would be just as popular as Aziraphale would enjoy, which is to say about eighteen fans who would reliably appear at every concert without too much in the way of new people and no-one would ever ask any questions about how the group had apparently been going since the first Gladstone administration without the harpsichordist ever being replaced.

5. Why did you choose that book?
Because it's one of my favourite books, and the obviousness of Crowley's glorious metal band was too easy.

The other, paired, one I thought of doing

[softfruit]

As this one doesn't seem to have inspired as many responses as usual, perhaps a second from the same person will be indulged here as there were two answers wrestling one another in my mind. Not sure about the rules on rude words so I've slightly redacted.

1. Take a book you've read. Now take the main character. put them in a band. What would the band's name be?
Crowley from Good Omens. Just about the only still-living character from the 70s Glam Rock era to be both famous then and not a matter of police investigation now (a few tried, but rapidly chose early retirement). Crowley is lead singer and only consistent member of Metatron, a band whose official pinbadges were inspired by Blondie and read "Metatron is a band (and a c--t)".

Creating a band, writing a string of albums and touring takes a lot of effort, but Crowley felt it was worth it for getting whole stadiums full of fans to chant 'Metatron's a c--t" en masse. And the touring allowed a series of small local tasks for Hell to be undertaken as well as giving the band a reputation for playing smaller venues.

NME interview, 6 April 1984:
David Quantick: "Your last album went triple platinum and you sold out Wembley Arena seven nights in a row. Why are you playing Rhyl?"
Lee: "People there need something... tempting... in their lives."

2. What instrument would that character play?
They were fairly ordinary electric guitars. Lesser demons would have gone for a showy twelve-string but Crowley knew what mattered was not the size of your instrument but the sigils etched into the fretboard.

No-one quite knows how the strings on the electric guitars Crow Lee plays survive the instrument being on fire for the full three hours of a concert, but it was iconically popular and the way it hypnotised the crowd was sometimes useful. Some nights Crowley would set fire to the guitar, tell the entire stadium to look at the flames and hear their favourite Metatron songs, then f--k off to the bar for a few hours before coming back on stage for the encore. I mean, playing the same songs every night... that's not rock and roll. Besides the fights that would break out after the gig over whether I've lost my soul now give me yours was the opener were FUN.

3. Who else would be in that band?
No one, including the other band members, can remember their names.

4. Would they stay underground or get popular?
They were incredibly popular with rock and metal fans, and their peculiarly detailed imagining of the denizens and hierarchies of Hell were the subject of countless university dissertations. Privately, Crowley was glad to have wrapped up the band before the likes of TikTok. Endless videos with titles like "why did no-one ever get a photo of Crow Lee not wearing that incredible snake mask: proof he was a grey alien" infested social feeds. Though he did send copies of them all to Hell as proof he had been spreading doubt and misinformation. It was the electricity thing all over again. Humans were so much better at these things than demons, and they had the numbers.

Metatron's last long player was 1986's "Metatron Sings Queen", available at service stations all across the UK motorway network. Snopes.com has a page debunking the story that if you play it backwards you can hear Fell from The Nice Quiet Harp Band arguing with Crow about whether choosing to play an album constitutes enough free will that a hidden message selling the listener's soul is fair dealing. No-one at Snopes can explain where that page came from, and no matter how many times they delete the file from the server it won't stop appearing.

5. Why did you choose that book?
Because it's one of my favourite books, and the contrast of Crowley's glorious metal band and Aziraphale's "harps were very popular in the early days, they are bound to come back into fashion" ensemble is fun.

[cornerofmadness]

You can find mine here.