My Tribute Band To A Tribute Band

 These days there are bands that try to replicate the concert going experience of everyone from Elvis to The Beatles to The Monkees and back again. Just a very small sample of current tribute bands:

Led Zepagain: America's Premier Led Zeppelin Tribute
The Cured and Strangelove: Tributes to the Cure and Depeche Mode
The Rolling Clones: A tribute to the Rolling Stones
Van Halen Tribute Band Fan Halen
Hotel California: The Eagles tribute

What if other show business entities used the Tribute Band concept? The comedian Gallagher's brother, who looks just like him, does his brother's act and calls himself Gallagher 2. He got so many bookings that when the "real" Gallagher's popularity started to wane he found he couldn't get even low end bookings because his brother got that market sewed up. He actually had to sue his brother in order to get his own act back, and that included face, body and voice as well.

But what other acts could be successfully cloned? I once met a guy who did a great Sam Kinison impression and there are Borat, Dame Edna and Billy Connolly tribute acts and many other British comedy acts being offered by an English talent agency. One of the performers in our show A Day In His Life performed in a Marx Brothers show. There are even "casts" of sitcoms doing tribute shows such as one based on the John Cleese show Fawlty Towers. How about shows other than comedy or music? How about lectures by Alan Watts or Timothy Leary or Carl Sagan? I suppose there are "one man shows" along these lines like A Night With Mark Twain or Give 'em Hell Harry about Harry S. Truman.

The WORST TRIBUTE ACT EVER is a guy on the radio in L.A. who bills himself as The Jesus Christ Show. He actually talks as if he is Jesus and gives moral and religious advice to callers who talk to him as if he is Jesus. How is this not blasphemous?

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