More on Rock Bands

Today is Friday, here's a list.

TOP FIVE BANDS/MUSICAL ACTS FROM BOOKS WHOM I WISH WERE REAL

5) The Weird Sisters, from Harry Potter -- Ok, I know they already kind of real, by virtue of being played in the fourth Harry Potter movie by half of Pulp and 2/5 of Radiohead. But that has to be recommendation enough to get them on a list of imaginary bands, right? And, the Do the Hippogriff song is good. It's sounds like it's by Jarvis Cocker, which it is, and that is sufficient for my imaginary band purposes, at least. They are described as "extremely hairy and dressed in black robes that had been artfully ripped and torn" and apparently have names like Heathcote Barbary and Orsino Thruston and Gideon Crumb (which last plays the bagpipes). So yeah, I would have had a 10" by 20" poster of these guys, if they were real.

4) Ormus Cama and Vina Aspara -- These ones are on here largely because of curiosity as to all the people they wouldn't be. Ormus Cama is one third John Lennon, one third Elvis, and one third Freddie Mercury, but he lives in a world in which Elvis has somehow ripped off the music that he has been hearing psychically. It's kind of confusing. And Vina is his muse, so she'd have to come too. One of the most interesting thing's we'd learn from these people, if they were real, is what fem-Lou Reed is like, because in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, Lou Reed is a woman: when his ghost twin Gayomart tells him about how weird the other world he's visited is, it's ours, and one of the things about which he is shocked is that Lou's a dude here. Fascinating.

3) Mary Bennet -- Poor Mary. All she does in Pride and Prejudice is bum everyone out, by being plain and wanting to talk about god. However, she is apparently quite gifted at the piano. She could be like a frumpier Glenn Gould! And I always feel bad for her, so she gets on the list.

2) Ok so for this one, I was going to put on Bucky Wunderlick, the pseudo-Bob Dylan from Great Jones Street, but do you know what? I didn't really like Great Jones Street. And anyway, Bob Dylan is barely real anyway, so I'll just throw him on the list his own personal self. From Chronicles, Vol. 1.

1) the Paranoids -- It had to be them, right? The goofball, fake-British invasion house band from Paranoid Mess The Crying of Lot 49 are awesome. They party at least as hard as any band in fiction, or probably real life, and they say funnier cryptically literate things than any band in real life except maybe Radiohead. They seem to sound like the Kinks when the Kinks were only loud, and their lyrics bounce around between sounding like they're by Jack Kerouac and like they're by John Donne. Just the best of both worlds, with this guys. I have an Axis: Bold as Love t-shirt that I wear and always feel self-conscious about, because I feel as if I don't know Jimi Hendrix's work well enough to justify it. And that is exactly the situation I can imagine myself in with regard to the Paranoids.