Weekend Listomania (Special Everybody's In Showbiz Edition)

Well, it's Friday and you know what that means. Yes, my Oriental glottal stop instructress Fah Lou Suee and I will be heading off to beautiful Flathead County, Montana, where we'll be investigating some of the odder reports in the recent Flathead Beacon Police Blotter. We're particularly taken with this item, from Monday: "Three vicious pit bulls on Kelley Road slobbered on a pregnant woman while she was out walking her dog."

That being the case, and since things will most likely be a little quiet around here for a day or two, here's a fun little project to help us all wile away the hours:

Post-Elvis Rock Group or Solo Artist Whose Life And Work Would Make a Great or Appalling Broadway Musical!!!

Totally self-explanatory, obviously, and I can't think of any arbitrary rules at all, you're welcome very much.

And my totally top of my head Top Six is:

6. The Monks



Five American GIs stationed in Germany during the Cold War shave their heads, invent Blank Generation Punk Rock ten years ahead of its time, and then return to the USA and three decades of complete obscurity. You can't make this stuff up, as it happens.

5. Patti Smith



Just finished reading her memoir, Just Kids, about her scuffling years and her love affair, if that's the phrase, with the late Robert Mapplethorpe. Fuck that Rent nonsense -- THIS has the potential to be the real La Boheme for the modern age.

4. Uriah Heep



The world's longest running, least photogenic and most clueless heavy metal band -- the real Spinal Tap, in other words, and what a comedy of errors their musical could be. Incidentally, there's a story -- possibly apocryphal -- that when this video debuted on MTV, the band's record sales began to plummet so dramatically that their management literally begged the network to stop airing the thing.

3. Michael Bolton



Dock of the Bay -- The Musical. Most Dramatic Moment: Michael changes the spelling of his last name so as not to appear too Jewish. Biggest Production Number: Michael sings "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You?" to his hair.

2. Jobriath



A story that starts in 1974 with an openly gay glam-rock star given the biggest hype in music history -- billboards in Times Square, choreography by the Joffrey Ballet, Peter Frampton and John Paul Jones playing on the album -- and ends with the now broke and forgotten hero playing Sunday brunch cocktail piano at a restaurant in Greenwich Village....



..before dying, alone and out of his mind, of AIDS in 1983. If there was ever a show about "That fame shit sure drives a hard bargain," this should be it.

And the Numero Uno musical life that most deserves to be on the wicked, wicked stage unquestionably was lived by --

1. The Kinks



For the story where Ray shoves a butter knife through Dave's ribs over breakfast alone. Although the story about the time Mick Avory thought Dave was spitting at him onstage needs to be in there too. Plus...oh, hell, there are enough great stories about this bunch to provide the book for ten musicals.

Alrighty, then -- what would your choices be?

[Shameless Blogwhore: My parallel Cinema Listomania -- theme: best or worst pop music documentaries -- is now up over at Box Office. As always, I'd take it as a personal favor if you could head over there at some point and leave something pithy in comments.]