Maybe you’ve heard of the All For Nots, a fake band consisting of “musical actors from Williamsburg.” Watching a couple episodes over at their site makes it pretty clear that the non-band’s name is more apt than perhaps they’d like to hear. Breaking down the fourth wall, they recently played a show at the Annex. As the NY Times City Room blog notes:
On Wednesday night, City Room went down to The Annex on the Lower East Side and scoped out the performance of the All-For-Nots, a spoof of an indie Williamsburg band that is the center of a new Web series backed by former Disney chief executive Michael Eisner. This was the band’s first performance in New York since the series debuted last month. (They had an earlier performance at the Mercury Lounge back in December, an impressive debut venue for any band, real or fake). The conceit of the Web series, introduced in the first episode, is that a documentary crew is following the band around on tour. In other words, faux-reality television.
Ugh. If you continue reading, it turns out people showed up, someone used the word “slammin’” without irony, and the band’s annoying fake manager has an annoying real blog. Oh, Disney, you already turned Manhattan into a theme park, and now this. Videogum has some footage from the show (an episode where the band heads off to play a college, gets in a fight) along with some footage of the Monkees, who did this kinda faux-reality television with songs that were actually good. Novel. The All For Nots stuff is pretty painful … but, hey, at least pain’s real. Check it out. There’s also a MySpace, which they mention in that aforementioned episode, though it seems they exaggerated their friend count. Let’s hope they don’t start a Twitter.
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Wow, Yeah, pretty annoying, although not any more so than most Williamsburg kids.
lighten up. sorry if this is how the rest of the country looks upon your precious little “scene”, but i guess you crybabies had to find out somehow.
Oh, Christ.
Ugh is right. Seriously, what’s the point of this, and who is the audience? Satire directed towards indie rock would be welcomed, but that’s not what this is. It’s like that fake band on Quarterlife.
A post on a fake band but no post on Moby at Maxwell’s?! What gives Stereogum?
who the fuck cares about moby?
Shirley?s kind of cute.
I loved the Monkees, but I probably won?t ever watch this, I have an aversion to watching ?television? on the internet.
If it was on an actual net work?I probably still wouldn?t watch unless Shirley got nude.
Oh. My. God. I accidentally watched a minute of the video. That is some of the worst writing/acting I have ever seen. I wouldn’t dare torture myself by watching what actually happens when music begins.
I would like to point out that there already was a Monkees 2.0 back in the 80s called the New Monkees. As I recall, they sucked too.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought it was going to be a satire. That songwriting is pretty terrible. Worst lyrics ever.
doesn’t eisner like own stereogum or something?
wait.
you’re saying that ‘slammin’ is okay with irony? is it actual possible to do so without technically being plain old sarcastic?
I think it is hilarious. lighten up. You look like losers bashing this.
Funny sad, not funny ha-ha. I just don’t understand why the music must be SO bad. Why? To the Monkees point: I wouldn’t categorize it as “good” per se, but at least listenable.
Screw Williamsburg. It deserves what it gets, as most of the “music” coming out of that “scene” is barely better than its faux counterparts.
It’s a real shame that Stereogum has to have such a knee-jerk reaction to this — and in effect miss the point completely. The purpose of the show is to exploit the humor of deluded musicians everywhere who believe their due is coming — when in fact they’re just as anonymous as the next ‘important’ band. There’s certainly a breaking of the fourth wall here — the actors performs real shows in character, blogs are written, etc. — but rather than simply scoff presumptuously that AFN must be a MySpace/ Web2.0-ized attempt to market a new band, perhaps it might be better to try evaluating the show on its own merits.
but if they weren’t delusional, they’d have broken up. so it’s actually a shit idea.