The Next Great American Announcement

We here at Leper Pop are excitingly indifferent to announce that soon we will be allowing another rock and roll reality type show to torment us. Ever since Lucas was crowned magic furry frog of the non-existent band, Suave Porn, we just haven’t known what to do with ourselves. So, we’ve been scraping salt licks for gold and building pole vaults for the elderly. You can’t imagine how fulfilling it is to see the smile on an octogenarian’s face when she finally clears eighteen feet without displacing her hip or losing her dentures.

Before I continue, I’d like to take a moment to say a few words about old people. I was at WalMart today buying a rubber decoy fish, and I happened to walk through the adult sanitary diapers (as opposed to those unsanitary diapers – don’t be duped into buying those; you may as well just wear a burlap sack) section. As usual, I giggled to myself thinking about old people shitting all over themselves. All of a sudden, I had a moment of maturity and realized that when we make fun of old people, we are actually making fun of ourselves. Most of us are going to get old and will be subject to all the inhuman suffering current old people are enduring. And those of us who don’t get old will be dead before then, and that’s not very funny at all (except for the Darwin Award winners – I just love getting those emails. Especially when I receive the same one over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Precious.). We younger people think we are immune to the eventualities of age. But we’re not, unless death saves us from that ridicule. Even Pete Townsend grew old, albeit, as far as I know, not incontinently old. Yet. Did you know that the original lyric he wrote for My Generation was, “I hope I die before people make fun of me for shitting on myself”? But, as is the bane of most great unresolved lyrics, it was haphazardly erased and scribbled over when he had trouble coming up with a meaningful rhyme for “shitting on myself”, so he changed it to “…before I get old”. It works, but it certainly isn’t as inspired as it could have been (he should have used “knitting yon shy elf” as the subsequent line to save the endangered lyric). That should be a lesson to us all. Let xe without potential soilage cast the first snicker.

And now back to our regularly scheduled announcement.

If you are anything like me, you’ve known for about a day and a half the FOX network will be presenting a groundbreaking new rock and roll show called, The Leprosy Variety Hour and Beets. They WILL be presenting it once they agree to fork over enough cash to bring our band out of retirement, or at least buy Sid a new bass (and amp). While they are waiting to meet our demands, they plan to waste our time with a catastrophic talent show called The Next Great American Band. Brought to us by the creators of American Idol, this show proposes to pose undiscovered musical groups against one another in a weekly cut-throat musical melee. Hopefully it’s musical. The show dares to follow the American Idol model for success: present a bunch of weirdoes to make the actual contestants seem worthy, use judges to roast the shit out of everybody, impound everybody’s identity, conduct marketing research in the form of audience voting and then cross-market the crap out of the winner, incorporating a band branded breakfast cereal, Saturday morning cartoon, action figures, guest appearances on the Al Roker show, fake news stories, TV commercials for adult diapers, a Google Earth expose’, Mormon controversies and maybe, just maybe, an album and/or a single. The hymen exloding episode will be a two-hour extravaganza airing this Friday at 7:00 pm (that’s right, I’m talkin’ Central Time, the time zone that brought you Oprah and Fritos).

Before seeing a single episode of this show, I’m a bit confused by it. What do they mean, the “next” great American band? Grand Funk Railroad is The American Band, as evidenced by their web site. They earned that title by composing We’re An American Band. They had me at "A-booze n ladies keep me right". By golly, if they were good enough for Sweet, Sweet Connie, they are good enough for America. I hear she’s quite discerning. Here is where I get confused. How does this show jump from The American Band to The Next Great American Band? What happened to The Great American Band? Was one ever established? Nobody ever asked me to vote on it. Who is it? No, not The Who. I’ve already covered them by discussing Pete Townshend’s lurking runny bowel issues. Besides, I don’t think they’re American. FOX and those Idol people may be jumping the gun on this. I won’t be able to concentrate on the undiscovered bands if I don’t know who they intend to usurp with the new artificial title they hope to achieve. It’s not Starship, is it? Jeez, I hope not. Let’s assume it’s The Meatmen and move on.

The show, hereafter referred to as “the show”, will be hosted by Dominic Bowden, host of New Zealand Idol (a show where a sheep usually wins). He was chosen because Americans still think New Zealand is cool because of all of the Lord of the Rings hoopla. I know nothing of Dominic Bowden other than I think he played an orc, the one that looked like Ernest Borgnine, in Return of the King.

Like American Idol, the show will have three judges: John Rzeznik, Sheila E. and Ian Dicko Dickson. Rzeznik, of course, is The Goo Goo Dolls. I know he was partners with Robby Takac, but Robby’s songs never did anything so we, like Rzeznik, won’t give him any credit for the band. I was on board with The Goo Goo Dolls when I heard Only One, and it even drove me to buy their first two commercially noticeable albums. But then Rzeznik sold out and committed himself to writing sappy, sapful, sappish sap. He’ll fit in perfectly on this show, I’m guessing. These undiscovered bands have already sold their souls to the producers to get on this show*. Rzeznik will be able to mentor them as they kowtow their way up the charts.

* I read through the application/contract each band needed to submit. The contract pretty much does require them to sell their entirety to the show’s producers. The bands and anything they create, say, do, look like, smell like, think, ejaculate, bump into, have thrust upon them during the show belongs to the producers. And not just here on Earth. There is a line in there that states this servitude applies to anywhere in the universe and in perpetuity. Luckily for the bands there are probably multiple universes. Until those other universes are accessible, however, these people remain cartoon characters for the show, unless they can figure out a way to become real like Fat Albert did. Hey, Hey, Hey, gonna have a good time. As long as we get laid, right bands!

Sheilah E. comes to the show from the world of Prince, so she is used to being told what to do. She should be able to turn that around and instruct the contestants what Prince would have them do. But that alone is not enough to qualify to be a judge on a reality show, especially since Prince refused to write a letter of reference for her. Once they found out she is the aunt of Nicole Richie, a reality show super freak, the producers realized reality is in her blood. Plus, every good reality show needs a good drummer.

I don’t know much about Ian Dicko Dickson. I suppose I could learn more about him if I tried, but I’d rather be surprised. He is a judge on Australian Idol (where an Aborigine and a dingo duke it out each week for national glory). I assume he will adopt a similar role to that of Simon Cowell’s role on American Idol. All I really have to go on is his moniker, Dicko. I know what it means to be a Dicko here in America, so I may be able to assume he is a bit pelicanish. Since he works in Australia, I thought it prudent to research the equivalent Australian meaning. It turns out, in Australia, Dicko means Slappy. Sheila E. will be providing all of the rim shots for Dicko’s ribald flapdoodle.

From the promises strewn across mass media about The Next Great American Band, this show may be ridiculous enough for us to admire. And by “admire” I mean ridicule, as well as admire, not to mention chew over, and possibly reprove gently but earnestly.

Which brings us to the long awaited announcement. In an effort to help this show get off to a good start and remain popular in perpetuity across this universe, because we feel sorry for the executives of American Idol, realizing that they are not yet rich enough, Leper Pop will painstakingly watch The Next Great American Band program and report back to you our accounts. This way, you will not have to watch it and be able to go out and get drunk like the rest of America, watching live bands in real bars, each Friday night, while we sit at home wearing our adult diapers so we don’t miss a second of it.