Sunday nights at 10 p.m. on VH1
Starring: Flickerstick, Soul Cracker, Harlow and The Josh Dodes Band
Despite the catastrophic season finale of Survivor 2, reality TV is alive and well, particularly on Sunday nights at 10 p.m. when VH1 airs Bands On The Run, MTV Network’s latest foray into the genre that turns ordinary people into celebrities, sometimes for almost 15 minutes. This time, however, the contestants are more than just your pedestrian participants: they’re mediocre musicians with almost palpable fantasies of becoming famous.
Bands On The Run – not to be mistaken with Making the Band, the boy-band saga which is also affiliated with MTV Networks – pits four unsigned and strikingly unexceptional bands against each other. VH1 gives each of the bands a van and sends them to 11 cities to play separate venues on the same night. Over the course of eight weeks the bands promote and play 13 shows. Each group is also responsible for setting the price of their tickets and merchandise. Borrowing a page from Survivor’s “How To Make a Reality TV Hit” handbook, VH1 has also inserted the occasional “reward challenge,” providing the contestants an opportunity to make some extra cash.
Along the way, VH1 provides each band member $20 per day, a phone card, gas, two hotel rooms per band per night, and two-way pagers. Two bands are eliminated during the tour. The winner – the band with the highest tour earnings – receives $50,000, $100,000 in music gear from Guitar Center, a video that will be played in heavy rotation on VH1, and a showcase gig before the A&R heads of “major” record labels.
According to the VH1’s official Bands On The Run web site, the show’s allure is that it offers viewers a “candid look at what the rock life is like in the trenches.” Like the original Survivor, however, it’s the casting that makes the series a success. Whether ingenious or fortuitous, VH1 found the perfect bands to kick of the series: There’s Soul Cracker, an earnest and industrious quintet from San Diego; Harlow, a gaggle of talentless Goth girls from Los Angeles; Flickerstick, five Radiohead-wannabe alcoholics from Texas; and the Josh Dodes Band, a generic funk rock group from New York who aren’t worth mentioning since they were eliminated last Sunday in a questionable, albeit highly understandable, move by VH1.
Rather than relying on tour earnings to determine which band would be voted off the island, so to speak, VH1 held a Battle of the Bands. The band with the lowest tour earnings would be sent home, unless they won the battle, which was judged by a “special VH1 panel of independent music fans.” Flickerstick, whose alcohol-induced antics provide the show’s most amusing material, were in last place going in to the event. But after the “special panel” deemed them the “battle winners,” the less glamorous Josh Dodes Band were shipped back to New York.
While the ethics are shaky, VH1 had no choice. Spending most of their time blind drunk and looking for love, Flickerstickers have unwittingly provided VH1 with a hilarious satire of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. They’re better than a naked Richard Hatch: they’re Spinal Tap, only they’re real. Without Flickerstick, Bands On The Run would be like Survivor 2 without Jerri – just another mediocre hour in a sea of mediocrity.