I dropped some donations at a local thrift shop today and (of course) popped inside to see what I might find. While I didn't take any new treasures home, this album cover gave me a good laugh: has there ever been a more thematically-specific band than The Hondells??

When I got home I did a little research and was even more amused by what I learned: “The Hondells" were a band that didn't exist - the songs were recorded by a revolving collection of studio musicians lead by producer and California surf-rock pioneer Gary Usher. The Hondells had a legit hit song with “Little Honda,” which was co-written by Brian Wilson and Mike Love from The Beach Boys (which is pretty obvious if you listen to it!), and then went on to record this whole album of Honda-themed odes to the SoCal motorcycle scene.

Bonus fact not found in the above-linked Wikipedia article: amusingly, because the actual music was all recorded by various working session musicians, during the handful of TV performances by “The Hondells,” the band was played by random guys who happened to be hanging around the studio at the time. They were all given a little time to learn enough of the lyrics to semi-convincingly lip-sync the songs while pretending to play their instruments. Good times!

I heard of another instance like this, and I thought it was The Zombies, but a quick search jogged my memory on that story, which I'll share since I'm here

The band The Zombies from Europe somewhere had broken up by the time their song hit it big in the US, and so nobody knew how to get in contact with them. So since nobody also knew what the original band even looked like, the record company decided to just get a group of musicians together to go on tour as The Zombies. Two of those band members went on to form the band ZZ Topp.

If anyone knows the other story I'm trying to think of, please let me know

This is the most interesting TIL post I've read today.

Help me Honda...help help me Honda

Same with Boney M. 100 million record sales, and the group is Frank Farian.

Do you have a source for this? The Zombies I'm familiar with don't have that history.

Just because it's session musicians or a supergroup doesn't mean it's not a real band. I mean, would you say NIN isn't "real" because it's Reznor and whoever he hires that week?

Garbage is fake? What about Me First and the Gimme Gimmes?

Even completely fictional bands exist, in that you can't have music without somebody vibrating something:

https://www.ilikeyouroldstuff.com/news/fake-artists-real-hits

They recorded two LPs and had a long list of members names. No, they didn't tour but I think they qualified as a band.

The group's second LP, titled simply The Hondells, was released only a few months after Go Little Honda.[1] The LP yielded a Billboard 100 single, "My Buddy Seat," written by Brian Wilson and Gary Usher, backed with "You're Gonna Ride With Me," written by Usher and Roger Christian. Mike Curb wrote four songs that appear on the LP, "The Rebel (Without A Cause)," "The Lonely Rider," "Cycle Chase," and "The Sidewinder." The remaining tracks consisted of "Black Denim," "Night Rider," "My Little Bike," "Lay It Down," "He Wasn't Coming Back," and "Honda Holliday.

"Interesting part is one of the writers (Mike Curb) later formed the "Mike Curb Congregation" which had a hit "Burning Bridges"

Thry also wrote several Disney hits.

It’s a Small World

When You Wish Upon a Star

Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo (The Magic Song)

The Bare Necessities

https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-tmus-us-revc&sxsrf=ALiCzsY_bRAicILc_3T6tyNJkDBKJRenrw:1667872161275&q=Mike+Curb+Congregation+Walt+Disney%27s+Greatest+Hits&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAOPgE-LSz9U3MMwtK0jLUuLVT9c3NEwqiTdKT87O0hLPTrbSzy0tzkzWTywqySwusUrMSSrNLV7EauSbmZ2q4FxalKTgnJ-XXpSanliSmZ-nEJ6YU6Lgklmcl1qpXqzgXpSaWJJaXKLgkVlSvIOVcRc7EwcjAGoVS-pzAAAA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDhND9u537AhVTkYkEHVszAwAQmxMoAXoECBAQAw&biw=384&bih=726&dpr=1.88

How did Garbage get into this?

This isnt a case of a musician hiring backing musicians, or a group forming of session musicians. This kind of case is where a producer writes or buys a song, has studio musicians record it and invent a band when its released. The people recording the song, on the cover and on the tour group may be totally different based on who is availible or works best. The musicians would have no say on the name, song or anything else related to the band.

Tony Burrows is a famous session musicians singing on four number one hits for four seperate bands made this three of which where on 1970

It's an interesting conundrum. The band existed, it was real people making real music, it just had fictional names and backstory.

It's not too far removed from 80s and 90s teen pop stars. By that time the industry "formula" for boy bands like NSYNC and female solo acts like Britney Spears was so polished and perfected, these singers might as well have been fictional. They were merely voices and faces holding up a largely imaginary popular persona.

Perhaps a more apt comparison would be the Gorillaz or Alvin and the Chipmunks. The music made by these "virtual bands" is real and performed by real musicians, but they disappear behind the animated personas of their fictional characters.

The teen idol formula existed just about from the beginning of rock/pop. In the 50s and 60s Bobby Rydell, Fabian, etc. were young, pretty faces with passable voices (sometimes electronically enhanced) that could sell records. And television just made it easier: a couple of lip synced performances on American Bandstand and the record company was swimming in cash.

The packaging may have gotten slicker over time, but the idea has always been the same.

Here you go

I think K-Pop music and bands would be a good comp. A lot of those groups churn through the members while putting out music on the constant.

Wow! Thanks very much.

> Ultimately, the actual Zombies had no ill will. In fact, Rod Argent cracked a joke: "When we finish our tour, we have to go out as a ZZ Top tribute band and repay the compliment," he told the Toronto Star in 2017.

No problem. Glad you found it as neat as I did

Mike curb may have recorded those Disney songs, but he did not write them.

It’s A Small World

• the Sherman Beothers (Richard & Robert)

When You Wish Upon A Star

• Ned Washington & Leigh Harlingen

Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo

• Al Hoffman, Mack David, & Jerry Livingston

Bare Necessities

• Terry Gilkyson

Yes, probably he didn't write them, but members sang them.

I’m going to have to look for that greatest hits. I’ll bet they did a great job on all of those!

The wiki article you linked literally has that story under “post-zombies”

Yeah, you're right! It literally does.

I played the 45 to death over the course of that Summer; good times!