Coming to you from the studios at the Illinois Rock and Roll Museum on Route 66, it's the Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast. Hey everybody, it's Ray the Roadie. And yeah, I forgot.

This is Hollywood Mike. You forgot your name? I did for a second. Holy shit.

It's been that kind of day. I can imagine. It's been cold.

Yeah, it's cold, definitely cold. Snowy. You know, I took like three weeks off from my day job.

Okay. And for the past five to seven days, I've been catching up on emails that I didn't. You went back to work.

Yeah, I went back to work. Yeah, I took like three and a half weeks off. Wow.

And it just doesn't pay. No, there's just more work to do when you get back. Yeah, right.

So it's been one of those days. But I'm glad the holidays are over because I have my own company. I've got, you know, my distributors and everybody's trying to do these, you know, holiday parties and a little bit.

I'm so glad it's over because nobody wants to irritate or piss off each other. You know, you know, Chris can celebrate this and and and Jewish celebrate this holiday. It happened to be on the same day.

Holiday and all this other stuff. Yeah. And everything was good.

So everybody said, you know what we're going to do? We're going to do holiday parties on January 13th. How's that? That way we don't irritate or piss off anybody. Let's just pick a neutral day.

And then then some asshole says, yeah, but Chinese New Year, it doesn't happen until we all punched him in the face. Oh, it's like, you know, you know, you can't please everybody. I got a guy, I got a friend of mine that works at a banquet facility.

He says they do Christmas parties in January. So, yeah, nobody comes. Nobody comes.

Nobody goes. It's done. Before the holidays.

Oh, they're all ready to party in January. They're done. Yeah, I know.

You blow your load by January 1st. And nobody wants to go to a holiday party. Everybody's doing dry January.

Yeah. Oh, God, I started that. You know, Frank Sinatra said it best.

He said, I feel sorry for people who don't drink because when they wake up in the morning, that's the best their day is going to get. Yeah, yeah, that's true. No, but seriously, what I what I like the most about the holidays being over and done with is we can get back to our regularly scheduled garbage day.

That's right. Hey, it's garbage day. Yeah, you know, it's like sometimes Dawn forgets to bring the garbage out.

I know I got to say, hey, stupid girl. Yeah, you know, I know you got to get that. You got to bring the garbage out.

I'm in so much trouble. I know you are when she loses. Yeah, you got to tell her it's not coming out.

Well, what do you guys feel about that girl? All right. Yeah. This is a stupid girl that doesn't mind being called stupid.

That's right. That's right. We have dealt with that sometimes where people will come up and be like, are you trying to say the girls are stupid? Yes.

I think I think you should call it stupid boy. And we're like, OK, we we understand. You have no idea what we do, do you? That's pretty much the answer.

You know, yeah, right. Yeah. You have.

Why are you here? Yeah, yeah. We're only going to do one thing tonight, pretty much. And if you don't know what that is, you're wasting your time.

Yeah, exactly. So why don't you explain to everybody what stupid girl is? You go for it. OK, well, stupid girl is a tribute to the band Garbage from the 90s.

I mean, they're actually still playing. They're still making great music in the in the tribute scene. You know, you try to when you're thinking of the name of a band, you want something to be identifiable and something that's kind of unique.

You know, so Supergirl was one of their biggest hits. And it does kind of draw a little bit higher. So, you know, you push the envelope a little bit.

So that's why that's why I picked it. But we're a tribute to the band Garbage. OK, so tell us about Garbage, because I'm going to tell you the reason why.

Because there was a time in my life, many, many, many years ago when I was in my late 20s, the early 30s. People thought that I looked somebody like Dwayne The Rock Johnson. Right.

Because my hair used to be different. My hair was it was it was more plentiful. You know, who thought that, huh? You know, there's always one in the crowd.

There's always one in the crowd. But I can't tell you how many times I was stopped at like O'Hara airport by security saying, hey, sir, we'll escort you to your plane. And I was like, why? And it slowly dawns on me.

Apparently, I looked that much like him and I didn't I never saw it. But you did take the escort, right? Of course. Absolutely.

Of course I did. I also got bitched out by by like an 80 year old lady. I tried to explain to her that I'm not him.

And she just went off on me, cursing at me like a sailor, because I wouldn't sign that autograph for her grandson. If I just finally said, give it to me. But I was expected to know everything there was to know about Dwayne Johnson.

And if I didn't, the person who was asking me was just like pissed off and left. And I ruined their day. So tell us about garbage.

You know, somebody walks up to you and says, yeah, so I've never heard of these guys before. Why are you doing a tribute band to them? Who's the historian? I'm kind of the historian a little bit. Okay, yeah.

Name and what you do. My name is Julie, and I'm the lead singer of Stupid Girl. I'm usually the one who's the one who fields the questions about garbage, because I've followed them for so long.

I fell in love with them when I was in high school. I just love their energy. I loved everything that was about it.

They were different than everything out there. The lead singer was a woman, and it was all producers. It was pretty much fronted by Butch Vig, who also was producer for Smashing Pumpkins album.

I forget which one. The biggest one is Nirvana's Nevermind. Nevermind, yeah.

So he put the band together, basically. He was like, they were like, everybody's in a boardroom and said, give me these four people. Well, actually, it was him and their two friends, which was Duke.

Yeah, Duke Erickson and Steve Marker. Steve Marker, and they came together. And they were the ones who kind of started it before, and they were producers for different projects.

And I guess they heard Shirley Manson. She was in a different band called Angel Fish. And it was like three o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday on MTV.

And Steve was the one that actually stayed up, watched the video and was like, that's the girl. That's the one who's going to be in our project. I want her.

So then she was already in Scotland, I think at the time. And they flew her down. And they were like, oh, come over here and jam.

And it was a total disaster. She was totally uncomfortable. They were like, oh, we want you to come up with lyrics on the fly.

And she'd never done that before. So she was kind of like a fish out of water with that. And I feel like that all the time, too.

I feel like the awkward one in the group. So I usually try not to talk too much. Except for now.

Except for now. This is the one time. Would you shut up, please? Give you the history lesson on garbage.

But that's how it started. It was really bad. And they both all agreed.

They're like, oh, this didn't really go so well. And then eventually they were like, OK, how about you come back in? We'll try it again. And then it blossomed.

And from there, they were able to write music and really come together. Sold over 17 million albums. Yeah.

Out of Madison, Wisconsin. Wow. That is surprising.

Isn't it? Wow. Man. Well, I don't know if you guys are familiar with Smart Studios.

So Butch Vig and Steve Marker, they actually founded it. I think it was in 1982. And if people want to go online and check out, just look up Smart Studios.

But it was Madison, Wisconsin was hugely influential in the early alternative movement. Just from garbage and smashing pumpkins and Nirvana and all the work that they did there. Right.

Yeah, no, I can totally see that. So that was not the answer I was expecting. I was expecting, well, you know, there's this grunge band, you know, they just kind of rocked a little bit.

Because that's normally what people say. She knew the name of the producer that decided we're going to do this. And she's a historian.

And she knew that the first time out, it sucked. I mean, she knew all of that stuff. Yeah.

About it. And you guys didn't say anything. Come on.

What the heck? I mean, what's going on here? We have nothing to say. Nothing. No, we're fine.

Julie says it best. Well, to be fair, I think like Brooke, she's our other guitar player. And we have Paul, who is our drummer.

They weren't really like garbage fans. Like, oh, my God. Like me.

I'm a fan girl. I'm the one who's like, oh, my God, Shirley is amazing. But they've said that when they've started listening to the music and they've started playing it, they're like, wow, this song's really awesome.

This song. This is another hit. I didn't remember the song.

And then it's just like it's a flood of memories that come back. I've been producing garbage all my life. I produced garbage before I threw it out, before I came here.

So I'm huge producing garbage. Right. Where's my Grammy now? Yeah.

My Grammy is at home right now with my Grampy. Well, something I wanted to add. This is Brooke.

I play guitar. I loved garbage when, you know, back in the 90s, when you heard it on the radio. I wasn't like a huge fan, like Julie said, wasn't a super fan.

But when she joined the band, I started coming around. Well, not garbage, but stupid girl. I started coming to the shows.

I was like, oh, my God, I know all of these songs. And I feel like that's what happens. Like people are like, oh, yeah, I'll come see you.

I don't really remember garbage much. Maybe a couple. And they're like, I knew like all but like two of the songs.

Yeah. No, I agree. They definitely, I would consider them to be almost underground because the funniest thing is my knowledge of garbage.

I would never have heard of them unless I didn't have a friend who was a super fan of Hole. Yeah, for sure. I was in a band at one point in time where he added a female singer and she just loved the music of Courtney Love.

Somebody's got it right. No, she's had she had a couple of songs. But there was there was a lot of stuff.

She said, let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this.

And because she was such a Hole fan, I thought that I just assumed it was Hole. But no, it turned out, no, it was actually garbage. So that was that was how I discovered that it was her name.

Really? Shirley Manson or did she pick it because she's like Manson, Charles Manson. She needed a catchy name. Her real name is Shirley Manson.

It is. And she would know. Wow.

Interesting. Interesting. So good.

No swastika. No swastika. No, no, not that type of Manson.

No, no. But her name really is Shirley Manson. So that's good.

So who put the whole thing together? How the project started? I'm going to shift this over to Mike. Okay. Well, the project started.

I think I knew the answer. It originally started in 2019, but unexpectedly, the original singer passed away. So when that happened, the band kind of went on hiatus, a couple of years went by.

And then Julie was introduced to us through a mutual friend. And that was I think that was like the summer of 2021. And then she tried out and it was great and worked out.

And we just kind of took off from there. And then last year, Brooke and Paul, they joined the band. And we've been, you know, we've been going ever since then.

Now, don't skip over the whole thing, because she's a fangirl, right? So the second she found out it was a garbage tribute band, and then she got the gig. I mean, let's talk about how loud she possibly screamed. I mean, did you hear that? Oh, this is a funny story too.

Well, right. I guess the opposite is true. If you want to know about after the tryout, because some people are poor at communicating.

Oh, well, I'm trying out for, you know, three dudes. And I didn't even know I got it at all. Like, they're just stone-faced the entire time.

I had that. It wasn't until like, they're like, oh, yeah, we'll wait till we book some shows. And I'm like, so did I, am I in? They're like, well, yeah, yeah, you're in.

Like, why didn't you tell me? Like, say something, make it official. Yeah. Can we do that part over again so I can jump up and down and scream? Right, exactly.

Be excited or something. I remember getting in my car, driving home. And I'm like, I don't even know what just happened.

What just happened? So you said three dudes. So who are the original members? Well, so the original members are Mike, the bass player right here. Right.

I'm the last original member from the original group. Right. Right.

But after Julie left, the original members were like, does this work? I'm like, yeah, we're going to keep it going. But we just did a bad job of telling her that. So we knew it, you know, we knew it.

But we just, you know. But after that, you know, it took us a while to kind of to get our legs and actually, you know, book some shows. I think we only had one show in 2021, two in 22.

But then 23 is when we kind of picked up some picked up some momentum. But all this audition and the whole thing that started in 2019. No, no, no.

You know, 2019 was with a completely different lineup, completely different singer. And then the band, after the original singer passed away, the band just stopped. So how long have you been in the band? Oh, gosh, I think it's three years now.

I always, I'm so used to being like, oh, I've been in here only for two years. Yes, they're so long. I'm like, wait, no, it's three now, right? So you can tell she's a singer, too.

And he's not. He's better at rapping. So finding out that they're accepting you in the band, it was kind of like a sucker punch.

Hey. He was waiting. He's like, how can I sneak that in all day? The sneak that in.

That was good. I got Post-It notes all over my desk at home. How can I do this? That was all done.

So how did the rest of the band, the current lineup come to be then? Come to pass? Paul, do you want to tell? Well, I was the next one of this lineup to join. I've known Mike since 1981, and we lost touch for quite a bit, until 2019, where we were in other bands together. And then a spot opened up, and I was previously, like you said about bands, garbage.

I only know Stupid Girl and that one that she sings on. And that other one, yeah. Yeah, that other song was great.

I heard it once. Something about the weather. I played on that 45, it was great.

But then when he gave me the set list, because I actually did a fill-in show first, and I'm like, okay, I know that one. Oh, I know that. Oh, that was Garbage? Oh, wow, that's amazing.

So then I was hooked, and that's how I got in, just because I knew the bass player. Right. And so you were the last person to come along.

Paul and I kind of joined at the same time, right? My first practice, you ditched for the first practice. Funny story, too. I am not playing with a chick guitar player.

Am I auditioning, or am I in the band? Because it's going back to not communicating, and you're like, oh, no, you're in. I'm like, what if I suck? And I'll give you a little history. So Julie and I, we go back, what, 20 something years? 20 years or so? Yeah.

Back to the good old Ashbury Coffeehouse. I used to play an open mic there, and she would come, and she liked some of my songs. Where was that? In Willow Springs.

Yeah, okay. Willow Springs. Yeah.

Oh, is that that place that's kind of right on the corner, and it looks like an old village? Yeah, and it's a kiddie corner from, what, Imperial Oak? You know, we probably are running each other before, because I hosted an open mic there several times. Oh, man. Yeah, that's where I grew up as far as- Like when they did it upstairs.

Upstairs. Yeah. And everyone just chain smoked, and it was freaky.

The first time I went there, there wasn't even mics or anything. It was just so packed, and they would say, who wants to play next? And you just raise your hand, and you just play where you were. It was fun, but that's how we met, and we weren't friends off the bat.

You kind of, no, I was fangirling about you in the corner pretty much. I was like, oh my gosh, you sound so amazing. She plays so great.

I just want to be her best friend and hang out on the weekends. Just be best friends. No.

Yeah. Well, we hung out a little bit. You know, that was like your early 20s and stuff.

Yeah. In a weird time, people were kind of going to school and kind of not, and kind of growing up and getting crappy apartments and stuff. But we stayed in touch over the years, and when she joined Stupid Girl, I started going to the shows.

And then they had asked me if I wanted to join, partially, you know, because I play guitar, but also so we could add some of the harmonies and backup vocals and stuff, which has been a really nice dynamic. People seem to be enjoying it. But yeah, that first practice, I was like, am I trying out or am I in the band? That's right.

I put the same way. And I kind of like, and it's almost like when you, when you like test drive dating a friend, you know, like, I'm like, okay, guys, so Julie. I don't know why I just jump right in.

So here, I'll let you, this is my analogy. So I'm like, okay, so say, say you hate, say there, say you hate what I'm adding. Say the vibe is terrible.

We could still be friends. You know what I mean? Like, if we're not vibing, like, and you're like, listen, it's not working out. Please leave.

I will still love you forever. You guys started bonding and communicating right off the bat, but still at this point, neither one of you knew if you were actually in the band or not. Yeah.

Yeah. So, so they went, so, so I can see it now. They met over at the Ashbury coffee and they sat down over a cup of mocha, chaka, whatever.

Right. And they said, and they said, yeah. And they said, are all guys like this? They had the whole, I hate men because they won't communicate.

I don't know if I'm in the band. Yeah. Are we friends? Yeah.

Yeah. Don't even know if they're friends. Our story is not even that cool.

He kidnapped my dog and said, if you fail this audition, you're never going to see the dog again. I'm like, Mike, come on, please. So I was nervous, but I made the band.

Yeah. Well, that's good. The dog ran away anyway.

Okay. So you still didn't get the dog back. So you're free to go whenever you want.

So we've been talking about is I want to hear some garbage music because for the life of me, I can't think of that other one other than stupid girl. Yep. That's right.

It's on. Doesn't sound right. Let's hear some garbage.

I want to hear some good music. Yeah. By garbage.

By garbage. Yes. Yeah.

We got, we ready to play. I see a guitar over there. Let's take a little break and get them all set up.

Sounds good. We'll be right back. You're listening to the rock and roll Chicago podcast.

Hey, everybody. It's Ray, the roadie, and this is Hollywood Mike of the rock and roll Chicago podcast. If you've been joining our weekly program, we have great news for you.

Just tune in to road to rock radio on Mondays at 7 p.m. central time. And you can hear a rebroadcast of one of our past episodes. Then again, on Thursdays at 7 p.m., you can hear our most current episode brought to you by the Illinois rock and roll museum on route 66.

So go to road to rock.org, scroll down and click on radio station. That'll bring you to the road to rock radio, a station committed entirely to the great music from Illinois, from Chicago blues born on Maxwell street to today's rock and roll and everything in between 24, seven, all music with its roots in Illinois. And we are back with stupid girl with their first performance of the evening.

That wasn't very nice. Don't call him. Would you call him? Wow.

Very nice. Excellent. Excellent.

Excellent. And that just goes to show you, I am not as familiar with that song. See, that's, that's a deeper, that's a deeper cut.

That's what you asked for. I did. I wanted to hear the other song.

Oh, the other, the other song you haven't heard before. Yeah, that's right. Very good.

That was a single off their strange little birds album. It was a, it was a single for them. And that's one of, it's one of our favorite songs.

And the video was awesome. And her pink hair look is one of my faves. True story.

So who's playing bass in your band? I am. So you're, you're playing acoustic guitar here because you're egotistical. And absolutely.

That's what, that's what happens. I mean, the whole time I was wondering if you're the one playing the bass, then where's all these extra licks and everything coming in from when, uh, when you're performing live, it's coming from our other guitar player. Okay.

So you have another guitar player eventually. Right now we're working with some really talented subs. Okay.

Yes. We are in the, on the hunt for our forever person. Gotcha.

Okay. All right. So anybody, no, I would have to add like six or seven hours to my day every day in order for me to do that.

But, um, they are looking for another guitar player. And where, where are you guys located? Where'd you come from? Mainly, mainly South, mainly Southwest suburbs. So, but I mean, we, we play all over.

So, right, right, right. But I'm talking about for rehearsal reasons and looking for your next guitar player. We're rehearsing with Juliet.

Oh, we're rehearsing Juliet. Right here, just kidding. Well, you guys should hang out at some of the, uh, some of the local open mic nights and see if you find your guitar player.

There's quite a few of them around and that's where bands can put together. So there's one that you host on Thursday nights, I believe. Yeah.

In fact, tomorrow night at the Uptown tap in Plainfield. Yeah. Well, if I hope I just wonder if anybody's listening from there, cause you know, we are looking for sponsors.

We are like to sponsor. Yeah, absolutely. They own several, um, restaurants and bars around the area.

Yeah. But Uptown tap always has magnificent musicians that show up. So I love open mics.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, it is.

That's where you find them. You know, it's, it's, you know, there's, if you, if you look at the bands that are around here in the area, um, you'll see like, okay, there's these five guys, they're in a band called whatever. And then you go out the next night and three of those five guys are in another band.

Right. And then you go out next week and they're like two of those guys, you know, with the guy from the previous week is in there and everybody's wondering, you know, it's like you go out every single weekend. You can go out Friday night, Saturday night, and you can see two bands each one of those nights and you see the same faces over again.

Well, there's something to be said about professionalism. You know, there really is. Paul, how many bands are you in? Um, I'm in five, five tributes, um, and original five tributes.

Wow. Yeah. Five tribute bands.

How about Mike? Mike? Oh, you know, he's, he's in at least three, at least three people in this band today. Right. At least three.

And then two others. Yeah. Right.

That would make it five. Yeah. Right.

I've done good in math. You've done, you've done good in the, in the ciphering. You made it past the fifth grade.

I did. And that's your story. Your story is right about too, because it's like, we know a lot of amazing musicians.

Right. And it's not even about the fact that they're busy with other projects. They, they have other, the other way around.

They don't have commitment. Right. You know, they want to stand out and if they don't stand out, they don't want to have time.

I don't want to commit to that. Right. I don't want to waste my time learning that it's garbage.

What do you mean? I'm just going to stand there and just do nothing. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Right. Right.

Yeah. No, but, but, you know, truth be told like a tomorrow night for, for in fact, our, our bass player told us that he isn't going to be there because he came down with his norovirus that's going around and stuff and he knows he's going to be not going to be ready. So I picked up the phone.

I made one phone call today and we got a bass player to fill in. Right. You would be an option, you know, it's, and once you, once you find good musicians that are professional about the whole thing and they understand that it's, you know, we're going to have fun and we're going to be professional about it.

You get a, you get a corral of people that you'd like to work with and that's who you work with. It's true. It really is.

So you do original music too as well. Yeah. The two of us aren't an original band.

Yeah. Well, I mean, that's kind of, I mean, that's why I'm still playing bass is because just how long we knew each other and just to have, I mean, when you play with people, I mean, when you're on bass and you play drums, I mean, after time, you know, you find that connection, but we just have that, you know, I know where he's going. He knows where I'm going.

And then, so that's just, it just, I mean, we talk about like the actual, when we play stupid girls. So, I mean, the garbage music, it's great. I'm not trying to say that music has to be complicated to be good.

Right. But I mean, absolutely not. It's really not that hard a song, but just that verse, that groove, it's just, it's just, we just lock it in.

And then it's just, you know, you're trying to make the people move as much as it's so simple, but it's our job just to kind of force you to move. Like you, you have to start dancing there. You have, you have no choice.

You can't resist that bass line though. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike's bass line. Well, it's not Mike's, but he plays the bass line in the song, stupid girl. And it's very smooth.

I have a weird theory that the bass is probably might be the most interesting of the, between the bass and guitars. Right. So, but it's just really well-written music by, you know.

Oh, sure. Sure. And he definitely crossed off a check in my box because no pun intended there, but, uh, you know, my motto when I'm in a band is I like to feel the bass player.

I feel, I feel the bass. I, uh, watch the guitar player and I hear the singer, you know, and it's pretty much how it goes. And when you're feeling and locked in with the bass, that's one less thing to worry about.

Right. And then I got to watch the singer because, you know, sometimes there's cues and there's pauses and there's, you know, and then I listened for the guitar. See, see that I'm going to hold on right there.

Okay. I, okay. I feel the bass player.

I watch the guitar player and I hear the singer. We're going to have t-shirts made up. Okay.

You need 10% of that. Don't let that go. There it is.

We've got a squirrely mic cable is what they do. Yeah. Or something in here.

Um, so you guys met at an open mic. Were you doing original stuff as well, or were you just kind of doing cover stuff, doing original stuff? I still do. Yeah.

I have like a solo acoustic stuff that I do. Nice. Nice.

Nice. Nice. I used to do originals.

I haven't, I kind of put it down, put it away for a while. Now do you play an instrument as well? Yeah. I play guitar.

I used to, I'm trying to get back into it again. Okay. This is, this inspires me.

So. Right. Right.

So here's, so here's the hard question. Here's the, I don't think I've ever asked a cover band or a tribute band. Hollywood mic asks the hard question.

The hard questions. Yes. Who invented liquid soap and why? No.

Um. I don't know, but I'm glad they did. Right.

Somebody change a channel. Yeah. So you guys are all into original music and everything.

And in one of the big complaints that I hear in the Chicagoland area about the Chicago music scene, and believe me, not just here, I can go to other States and say, Hey, have you ever played Chicago? And they're like, no, Chicago sucks. Right. And the big complaint is nobody wants original music.

Nobody even wants a wide variety cover band anymore. It's tribute bands. That's what it is.

Chicago is the app. I don't want to say worst because that's not the right word, but I have no other word to use. Chicago is the worst when it comes to that.

Bars want tribute bands and if not tribute bands, they want cover bands, but they want the cover bands to be kind of specific. Going away are the days of one band that can do Count Basie, Motown, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, you know, and then Bruno Mars, you know, it's, you know, those bands are kind of going by the wayside a little bit. We could start a Count Basie tribute.

We could start a Count Basie tribute band. Yeah. You know, I credit that a lot to the clubs themselves, you know, in terms of making more money.

If you have one band playing everything, you only have that one bands falling with you. If you have four tribute bands in that same bill, you have four different following bigger crowd. I understand it.

I understand it completely. I 100 percent. I understand that completely.

But as a musician, as an artist, since you guys are into your own original products and the whole bit, don't you feel like you're kind of double crossing, you know, you know, other musicians in a way? I mean, if we want to make the scene better in Chicago for original music, why all this effort on tribute bands? Well, it's like the stalker in the van inviting the kid and you got to invite the kid in with the cookie first and then you give him the goods. So that's what we do. We get him to the show and we say, hey, by the way, and that's how we did it with with our other band is we got they came to the show and and we say, oh, by the way, you know, oh, you're there.

Let's check that out. And that's how we get it. And then eventually, hopefully it will cross over.

That's the way I look at it. I don't know if you guys. Yeah.

But when you're out with when you're out with Stupid Girl, though, you know, are you throwing in an original song in the middle of a Stupid Girl set? No. See, that's what that's what I mean. You know, it's that's what I mean, because I totally understand.

OK, we're in a cover band, right? Every five or six songs, let's throw one in that we wrote and nobody's going to really know. OK, I get that. But when you're a tribute band and you're supposed to be doing all garbage music and all of a sudden you throw one of your originals in and maybe your original songs don't sound like garbage at all.

Yeah, you don't see tribute bands doing that very often. You're right. You know, and all I hear is tribute bands.

I hate tribute bands. I hate it. I can't get booked because all they want is tribute bands.

Yet everybody's in a tribute band nowadays. It's true. So how do we change that as musicians? How do we take control of that? Well, I was going to say something to to kind of add in.

Like, I'm an original musician and I never thought I would be in a tribute band. And back in the day, too, I never thought I would even play a cover song. I was like, I'm not covering anything.

I'm only playing what I write. And then, you know, I put down music for a little while, had some kids, whatever. And I got inspired to pick it back up when my dad passed away during COVID.

And I picked up the guitar for the first time in probably five or six years. And like for some reason, I couldn't write anymore. Like I still even now have a hard time writing.

And rather than not play at all, I started learning covers and kind of making them my own and learning songs that my dad used to play, stuff like that. But I digress a little bit. But I think part of why people are enjoying tribute so much right now is just because it's like so familiar.

And it's so it's kind of like almost like since COVID, it brings you this like nostalgic experience to where you could see a band that you used to see more often when they were playing out a lot. And now, you know, they only come to your city once every five years or whatever. And it's just it's just so it's such a fun scene.

And for me, and I see both sides of the coin. For me being in a tribute band, the thing that I love about it is I'm a mom, I have a full time job, I play my own music. I can practice this at home by myself every single day.

And then we get together and rehearse a couple times just to make sure we're all together. It's kind of nice. It makes it manageable as a musician to to like be in a band without so much pressure of like figuring out how to be extra creative and original and learn everything.

That makes sense. Right. Do you think that it might be a little bit of laziness on the fans part, the audiences part? Oh, it's a lot easier to go and listen to something you're familiar with, then put out an effort to listen to something that's original.

Very good. Yeah. You know, if you don't you never heard it before, you got to kind of listen to it.

Do I like this? But if it's something you already know, yeah, that's easy. You sit back and listen. Right.

We watch the stats on the videos and stuff. And even the Spotify, when we put this stuff out a year and a half ago with the five songs that we put out for four songs, we have less than a thousand listens, the streams. Are you talking original? The original stuff? Sure.

Very hard to get. And then I notice you kind of tick tock and stuff. You see the grams and stuff.

And then after 10 seconds, it just dips like you're falling off a cliff. The interest is just like that. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's tough. You know, I think technology has had a lot to do with it because now I mean, we live in the age where and we're not mentioning any names, but we live in the age where there's a lot of cover bands out there that play with tracks.

So you go to a show and they sound exactly like the recording. So people want to go out and they want to hear their favorite acts. They want to hear their favorite songs exactly the way they expect to hear those favorite songs.

And people realize now that that can be done. Right. So in a way, it is a little bit of being lazy.

But at the same time, I think a lot of a lot of the fans, spectators, you know, patrons have been conditioned to think, OK, well, I can go and see this garbage cover band, but they're not playing the tracks. So, yeah, they're playing garbage music, but it doesn't sound exactly right. I'm gonna go over here and see this garbage cover band because they've got all the tracks and now it sounds exactly like garbage.

It's really lazy. I mean, really lazy. And I bring that up because, like I said, I travel all over the country for my job and and Chicago is the only city, only big city that I've gone to where this phenomenon is going on.

You go to the Twin Cities in Minnesota, they don't want to talk to you if you're a tribute band. They'll allow you to be a cover band as long as you can throw some of your original stuff in there. Right.

And think about all the music that has influenced people over the course of the last few years. And ironically, we are in a museum right now dedicated to Chicago musicians that have influenced the music industry. But that's curtailed.

That's that's died off a lot in the last few years because there's not a lot of original acts coming out of Chicago, yet they're dropping out of the trees in L.A. and Nashville and the Twin Cities and even places like Indianapolis in the whole bit. And I think that has a lot to do with the fact that the music scene is so much different there. It's less commercial than it is here.

Well, something that we do that I like is we don't necessarily try to completely emulate the album versions of songs. We'll find live versions where they do a different intro or like a totally different bridge that's like from another song. And we try to, you know, bring some of that to the set.

It's not just like you're listening straight up to the album. You know, I like that we do that. I think that's a really fun thing.

We do some different intros and things like I mentioned. Right. Make it like it's a garbage live show as opposed to.

Right. Right. Because I mean, I mean, they do tend to.

I mean, they have their I mean, they have some programming and songs. But when they're when they're performing live, they tend to go more towards the actual, you know what I mean? Just kind of, you know, try it. Right.

Harder life. And I feel like we are we are a little heavier than when you listen to the albums. But that's kind of what they do, too.

And it's kind of more fun to rack up. Yeah. I've always liked live albums.

I mean, my whole life I've always bought live albums because they were different. You know, you can listen to the album they put out, but when they do it, everybody changes it. There's something different.

And, you know, I guess it's more powerful. It's different. I like that as a fan.

I love that. I mean, I love to this day. I love live albums.

I just love them. Well, basically, it started with Kiss Alive and Peter Frampton and all those albums that became Kiss Alive made the band. Oh, sure.

Sure. The band. That's that just started the whole and the live at Budokan.

Live at Budokan made Cheap Trick. I mean, they were big here in Chicago and the Midway. Huge.

Outside of here. No, nothing to do. One live album later and they're worldwide.

Well, I think it's time to hear another song. I think so, too. What song are you going to play? I think we're going to probably would like to play one of Brooks original songs, actually.

Harp. Well, damn. All right.

This is going to be interesting. One more time. We have Stupid Girl.

Long before now. We have started long before now. We have started long before now.

All right. That was Stupid Girl, the garbage tribute band playing an original song. That's right.

Figure. Very nice. Very nice.

Not that we had anything to do with that at all. No, we had nothing. Fantastic.

We planned that. Yeah. Did you really? That was awesome.

That was awesome. I shouldn't have said I should have said this is all your fault. Yeah, we did this completely unrehearsed.

Asshole. We're going to come here. We're going to do Stupid Girl.

No. So where can everybody find you? Oh, geez. Why do you look at me? We are on all the we are on all the socials.

We are on Instagram. I'm Supergirl Chicago. We're on Facebook.

We're also on TikTok. We're on YouTube. So, yeah, we got gigs in February.

In February. Yes. February 15th, we're going to be playing at Cubby Bear.

And then on February 27th, there's a nationally touring Depeche Mode tribute called Strange Love. We're going to be opening for them for three nights. On the 27th, we're going to be opening.

We're going to be playing at the Piazza in Aurora. On the 28th, we're going to be at Hobart's Art Theater. And on March 1st, we're going to be at the Impact Fuel Room in Libertyville.

Nice. Real nice. Going to be busy.

You guys got a couple of gigs coming up. You guys are on your way, man. Yes.

Well, thanks for coming in, guys. Thank you for having us. It was a lot of fun.

It's been great. We'll see you out there sometime. Take care.

Well, that was stupid. That was a stupid thing. Girl, girl, the band.

You know, that's going to be going through my head now, because I swear to God, I don't know any Garbage songs except that one. You're going to start listening. That was a stupid girl.

That's it. It's going to be going through my head. You could go to Spotify.

You can listen to all of it. Yeah, I guess I could. That's right.

Or I can just go out and see them as you should as well. That's right. That's right.

That's right. Definitely go see them. That was a lot of fun.

It was. They sounded good. I like the original music.

Again, I like original music. I like when people do that. It actually kind of sounded like some of the Garbage stuff.

So they could probably get away with throwing that in there once in a while. Just to see maybe if people would say, hey, wait, that's not a Garbage song. Yeah.

Or just, oh, yeah, it's a deep cut. It's from an unreleased album. Yes.

All right. As always, thank you for listening to the podcast and join us every Tuesday for another exciting new episode. But I got a favorite to ask of all of you this week.

You should go to our website, rockandrollchicagopodcast.com. Look up in the upper right hand corner. It says support. Yeah, support.

We can use as much support as you can give us. Yes, we could. Really, as little as five bucks a month would help us out.

We'd appreciate it. So check it out and we'll know if you did or not. I'm glad you said that because I was thinking bras, panties, jock strap.

Yeah, that too. We don't want those. You can keep those.

No, no, no. Keep that. Keep that to yourself.

So otherwise, we'll see you next week. The Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast is edited by Paul Martin. Theme song courtesy of Eminar Rush.

The Rock and Roll Chicago Podcast does not own the rights to any of the music heard on the show. The music is used to promote the guests that are featured.