Almost famous

>> Steven Kurutz’s Like a Rolling Stone is a
tribute to the bizarre world of tribute bands

by JULIET WATERS

A couple of chapters into Like a Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of a Tribute Band, Steven Kurutz makes a list of existing tribute bands that goes on for two pages, including, Duran Duran Duran, Malice Cooper, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Alanis Moreorless, Limpish Bizkit, AC/DShe, Spinal Pap, 2 You, Radioheart and Night of the Living Floyd.

Still, I think my brother came up with the best idea for a tribute band back in the ’90s, even if he never got around to naming his fantasy band. It was a tribute to Madonna, sung by Rush. (Don’t think it could work? Sing the opening lines of “Like a Prayer” in your best Geddy Lee falsetto, “Life is a myster-r-r-eeee…”.)

Soon after, we went to the funeral of our grandfather, a natural tenor who sang operetta and barbershop quartet. There we discovered our second cousins, once removed—identical twins with long blonde hair and a Rush tribute band called Presto.

This memory is either a testimony to the ubiquity of tribute bands, or evidence of a gene for natural tenors with a love of ironic grandiosity. Either way, it’s my brush with the surreal world of a genre that thrives on being mutated versions of the originals.

Kurutz briefly presents a history of tribute bands, starting with Beatlemania, the Broadway show that turned imitating the Beatles into a worldwide franchise. He discusses the subtle differences between tribute bands, cover bands (who do a range of material from different bands) and clone bands (who try to replicate the bands exactly). And he gives spot-on descriptions of the vaguely repellent world of tribute band management and audiences, which range mostly from aging baby boomers with a “gregarious and pleasantly self-satisfied manner” to spoilt, destructive frat house boys who morph instantly into boy scouts when the cops show up.

Like a Rolling Stone concerns itself largely, however, with Kurutz’s experience touring with two Stones tribute bands, Sticky Fingers and Canada’s own Blushing Brides. The dramatic core of the book is the bitter and bizarre rivalry between two aging Mick-divas, Fingers’ frontman Glen Carroll (pictured on the cover of the book) and Montreal-born Maurice Raymond.

In many ways this book reads like a tribute to another book, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Wilde’s novella, the hero never ages while a portrait in his bedroom takes on all the consequences of his debauchery. If Mick Jagger is hiding two tribute bands in his mansion, they probably look a lot like these two frontmen, each representing a different aspect of his dark side.

Maurice is the aging professional musician with a niche market that increasingly reflects back to him his own inevitable decay. Glen is the unapologetic, insufferable party boy whose denial puts another layer of dirt on that mirror every year (17 layers so far).

If the strangeness of this sub-culture isn’t intriguing enough for you, consider the almost as strange subtext. The devoted rock journalist whose career has descended to the level of touring with the tributes in these musically troubled times.

Neither of these frontmen come off as graduates from the London School of Economics, but they’re not so stupid that they can’t see the meta-weirdness of the situation. The Fingers even take to calling Kurutz “The Enemy,” (a reference to the Cameron Crowe role in Almost Famous).

After reading this book, I now have my own tribute fantasy. I option Like a Rolling Stone, and write a script for Mark Wahlberg, who played the lead in Rock Star, the movie based on the true story of Tim Owens, who fronted a tribute band to Judas Priest, until he ended up fronting the actual band. It won’t be exactly like the book, but even the best tributes never are.

Like A Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of A
Tribute Band by Steven Kurutz, Hc, 215PP, $27.95